In one of my late-night proverbial strolls across the internet, I happened to look at my referral links on Project Wonderful and saw I had been linked to on Reddit . This link made me giggle. For extra lulz, read the comments.
In light of this link I am posting a disclaimer, in case you’ve never had a science class in your life, informing all of you that apparently the girl in page 21 of chapter one of my comic(s) should have died. Because, you know, everything else that has appeared in comics EVER before the meteor incident on page 21 of chapter one of Starcrossed is 100% true.
So in case you didn’t know, there’s really a guy named Peter Parker who got bit by a radioactive spider and has superpowers. Head injuries really do spawn robots.. And a talking, anthropomorphic duck really can survive a rifle shot at point-blank range to the face with no apparent damage being done other than his bill spinning around his head in a humorous manner.
It’s all true. I read it on the internet.

Updates . . . Let me show you them.
I updated twice this week to make up for the lack thereof recently.
Question:
I changed up the toning for Starcrossed from the previous chapter. I thought the screen tones looked bad and instead opted for sort of an inkwash look for chapter two.
I know it’s only five pages in, but what are your opinions of the look?
I’m still sort of experimenting and finding something I like that’s quick and looks good, but I’m curious as to what people think.
I’m trying to find something more consistent with the covers (it seems a little jarring to have a painted cover and something entirely different for the pages), and it would take way too long to make it just like the covers.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to ideas for things to try out?
Let me know!

Oh almost forgot, Starcrossed won second place for Best New Comic of 2008 in the WebComic Readers Choice Awards! Woohoo!

Thanks to everyone for their support on my last post. I’d like to elaborate more on this, but that’ll have to wait until a later time. Right now I’d like to post about the comic.

I do hope the new page is an improvement from the art in chapter one. Back in August I received a tough, but fair review on Choice Comics that reamed my artwork quite a bit. I was kind of surprised, but at the same time not by the feedback. I always expected my comics to gain attention from the art rather than the writing, and this review was quite the opposite of that.

Initially Starcrossed is as much a learning exercise as it is a serious project. Not to say I put any less work or effort into this comic than I would my other projects I have lined up. I’ve just never really done much narrative comic art before. My previous comic projects include Value=Dead, which is more self-contained gag comics rather than a story and Wake Odyssey which I wasn’t entirely happy with and put on the back burner.

At the time when I had finished chapter one of Starcrossed, I was proud of it and happy with it. I’m still proud of it, because I stuck with it. After a while of looking at it, though, I can see what the reviewer meant by the art. I can do better. I had never done screentones much before, and I learned a lot from using them in chapter one. They’re not that great, and I don’t think they do my artwork justice. I’m weaning myself off of screentones in the first few pages of this chapter, and then they’ll be gone almost entirely. My strength lies more in a painted effect. You’ll be seeing more of that by around page four. I think it’ll work a lot better. It’s less time consuming, and is less distracting. I want to make this good, so don’t be afraid to tell me what you think. I like being proud of my art, but there’s a difference between proud of it and complacent. If you receive nothing but praise, you tend to get a little fat on creating mediocre work. I was actually kind of glad to get the critique because it gave me an objective and honest look at what I had made.

As for the writing, it’s funny that that appears to be this comic’s biggest draw. At least according to this review. Part of me knows how the story goes, but mostly it’s free form. I don’t really fancy myself as much of a writer, so I chose Starcrossed as a starting point for my comics because I thought it’d be best to start with what I know. Quinn is sort of loosely based off of me and my experiences. Similar hairstyle, freckles, we even dress sort of similar, same introspective artistic bent. Granted she’s not me, but it is easy to step into her shoes and write things from her point of view.

The family’s believable because, well, it’s my family . . . err . . . sort of. In a comicky sort of way. The personalities are pretty much established. I actually have two younger brothers, but for this story I wanted to just have one and play up on the sibling rivalry aspect of their relationship. It’s all too familiar. -_-

Quinn’s brother, Roger, goes through a small design change in chapter two. I thought he looked a bit too much like Vash the Stampede with the broom hair, so I shortened it after the first couple of pages to make it more believable.

