Who here hates sketches?

[Allan_ecker]

I'm getting kind of fed up with regurgitating old sketches. I mean, seriously. I should have something new for you guys. You deserve it, waiting around for my boring funnybook-making ass.

Soo....

I'm going to be chucking stuff up one way or another, and a lot will depend on how much creative energy I can muster in a given week. I'm not going to be as reliable as I was for the creation time of Umlaut House until I get done with grad school (which should be a year or so away), but I want to keep doing... something. So... cast your vote and I'll make my decision.

[Kieran]

I'd also be quite happy with option two too...

Alan,

Sketches are interesting, and so is concept art. In essence post whatever happens to be of the most interest to you, to inflict an esoteric quote from a musical: "I promise you won't bore me..."

If anything I know I'd be happy to see concept art, it's always a good thing to see what sort of things bounce around inside fertile creative minds...

[The_Fox]

I agree with Kieran. I like the sketches, but Allan, post whatever YOU LIKE AND WANT POSTED. I gurantee you that we, your loyal and rabid fanfurs, will enjoy all of it. You can't bore us. We're always happy to see more stuff.

- Jarylan "Never updates my site and has no leg to stand on" Vulpine

[Cyril_Dran]

I concur.. whenever you restrain yourself to doing one thing that is dictated by your readers, the art is no longer art, it's work. If you give yourself a deadline, it's work as well.. Whatever you feel deserves to be shared with the world should go on your website.. I mean, that's why webcomics are free, right?

[Allan_ecker]

Thanks for your support, everyone!

Here's a little insight into my thinking:

I'm a pretty disciplined person, mostly. I get up early even on weekends, I try to eat right (although I bugger that up a lot) and exercise (see previous aside), and I'm becomming a damn decent RF engineer because of this.

I did Umlaut House in a very UNdisciplined manner. BUT, because I have something of a perfectionist bent, I insisted on having an update schedule. In order to reconcile these two facts, I created the Buffer That Ate Manhattan. Umlaut House saw its debut with SIX MONTHS of backlog. As I watched my backlog baloon to nearly a year, I gave in to pressure from friends to go bi-weekly. And my buffer started to shrivel up.

But summers replenished it nicely. So the buffer would shrink to as low as a month or so in the spring, and chunk up to six or nine months in the summer. It was stable for two and a half years that way.

Then came Grad School. My first quarter was spent in the Air Force Research Lab in Ohio. It was there that Unit Zero first started leeching attention from Umlaut House. The buffer drained to the bottom, and in the first time since its creation, Umlaut House began updating the night before updates. It was then that, for the first time, Umlaut House became Work.

It was terrible. I still loved these characters, I still wanted to tell their stories, but the time was such a crunch, and I had so many other artistic interests sprouting up like dandelions that I was rushing myself. I started to wonder if I shouldn't just cut the thread cleanly so as not to have the comic peter out.

I hate when comics peter out.

My first year of grad school was pretty tough, and the buffer didn't get much bigger. This was last school year, the year I decided to stop drawing Umlaut House biweekly. I really did it so the comic wouldn't dwindle to a halt. I didn't want it to happen that way. If Umlaut House was to end, it at least deserved to have an End.

So I wrote the Wedding Strips, and of course Saundra interveined to keep things from getting too dull. Saundra really is like a subpersonality of mine; Jake and Volair as well. They appear to me in my mind's eye and comment and quip with me. The strips where Calvin and Amanda ended up together were not pre-planned. What you see in those strips is what happened inside my head. The cast of Umlaut House, if fictional characters can said to be so, is very much ALIVE. They're kind of like friends, and I think any hope for more comics featuring them should be drawn from the fact that I still get into arguments with Saundra, Volair, and Jake, in my head. This is probably why Brethed can't stop drawing Opus for more than a year at a time. I'm not saying I'm as good as him, I'm just saying I know what it's like to be a comic artist with strong characters.

So, ah, where does all this leave us?

I'm probably going to do a little of all of the first three, and I can't wait to show everyone my Half Straight album covers; I keep collections of song titles I feel would be likely to show up if the gang ever started a band. Titles like "Grape and Pillage: The Vikings Do Itally" or "Plato's Republic of China". You know, Geek Pop.

What would be really cool is if I actually could write these songs, but at the moment my composing skill is a little limited. I'll probably huck a couple of mp3's you guys' way along the way. Heck, I might even sing in one or two of 'em.

Run!!!

Heh heh.

Well, this Post Of Epic Proportions is starting to eat into my bedtime, so I'll put it up. Thanks everyone for cooperating in my webcomics experience. It most certainly is NOT over, and those of you who wait through all the sketches will hopefully be rewarded with a few good laughs or keen pictures along the way.

By the way, what did y'all think of Unit Zero: Issue One?

[Cyril_Dran]

About the subpersonality thing.. I do that too... unfortunately, I do it with every character I roleplay extensively.. Which gives me about a good dozen of the suckers. Although it is fun to get a 13-way argument going in between all 12 or so characters and myself at once, I always get this huge headache afterwards..

The biggest problem is when one of them gets irate and cusses me out over something stupid I did with their character.. like when I dropped Cyril off a cliff by accident.. heh.

[R. Wyatt]

Hell, you should draw whatever you want. If you're not enjoying it, there's not much point- so asking others to dictate what it is you should draw- especially when you have a wealth of ideas. And really knowing your characters like that? I was I had that, it'd make scripting a lot easier.

[Maximuscoolman]

My vote goes to concept art for the next round of comic, I can't wait to see what we will have the pleasure of reading from you in the future. However, concept art shouldn't come because you feel that it's needed, if you sit and try to think of stuff to do, it wont be real, it needs to come to you and then you need to show it us. If it's not coming, then I think I speak for everyone when I say we'll be happy with whatever you show us.

