 |
July 2, 2008: Chapter 7 and site updates
So, chapter 7 has started. First up, I'd like to apologise for the length of the break in continuity, I've gotten a fair deal of feedback recently that it was just too long for too little. To those of you who have been awaiting the next steps of the story, I really am sorry, I could justify all day as to why it needed to be done, but hopefully this will be better: It won't happen again. At least, that sort of length of time. There are a few more strips that need to be reduxed, but I either won't do them in such a block, or I'll do them in my own time and not interupt the schedule. In any case, we now begin the next chapter, so hopefully I can drag you back with that. Speaking of the new chapter, I've scripted it out and it will weigh in at 45ish comics, under half the mammoth that was family ties.
The other small point I'd like to address is that of the website. I just did a bit of tide-me-over maintenance today, updating dropdowns, archives, header images and so forth. I was hoping I wouldn't have to before HiT moved off CG, but that has been delayed. For those of you wondering, I want to use the fantastic CMXpress system being developed by a friend of mine. It's in the final stages of testing and I'm early in the line for a rollout. However, the chap doing this wants to make sure his product is quality, which means a bit of rigorous testing before I get my mitts on it. The moment I do, HiT will not only be getting a full site redesign, but moving to it's own server. I'm really looking forward to that, I've learned a lot about website creation since my initial terrible efforts, so the new site will hopefully be a lot less buggy and a lot more useable. I cannot honestly give you a projection other than it'll be more than a month and less than a year, the creation of CMXpress is out of my hands.
~Thereisnosaurus
may 13, 2008: happy birfday tooh meeh
20 years old, and still not dead. Well, it's something, I guess. Anyhow, first up apologies for those of you dedicated to check back right after update time, you may have gotten a little confused due some terrible uploading and equally bad glitches. It's all fixed now (I think, though given I'm updating the news, we may get that old glitch of doom again) and I'll take this time to tell you what's coming up. If you've been keeping up on the forums you'll know that I'm going to be taking a little break, but fear not, there's plenty of content incoming. I took two weeks off from drawing anything to put up (period) in order to do schoolwork and generally relax an iota. I've dug around for a little help and so for the next two weeks we'll have fillers from Pip( Sins: venials), Thoth the Grey (Arcana, a very promising looking up and comer), Darin (Crossworlds), Sage (Yosh!), Moomanibe (a friend of mine) and potentially one more (otherwise I'll put something up myself to round out the two weeks). in the following month I then decided to continue project: redux and advanced it significantly- 11 new comics, the entirety of chapter 2. these will go up three a week like the last batch and then be moved back to their correct place once all 11 have gone up. Finally, a week of fillers of my own devising will lead into the resumption of continuity. All up that's a little more than a month and a half, I know that's a long time and I don't blame you if you take a break and come back when we're ready to continue, but please understand that I'm a student with a full time uni course I pretty much have to excel in and plenty of other stuff to hold down. I can handle the load, but it means unless I take a break once in a while, I'll burn out, which I really don't want to do. I hope you understand :). On a final note, HiT made the top 100 comics on TWC for about a day at the start of the month, so thank you to everyone who voted, and particularly to Thoth who campaigned to get some more people hitting the button. That's all for now, Saurus out.
~Thereisnosaurus
march 18, 2008: Back to school
t's been a little while, so I figured some more news was in order. I'm very close to finishing family ties, probably within the next six to eight strips, meaning you'll finish the chapter sometime in may. When this happens, there'll be a two to four week break in story. If it's two then it'll be two weeks of guest and random fillers and then back into the story. If it's four it'll be two weeks of fillers and two weeks of redux strips. As always, I'd love to get some fillers from people for the first couple of weeks, so if you're interested, please submit em'. The reason for the break is I still haven't managed to get back up to 24 stips in my buffer and I really want that settled. Further info as it comes to hand
more bad news (sort of) lies in wait. I was hoping to increase my buffer enough that I could re-do some old strips this holidays, and that just hasn't happened. hot weather, work and family have conspired against me and have actually sapped a few strips off my existing buffer. I'm not dying or anything (still have about 18 strips ahead), but I need to get that up again to 24 before I can consider reduxes. I still have a few weeks before I go back to uni, so there's a good chance I'll be able to work back up now that the worst of my commitments are over, but we'll see...
enjoy the read!
~Thereisnosaurus
febuary 6, 2008: Upsies and downsies
it's been a long time since I've updated this, relying instead on sub-comic memos, which is a bad thing, so it's about time I did a proper news update. here goes. A few things to get started- One is the annoying glitch you may have noticed where the latest comic is periodically and inexplicably replaced by the intro comic from the between part special. I say inexplicable because it IS, I have no idea why or how the site is doing it, because I definitely am not. Unfortunately, I can't fix it manually, but it seems to correct itself when the next comic is auto-uploaded (manually triggering an update doesn't work). So the best thing to do at the moment is just wait for the next scheduled day (tues, thurs or sat) and it should fix itself. If you're desperate to see the latest comic, you actually can, go back one strip using the navigation and then look at the address bar of your brower, which should have the archive address, for example: http://thereisnosaurus.comicgen.com/d/20070904.html. where the set of eight numbers are in the address, replace those with the latest update date in the format year (four numbers), month (two numbers), day (two numbers). so if you wanted to see the scheduled update from febuary the fifth, 2008, you'd put in 20080205. hit go and it should take you to that strip, glitch or no. Now, I've been saying I'll be moving off comicgenesis for a while now, but matters have conspired to prevent that. I'm waiting on CMXpress to be completed before I build the new site, and I'm not sure it will be done, but I'm hoping within the next few months or so.
more bad news (sort of) lies in wait. I was hoping to increase my buffer enough that I could re-do some old strips this holidays, and that just hasn't happened. hot weather, work and family have conspired against me and have actually sapped a few strips off my existing buffer. I'm not dying or anything (still have about 18 strips ahead), but I need to get that up again to 24 before I can consider reduxes. I still have a few weeks before I go back to uni, so there's a good chance I'll be able to work back up now that the worst of my commitments are over, but we'll see...
Sorry for all the glitches and enjoy the read!
~Thereisnosaurus
November 26: pass go, collect 200 strips
That's right, as of tuesday, HiT is officially 200 strips old. Probably actually quite a bit older if I did a proper count, but that's the way my tally works. Not bad, clocking in at a few over 100 strips a year, and it's getting faster. We're now hitting the meat of family ties, and as far as my predictions go, we're about a quarter of the way in, I've got the thing scripted out a long way in advance and it's looking to be upwards of eighty comics! over double my previous biggest chapter... eesh, though I think it's worth it. Anyhow, I'm back up in canberra for the holidays, so I'm a gonna be burning butt to catch up on comicry while I'm here. Count on some extras over the holiday season...
enjoy the read!
~Thereisnosaurus
October 21: busy busy busy
I've taken time off drawing HiT full time recently to get my education sorted. I was lagging behind with my schoolwork so I figured it'd be best to set other commitments aside so I had my nose to the grindstone for the most limited period possible. This won't interrupt the schedule to the end of family ties I hope, but will mean a week or so's fillers at the end of the chapter. I have been far from idle in the artistic front however, I've been continually improving my skills and I've been experimenting with some new styles of shading. The results of these will be up shortly on Sins: Venials and Misfile, so if you're popping in from one or the other, welcome to my humble little strip, Pip and Chris are amazing comic authors and I'm honoured to be able to give them a hand in return for the amazing work they do! In other news, I've updated the archive and about pages as well as uploading the next month's updates. We've also almost hit 2 million hits which is absolutely astonishing given it was only my last post in which I announced the 1 million. Thanks to all you folk who read the strip, it makes me more and more determined to improve and see this originally laughable idea through to its conclusion!
remember,HiT will now be updating tuesday, thursday and saturday!
enjoy the read!
~Thereisnosaurus
September 28: million hits and beginning of part 2
Funny how these things coincide. about halfway through the miniseries HiT officially passed the million hit mark, a big milestone. Oddly enough, within under two weeks or so, we're already at 1.3 million... obviously those adds I put up are working :). On that note, if you've been lured here by my blatant advertising, welcome, welcome!I hope your eyes haven't been mutilated beyond repair by my early attempts at comicry, I hope my more recent stylings have been more enjoyable and I hope my efforts have proved interesting enough that you'll pop back from time to time. By all means drop me a line and tell me why you stayed or, even better, why you won't...
After this filler we get stuck into part 2. There are a couple of comics to provide a cover fold and then we get into chapter 6- Family Ties. It's looking to be a good one, I say that about everything, but still, I haven't gone backwards since chapter 5. As a kind of celebration for the start of part 2, I've done up some new donation/contribution wallpapers- see below- you can get your hands on them by giving feedback, doing fanart or filler strips or donating (or generaly impressing and/or bribing me in some way). The grey one is available only to financial donors however, and contains an upcoming character (it's in full colour in the proper version, btw). On the topic of donations, they're still happily taken, and since the strips are now a little smaller, I've reduced the amount of donations required to get an extra update to $30- so get donating!If you lack in money, you can always vote, HiT has been steadily climbing the rankings and I'd love to see it in the webcomic list top 100 by the end of the year. Probably won't happen, but one can hope :).
here are the donation wallpapers
remember,HiT will now be updating tuesday, thursday and saturday!
enjoy the read!
~Thereisnosaurus
September 7: filler series stuff
I kinda lied about the no wednsday update, seems like there was :P. You'll have noticed the first bit of the site update has gone up, hopefully this is a little easier to navigate, and the vote and donate options being on the front page should encourage you to give them a click once in a while (>.<). However, updates are far from over. the cast page will get a rework, there's some sketches and fanart going up in the gallery and the archive page needs an update as well, so you'll see stuff there soon too.
In other news, I just uploaded the month's comics. the miniseries, however, falls two updates short of filling up the month, so rather than kicking off part 2 early, I'm going to put out a call for guest comics. Free publicity! a place in a comic forever! And naturally, the usual load of goodies I reserve for my donors (Doesn't have to by money people, art floats my boat as well :D). If I don't get anything (which I sadly kind of expect) I'll pop up a couple of sketch or gag fillers depending on my feeling. A fellow author recommended I do more fillers, so I shall take him up on that :P
enjoy the read!
~Thereisnosaurus
September 1: Look, out there, all creation awaits! :P