Starcrossed is actually going to be a fairly short story. It’s intended to be roughly about 15 chapters long, give or take. Depending on how it evolves. I wanted something that was a fairly involved series without being too epic. I have two fairly epic projects I want to get to in the future after Starcrossed. One, being Wake Odyssey, an idea Rumor, another friend at the time, and I started brainstorming on back in 2004. We tried to do some pages for it back in 2006, but it hadn’t been quite well enough planned out and the pages just didn’t do it justice. We’ve been doing a pretty heavy reworking on it since. The other one is a brain-child I started when I was sixteen called Medusa Complex which is supposed to be a mystery/phychological fantasy. It’s been redone more times than I can count because, well, I was sixteen when I came up with the original concept. Things change.

Anyway, I do hope you all enjoy what I have coming up for the comic. I have a lot of projects I want to get to. I think they’re awesome, but I hope you guys will think so as well.

So page one of chapter two is finally up. This has been a really bad month so far. My uncle was murdered on October 4th so I’ve been dealing with family things. I also ended up taking over a week off from school right around midterms, so I’m now entirely behind on work. I haven’t touched anything comic related, or school related for that matter. I’ve spent the last week sitting idly on my laptop playing the Sims because it’s the only thing that’s kept me distracted, and remotely sane.

Now I’m in class right now posting this and studying for my art history midterm exam for later today. I figure it’s about time to get off my ass and do something productive. Just sitting around being a lump on the couch isn’t making me feel any better. Luckily I have a month’s worth of pages ready to go.

Like I said before, I’m cutting updates down to once a week to make sure I can keep up with school and all. Expect a new page Friday from now on.

I posted chapter 2’s cover a couple of days ago and I got a comment from a reader saying it isn’t loading. Is anyone else having this problem?

Edit: Fixed. Let me know if you guys have any more problems.

Well I was wanting to update, but I’m embarrassed to say I actually don’t know how. My trusty colleague Rumormonger was kind enough to schedule all of the pages for chapter one to auto-update for me so I would only have to worry about making blog posts. Problem being I never learned how to update them myself. So once I have Rumor on hand to show me how, I’ll post the cover for chapter two.

I still don’t have internet quite yet. We will be getting service at our house next week. In the meantime I finally got a new laptop and get online whenever the wireless fairy blesses me with a wifi hot spot. The comic will be up and regular again within the week. Internet at home is like this site’s fiber intake. It needs it to be able poop fourth a page for your enjoyment on a regular basis. Yay for poop references!

I might not be answering my emails very quickly for a bit. I have an 8-10 page art history paper due next Wednesday. Bleh.

Hey guys, I figured I’d let you in on what’s been going on with me here lately and how it’s going to affect the comic.

I’ve been busy all week with moving and I’ll continue to be busy with it until Sunday getting more furniture over and getting settled in. I also will not have internet for a little while. Pages 27 and 28 of chapter one are already uploaded and scheduled to post on their regular days. After that chapter one will be done and I will be taking a small break. There won’t be any updates on the comic for probably a couple of weeks to give myself enough time to get internet set up, get settled in and get school projects done as well.

I have some pages for chapter 2 done, but I don’t want to get started on a new chapter just to suddenly stop. This will also allow me to get more pages done in the meantime so the comic can update consistently once I’m back online.

In the meantime, I will be able to still check my emails and comments at school and I can still make posts here so if anyone needs or wants to communicate with me they still can.

I’m just letting you guys know I’ll be doing the $5 sketch commissions until the end of August. So if you’re wanting a low priced commission, I’ll be taking them until then.
And if you’re outside of the United States or Canada, please let me know ahead of time so I can figure in postage.

And I’ll be starting school on Monday and I’ll be moving next month so I’ll be pretty busy. I’ll try to reply to any emails as soon as I can, but if I don’t get to you right away I apologize ahead of time.

I’m slowly, but surely working on chapter two. There’s a few changes that I’m making for it. For one, I’m opting more for flat tones rather than so many screen tones you see now. It cuts down on a lot of the time spent toning the comic and getting it out.
Also after doing thumbnails for all the pages, I went through and shot reference photos for each panel. I felt the anatomy for chapter one isn’t quite up to snuff to what I can do, so hopefully chapter two will be an improvement visually.
Also after this chapter, I’m going to switch to updating once a week. The reason is I start school August 25th. I want to be able to buy myself enough time to keep at least a chapter ahead of what’s out. Between the comic and animation projects I’ll have in school, I don’t think I could keep up with a twice-a-week schedule and I’d rather stick to something I can keep consistent.