Bleah, sorry for the recent bout of invisibility. This kind of thing always comes at the worst time; a family apparently moved in with the family next door, and they are all 24/7 chain smokers. We're just downwind, and all of the smoke goes into our vents. We don't have screens on most of the windows, and it's a bad neighborhood, so it's hard to ventilate the place.
We've just been breathing it all week, but today I've got the front door standing open. It's not really safe, but I've got to get some oxygen! All week I've been feeling like a hospital patient.
But the injection of clean air is helping a lot. I'm rolling out a new plan, today, that will hopefully benefit both readers and me.
First of all, Elf Life (the old series) has been due for a revision forever, and I've been talking about it for almost as long. I've decided to keep the former name for the old part of the series, and keep Alfheim for the new adventures. That way, there will be less confusion (I hope) over updates of the original series. The old archive remains where it is, but a new archive has been opened in which we will start updating new material as if it's just a new, regular series.
The first part is a new introduction that I've been ruminating over, for just forever. But the passing of time has helped me condense and adjust it. It was too heavy, too overly dramatic, before. I have to remind myself that Elf Life is supposed to be more comedy than adventure or pathos, although those are certainly elements, as well.
Also, ongoing criticism of the art from outside sources always seem to center on the character design, and it occurs to me that nowhere in the series do I really properly explain that I'm not trying to present pretty humanoid elves with gently sloping ears, but rather the odd Rackham-esque elves that supposedly scampered about in the dark ages, causing mischief in medieval hovels and whatnot. These elves were more likely gnarly and knotted grotesques with beards. There were beautiful elves, as well, but they were typically depicted as evil sirens who lured men to their doom.
So the revision of Elf Life gets this out of the way right away, then moves on to a sequence that I've been trying to draw for some time: a dream of faeries, leading to a short period of time immediately preceding the discovery of the spy posing as Baughb's portrait artist.
After that, I would like to draw a few new sequences, including a better introduction to Baughb's shrine and a skirmish or two with the Cesspool elves. Later, a more involved sequence involves Baughb's trial in the Underground Kingdom, which was originally posted as a text adventure, when the computer died way back when.
Instead of trying to do it all at once (the big problem, before), I will just work on it occasionally throughout the year.
Alfheim will continue, as well. The idea is to keep updates coming, no matter what, and to avoid the confusion of loading different things that don't belong together into the same archive, just to get it on the front page.
I'm also hoping that this will let me make schedule adjustments on the fly without stressing you guys out so bad. I know I've got a stint at the bank next month and a comic book gig coming up at some point, for instance. If I feel like the quality of Elf Life/Alfheim will suffer because of unexpected events (like all week overtime), I'll be in a better position to add a new feature without disturbing the flow of the regular comics.Labels: comics, schedule, site |
