Life in a Northern Town

Sun-Cutter - page 28

2012-05-21T08:04:42Z

( Sun-Cutter page 28 )

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Annotated Raven's Children - Issue #1: Page 6 & 7

2012-05-18T20:11:17Z

( Issue #1: Page 6 & 7 )

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Sun-Cutter - page 27

2012-05-17T23:16:02Z

( Sun-Cutter page 27 )

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Kismet book: pay for download?

2012-05-16T03:16:37Z

I'd like to start having more interesting, non-comics content on this blog, so here is a question for you. Since attempts to publish a "Hunter's Moon" book via traditional publishing keep falling through, I'm going to stop procrastinating this year (REALLY, I MEAN IT THIS TIME) and put together a downloadable version (probably also with a POD print version through Lulu.com or someplace like that). The whole comic is available online for free anyway, but I think a nice downloadable PDF or HTML archive (or both) would be a nice value-added feature.

What I'm not sure about is whether to charge for it. I'd definitely charge for the POD book, since there is a cost to ME to print it; but I'm on the fence about charging for the download. What do you think? It wouldn't be very expensive, more on the order of an ebook than a graphic novel.

View Poll: #10474

As I see it, there isn't a "right" and a "wrong" answer here -- I mean, voting for the free option doesn't mean that you don't want me to be compensated for my work or anything of that nature. The thing about Kismet is that I would love to monetize it somehow, and I'm tossing around various options for accomplishing that - I should note that none of these options includes shutting off access to the archives, which will ALWAYS be free online no matter what direction I go. At the moment I'm weighing the benefit of what small profit I might make for a pay-per-download PDF versus the benefit of having the PDF out there and freely available.

And the thing about webcomics is that they don't lend themselves to ereaders very well at ALL. I would have no compunctions whatsoever about charging for an ebook version of a novel I'd put online for free, because it is a nice versatile product that people would appreciate and use. A PDF of a comic, though, is mostly useful in the same venue as reading the comic online: you can read it on your computer, but not much else. And I feel a bit odd about charging for it.

Thoughts?

(This poll also exists on LJ.)

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Sun-Cutter - page 26

2012-05-14T07:25:25Z

( Sun-Cutter page 26 )

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Annotated Raven's Children - Issue #1: Page 5

2012-05-12T01:15:00Z

( Issue #1: Page 5 )

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Sun-Cutter - page 25

2012-05-11T00:25:58Z

( Sun-Cutter page 25 )

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Sun-Cutter - page 24

2012-05-07T19:21:41Z

( Sun-Cutter page 24 )

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Annotated Raven's Children - Issue #1: Page 4

2012-05-04T20:50:24Z

( Issue #1: Page 4 )

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Sun-Cutter - page 23

2012-05-03T18:32:18Z

( Sun-Cutter page 23 )

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Sun-Cutter - page 22

2012-04-30T20:04:15Z

( Sun-Cutter page 22 )

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Annotated Raven's Children - Issue #1: Page 3

2012-04-27T21:26:22Z

( Issue #1: Page 3 )

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Sun-Cutter - page 21

2012-04-26T09:36:49Z

( Sun-Cutter page 21 )

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Help me name the kid!

2012-04-25T10:14:07Z

One character in Kismet who does not yet have a name is the child in this and this page. She is a girl, and I want her to have some sort of plant/tree/nature type of name, but beyond that, I am drawing a blank.

On Tertia, due to the lack of last names, it's fairly common for children in the younger generation to be given names that are unique or unusual. So, in addition to common plant/tree/flower names, she could be named after just about ANYTHING.

The options in the poll are the names I'm considering right now. (And yes, I'm forcing you to pick just one. *g*) However, feel free to elaborate or to suggest something else in comments! If I like it, I'll use it. :D

View Poll: #10291

(This poll is also posted on LJ.)

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Sun-Cutter - page 20

2012-04-23T08:02:16Z

( Sun-Cutter page 20 )

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Annotated Raven's Children - Issue #1: Page 2

2012-04-20T09:47:56Z

( Issue #1: Page 2 )

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Sun-Cutter - page 19

2012-04-20T02:37:45Z

This "updating twice a week" thing would work a lot better if I'd remember to upload the page.

( Sun-Cutter page 19 )

And this scene is done! Now we move on to Kismet itself.