[Allan_ecker]

Goodness; I didn't want y'all to think I was pandering!

I think the question was more what I should -post- than what I should -do-.

I'll probably be doing more of -all- these things than I'll put up. (That's the hope, anyway.) I'm a firm believer in the "post less than you make" rule. I burn through a sketchbook in as little as three months on occasion, and the sum total of my work you see "online" is a very small fraction (perhaps two or three percent) of the drawings I've done.

So don't be bashful about asking to see one thing over another. Odds are, I'll be doing that and more. It's just a question of what you all would find -interesting-.

[Maximuscoolman]

Well if it's a case of having an excess of stuff that worthy of being shown, and you are having to decide what's best to show us, why not update more often and show us more?

[Allan_ecker]

Because a lot of it isn't natively digital, and I'm a lazy ass when it comes to the non-art aspect of art. You'll notice the website had something like two significant changes made to it during the four year run of Umlaut House.

Also, higher frequency updates would mean I'd still be geared towards higher frequency updates when grad school started up, and frankly, I want to have a significant -backlog- of stuff for the site when I start back up with school, for fairly obvious reasons.

Plus, I'm actually -embarrassed- by some of the poor-quality updates I've shucked up lately. I mean, sketches on lined notebook paper? What was I thinking?

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, my laziness when it comes to converting my analog drawings to digital images also is manifesting itself as less material for the UHCD, which I've said I want to be a real treat for the truely die-hard UH fans, the only folks likely to shell out the 15-odd dollars for the thing. Sure, after the CD launches, I may let some of the material in it trickle out through the website, but I want the first wave of buyers to get a fairly substantial chunk of artwork they've never seen before, very little of which I've got around to processing.

[Allan_ecker]

Update:

I remembered that one of the reasons I haven't scanned many sketches lately is that my new scanner likes to "help" me scan things, and I hadn't yet figured out how to get the ruddy thing to not HELP SO MUCH.

Most importantly, I figured out how to explain to it that I don't want sketches scanned as line art when I specify GREY SCALE.

See, it has this "feature" called autocorrect, which adjusts the brightness and contrast automatically using some sort of contextual information which, rather than trying to match the histogram of values to the output brightness, seems to be doing some sort of "smart" adjustment. Presumably, some if statement somewhere looks at my drawings and says, "Oh, now THAT is lineart if ever I saw it. I'll just take out all those nasty grey values for the user's convenience!" Fucker.

Fortunately, however, it turns out there's a fairly accessable check box to switch that set of code off, restoring control of the out/in curve of my scanner to its rightful owner: ME. I went on something of a scanning bonanza last night, and now have some genuinely interesting material for the next few updates. I also found a few things that belong very nicely in the UHCD.

Soon, though, I hope to put up a few "finished" comic pages as teasers for the next batch of comics.

[Maximuscoolman]

Speaking of the CD, when can we expect it to be available? I assume that it wont be available in the near future, but I'd just like to know a rough estimate to see if it's worth reading through the archives on keenspace again before I get it.

[Allan_ecker]

Hrrrr...

Well, I -was- planning on having it done at the end of the summer, which still -might- be reasonable if a couple of miracles happen.

Miracle #1: I get a good, decent and right ending done very soon.
Miracle #2: The exclusive UHCD-only bonus comics can be done quickly, and I don't harrangue myself too much over the quality.

However, being more realistic with myself would set the time around the end of this year, perhaps as ungodly late as April if something awful happens, such as several all-life-encompasing projects in a row or me needing wrist surgery. However, this summer is my best shot at some serious productivity since I'm only working a 40-hour week. Grad school can be as high as 70 or so when it gets bad.

This week's update should be of somewhat higher quality than they've been lately; No notebook paper lines!

[RandomScribe]

Actually, I like concept art only a little less than I do actual comics--at least when there's some sort of explanatory text to go with it. It's interesting to see the creative process at work. I'm still dying to see the UH finale, though... And I need to take a look at Unit Zero sometime soon.

Notebook paper is evil! It's awful for drawing, and yet doodling on it is so much more fun than actually taking notes in class! >.<

--RS (Hooray for geek music!)

[Allan_ecker]

I actually like the feel of ballpoint on notebook paper; it's better for drawing than typing paper, and while it's worse for pencils, it's better than my sketchbook quasi-charcoal paper for ballpoints, which have a certain bucolic charm to them.

Ha ha! Boy did I ever misuse "bucolic" back there! Who uses ballpoint pens on the farm!?

The heck? I sounded like Dragonfly for a second back there.

[DetailBear]

...However, being more realistic with myself would set the time around the end of this year, perhaps as ungodly late as April

In time for Yuletide presents would be nice.

[Alfador]

I actually like the feel of ballpoint on notebook paper; it's better for drawing than typing paper, and while it's worse for pencils, it's better than my sketchbook quasi-charcoal paper for ballpoints, which have a certain bucolic charm to them.

Ha ha! Boy did I ever misuse "bucolic" back there! Who uses ballpoint pens on the farm!?

The heck? I sounded like Dragonfly for a second back there.

Don't worry, we all absorb mannerisms from friends and acquaintances. At least I do...a lot.

It was the "Ha ha!" that REALLY did it, though.

[Allan_ecker]

...However, being more realistic with myself would set the time around the end of this year, perhaps as ungodly late as April

In time for Yuletide presents would be nice.

I'm imagining someone seeing UH for the first time via the CD.

Great googlimoogli. They'd be getting it with the director's commentary!

[Kieran]

I just wanted to chime in with support for Unit Zero. The parts I have seen have left me wanting to see more, which I think is about the most useful comment I can offer at this juncture...