Messing...

Been messing around with the code a bit. I don't see too many changes, but I scheduled the update a while in the future, so it may take some time. Midterms over, so it's back to the grind of MonWedFri.

Also, if this royally screws up your browser somehow with the new code and all, don't take it. I can be reached at "uts2htrae@yahoo.com" (Like I'd give you my real email account!! HA! I'd be spammed to death in a week!) if you spot a major or minor code problem, and I'm talking page breaking type code, not "I got 404'd" problems.

No week

Midterms this week. This means studying. This means cramming in work I should have done earlier, visiting people for help last minute, and in general panicking. I think Pylon needs a week long rest.

This is kinda my fancy excuse for I'm busy and lazy this week, and I can't be busy and lazy with both school and comics. Sorry-e-oh!

Smoothly

That's how things have been going lately. Nothing troubling, I've been hitting updates 1-2-3, school's fine.

I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. It will, someday. Something's bound to happen. Any day, any hour, any minute now, something is bubbling beneath the surface that will mess me up and everything with it.

I should prepare. I should make a nice, long backlog of strips in the wings so if something does hit the fan, I'll be ready. But, I never do. Usually, I'll just miss the date, and explain later if at all. I try not to be stupid, I'm pretty sure Pylon isn't world renown and such, and in fact I think the last webanalyizer registered only 100 or so unique readers. Also, Pylon's only got 30-40 strips to begin with, so I haven't got any deep involved storylines that would be destroyed if I did miss an update.

So, everything's a-ok. Except for that cast page. I'll get to it someday. Someday...

Late

Monday's is a little late. It's not in color, but it should be up and running now. Today's a kinda hectic, with papers, exams. Should be interesting.

Another Surprise

Colored Friday's in entirely. But again, don't get too used to it. If I have too much work, Color's the first thing that's going if I don't have the time to do it. The next timesaver would be to manually write in the strips like I used to, and the last resort is that I just won't have a strip that day. Skipping a day, fortunately, is only a worst case situation. I doubt I'd have so little time to not even pump out a 'gag' strip or something.

I guess the best indicator would be: if I can write this blog, I probably have enough time to make the comic. Not always, but often. And that's today's news.

My new pet

Color!

Come Wednesday, the surprise is that Pylon is first colored! October 5, I tried rudimentary coloring, and I posted it instead of the normal greyscale. Believe it or not, it's all GIMP'ed.

The thing is, I can't do this too often. It took almost four to five hours (I wasn't keeping track) to ink and digitally color this sucker. I don't have that time often, and will likely not in the future. I have studies, Man! And exams. And papers. Will Pylon still Mon-Tue-Fri? Sure, but don't expect a whole lot of colored ones to appear.

Also, traditionally, Pylon has always been done in greys. The 100 or so penciled strips were all greys, and most of the digital strips, until 10/5, were grey'ed. I don't know why, and I can't really offer an explanation of why I prefer greyscale. The most obvious has to be that it's easiest for me. I can quickly ink, scan, and GIMP a greyscale. But the coloring takes a while, as I'm trying to avoid "MS Paintism", which can be seen here or here or here or here (They're all from the same source, but the actual comics that have MSPaintism would induce a heart attack from the violence of color). If you still don't know, it is when someone uses MS Paint to make horrifyingly bright, neon, vomit-inducing colors. Or retina renching. MS Paint, by itself, isn't too bad of a tool. In the world of comics, MS Paint is kinda like a chainsaw. And using it with color is like trying to use said chainsaw to whittle a tiny ship in a bottle. It's overkill. And the result ain't pretty. I'm trying my best to avoid that.

I think I discussed enough, in both this and the last post. So, until the next most dire post.

Not my Bad!

I don't know if this is even an issue, but I am updating Mondays-Tuesdays-Fridays again. This means that if you check on those days, and the comic for that day isn't up, it's probably Keenspace(yes, I know it's Comic Genesis now, but still!). I'm not blaming them specifically, but the servers have a tendency to crash every so often or so. Most of the time, they run smoothly and no one notices anything. Every 3 or 4 months, though, they sometimes crash.

I, for one, admire the 'Space admins. Working for nothing, they slave away to give me the privledge of posting Pylon totally free of charge to everyone, and if being totally free means I have to see the servers Pylon's on crash once or twice a year, that's pretty awesome. So, if you don't see the new comic, don't complain to me or Keenspace. It's all free to you, and if the comics aren't up, come back tomorrow. I certainly can't do too much, and I certainly will not pressure 'Space admins to work harder, so that's that.

Well, not like anyone's complained, that is. Most of my 100 or so readers seem pretty accepting. I say 100 or so, but that number may be higher, since the site stats for September came off a bit odd, due to it changing it's code and switching from Keenspace to Comicgen. Or whatever. Long story short, half of September's statistics were lost and half of the month was reported as 0 readers, 0 hits, 0 everything. And I know that it's not just because Pylon is new or that it's unpopular, since the graph of hits shows a steady bar, followed by huge dips where the stats were recorded as zero. So, I guess the server there was just doing... something. So I'll have to wait till October to get accurate stats.

I don't know how, but I seem to have developed a habit of making rather large posts. The whole goal of this blog was more for Pylon updates, and I guess recently I've just had more to talk about. Also, I like explaining why the site's down when it is, or why an update isn't happening on so-and-so week. I feel that if you're one of those people who's coming back every few days to check my site, I owe an explanation if it isn't up. Like today. Just wanted you to know that yes, new comics are coming, whenever Comicgen fixes what's up that is. Heck, for all I know, it's already fixed. The only times I see my site is when I FTP or Stat checker. I think I have an RSS feed in there somewhere too, it's like here or something. If you wanted it.

Because

If you think today's (10/03) comic isn't up to par, keep this in mind:

Sunday night, just scanned it in. Well, I start working on it in GIMP, and I'm almost done! ALMOST! And then I go to overlay the text in, and the crap hits the fan. Because at that exact moment, Zone Alarm, Systematic AV, and AVG all chose that exact moment, 10:30 pm, to update.

Long story short, my Lappy crashed. And I lost all data. Including the strip. Only a miracle (and the fact that I work ten times as fast, and looked over some less obvious faults in the strip, like a background!) insured that Monday got a strip at all. So, please, forgive me. Blame my stupid computer.

In other news, the cast page was created, and now I'm just making all the characters. To fit into the page. Because it's the cast page. So it needs all the cast. But the page's code is down. