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AboutSo, right now there isn't much in About. But, there IS stuff here, and that's what matters.
The comic as it stands What IS this comic? The Dementia of Magic, you say? It's more or less a comedic medieval comic that takes place in a universe created by a computer geek who's never read a page of Tolkien or played a round of D&D in his life. It primarily follows the lives of Matthew and Alexandria, two siblings who live in the Landis Kingdom in some sort of pseudo-medieval magic fantasy world. The comic is meant to be read from the beginning. It's a bit serial, that is, plot-based and dependent on previous plots to advance the story. So you've gotta start from scratch and try to keep track of things. Of course, if you didn't mean The Dementia of Magic, you might've meant Silly Cone V, or Labgoats, Inc, or some other comics. Look over there. Why call it the Dementia of Magic? Because, in my life, I've learned that my mind seems to work differently than most, so I'm just covering my bases before I get people complaining that they don't understand my sense of humor. Granted, of course, it won't ALWAYS be funny... All right, once and for all, what's the update schedule? I'm taking large liberty in the "once and for all" part of the question, aren't I? Remember how I said I'd be back for M-F updates in September? Well, that won't happen now that I'm going to color. Sorry. It's MWF. But hey, it's color, right? Why do you draw like crap? Er... because I'm not that good of an artist? :-) This is more or less my first attempt at drawing much of anything on a regular basis. You've gotta start somewhere, and that somewhere ain't gonna be perfection. I'll improve, trust me.
As it stands now, I draw the thing in pencil first, then go over it all with my handy 0.1mm pen, all on bristol. After scanning to a 2-bit B&W format, GIMP takes over for color. I love GIMP. Following that, it heads to Paint Shop Pro for textwork. As much as I love GIMP, PSP has better text tools. Until I get my hands on an SVG-capable version of GIMP... Before Chapter Two, there was greyscale. Contrast hacking was my friend in my attempts to clean the pics and yet keep their texture. GIMP was not used. Beforehand (anything prior to September 27, 2002), I drew the thing with pencil on computer paper. Cheap and plentiful. Is Phil (your brother) really that mean? No, he's usually worse. ...okay, okay, I'll come clean. Phil has really zero input to the comic whatsoever (except for the Cute and Single joke, that was a quote of his in the old forums). He doesn't even read the thing. So, yeah. Wait, the artist's breaking the fourth wall! What gives? Well, I'm the artist. I live outside the fourth wall. :-) Actually, I'll never BREAK the fourth wall, per se. The characters in the comic (Matt, Alex, etc) cannot interact with the characters behind wall #4 (Myself, my brother, etc), and vice versa, besides me directly drawing the comic. So, technically, the fourth wall isn't BROKEN, the camera's simply changing perspective. So there. What's with Break Time? C'mon, I'm no uber-godlike master cartoonist. Drawing the same plotline all the time gets tedious. So, between major chapters, I'll take a break for some amount of time (however long I can get new ideas) and throw out single-shot comics, usually centering around Phil and myself. Or various DoM-related subjects that don't fit into the plot well. It helps to get my mind on something else for a while so I can come back to the plot with a fresh head. Could you make a "first time reader" page? Like, a section to get people up to speed quickly? I'd like to. I really would. But I don't want to make it a simple text page. I'd want to draw up complete comic pages (similar to the intro pages to Chapter 2) and do it that way. It'd just feel more natural. But that'd take time. Worse, I'm not sure what I'd need to cover to make people not feel completely lost when they pick the strip up. The plot is EXTREMELY plot-dependent and I'll be making numerous references to the past as I go along. When I do, I'll probably stick in pointers to lead back to referenced plots, but I want to make people as comfortable as possible without having to reiterate the entire plot. I'm not sure how exactly to go about that. But, I'll work on it. I understand it can be confusing if you haven't read the entire backlog yet. The comic's logistics and plot bits Just how old are Matt and Alex, anyway? I'll admit, this is tricky to figure out, given my drawing style throws proportions off madly and makes everyone look like kids. Sorry. But, as a rough guide, as per the start of the comic, Matt is around 23-24 and Alex is around 22-23. For the curious, Phinn is in her late 60s (but she's an elf, so she's actually fairly young), Jacob's around 21-22, Salthalus's true form is in her 70s, and most other characters can be derived roughly based on this data and how they interact with everyone else. Daily Vote Bonus Doodles So, why should we vote? What's in it for us? Um... the off chance I might get more readers? :-) Seriously, I've got some odd things planned for the DoM that requires more readers and/or people participating in the forums or otherwise giving me some feedback. It'll be fun! Really! C'mon! Side note, if you came here via my place at BuzzComix, could you let me know? I'm a bit curious as to whether or not it's actually getting anyone new in here... Not good enough. Better reason. This is where the Daily Vote Bonus Doodles come from. In September of 2003, right when the fall semester of classes started for me at Oakland University, I decided I'd doodle in my notes more. Y'know, to keep up my mad drawing skillz. Then I realized that, hey, maybe my readers would be interested in what I scribble. So, using of BuzzComix's nifty ability to display an image AFTER someone votes, I set up something where I can put up a doodle a day for anyone who votes. So, I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm blatantly bribing you. Heh. :-) How often are the doodles updated? Ideally, every day. Including non-updating comic days. Including weekends. Including holidays. Of course, that's the strictly ideal situation. While I do tend to draw at least one doodle in each class I'm in, this doesn't account for days when I don't have class (i.e. weekends), days when class consists of a test or some other scenario where I can't whip out my notes, or days when notes just come too fast for me to doodle. If I run out of doodles in the queue, I run out of doodles. Sorry. What are your classes? Y'know, just for reference. Well, I'm glad you asked. On the post-vote screens, I list the class or other source that each doodle comes from. They are:
Hey, who ARE these people? They don't look ANYTHING like DoM characters! You honestly didn't think this was my only comic idea, did you? Mwa ha. HA ha ha ha. HA HA ha ha HA ha HA HA HA! :-)
And then there's random doodles that have nothing to do with anything. Miscellaneous Anyone you'd like to thank right now? M@d pr0pz0rz have to go out to a bunch of people who helped my self-esteem while I was coming up with this whole thing throughout the years when nobody else would listen...
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