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Sun-Cutter - page 18

2012-04-16T07:08:01Z

( Sun-Cutter page 18 )

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The Annotated Raven's Children - Issue #1: Page 1

2012-04-14T00:53:50Z

( Issue #1: Page 1 )

( Footnotes: loanwords in an English-language fantasy setting )

What do you guys think? What are your personal preferences for borrowed or invented words in fantasy settings, either taken from real-world languages or made up?

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2X the Kismet!

2012-04-13T00:30:03Z

Starting next week, I think I'm going up to 2 Kismet updates a week: Mondays and Thursdays (just like the original Hunter's Moon schedule!). Right now I've got a few pages done in advance, and I'm having a lot of fun working on it -- I want to keep the story moving forward!

Also, if I'm giving you two pages a week rather than one, I feel less guilty about using lazy artist tricks, such as copy-pasting backgrounds or doing whole conversations in one gigantic panel. ;p

I'll drop back down to the page-a-week schedule if this turns out to be hard to keep up, but I'm enthused and ready to get this horse running again. Let's do eeeeet!

As an extra bonus, this is what my driveway looks like right now:

(Dog optional.)

Come on, spring, you can do it ...

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Sun-Cutter - page 17

2012-04-09T06:46:05Z

( Sun-Cutter page 17 )

( Footnotes: Gerald and Caillen's relationship, plus a brief intro to the Tertian creche system )

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Raven's Children - Issue #1: Cover

2012-04-07T06:37:35Z

And so we begin! Well, technically what you get today is the Issue #1 cover.

( Issue #1: Cover )

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The Raven's Children introduction and warnings post

2012-04-07T01:32:26Z

Before getting into the annotated Raven's Children, I figured I'd make this post to link back to, with some introductory information and a set of standard warnings.

In case you missed the first Raven's Children introductory post or don't wish to read it, the important things to be aware of are these:

Raven's Children is a series of self-published minicomics, plus one final web-only chapter, that I worked on from 2000-2005. It contains mature content (graphic violence, profanity and nudity) as well as material that may be triggering to some (sexual violence, child abuse, animal harm, and in-universe racism and sexism). There isn't really an ending; the story stops at the end of the first story arc, without much resolution, and probably will never be continued. Also, the series clearly demonstrates my learning process as I got the hang of writing and drawing a comic, so the early material is pretty rough and it gets better as it goes along.

I will be talking about my own creative process and the flaws that I now see in the series, including some unconscious racism and sexism on my part. However, this is open to interpretation -- I don't mean to invalidate the experience of those who read the series and liked it! Questions, disagreement and vigorous discussion/debate are encouraged. Also, as I go along, if you feel that I should add anything to this warning post, please let me know.

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Cultural Appropriation

2012-04-06T05:36:40Z

The last in my series of backstory posts for Raven's Children is going to be more of a definition post. I'm going to be talking about cultural appropriation quite a bit as I go through the series, so I thought it would be a good idea to start out with some basic information and definitions.

( Explanation and links under the cut )

And that's it for the introduction posts! Posting of actual pages starts tomorrow.

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Raven's Children - History - Merging the Raven Tribe with Fivemoon

2012-04-05T01:14:46Z

In the previous two posts, I talked a little about the Raven Tribe and Fivemoon. Now things get interesting. (Well, for certain values of interesting.)

Up to 1999 or 2000, these were completely separate stories in separate worlds. Fivemoon, as noted before, was the setting for several unfinished fantasy novels. The Raven Tribe's story was slated to be a comic, and I had an adventure/exploration/quest story mapped out in rough strokes.

When I started seriously looking at getting my Raven Tribe story underway, I decided to combine them. At this point, more than a decade later, I don't remember why, although my guess would be that I didn't want all the world-building that I'd done on Fivemoon to go to waste. At that point, the Raven Tribe had been developed in a lot of detail (one might say absurd detail, looking at all my ridiculously detailed family trees and lists of tribe members from 30 years before the story takes place and so forth). However, the rest of the world wasn't really developed at all. I had a couple of characters from other cultures and a vague idea that there some sort of medieval-ish empire, and that was about it. In Fivemoon, I had tons of different cultures to choose from, all of them well fleshed out, so I decided to transplant the Raven Tribe there.

( Day 3: Merging the two )

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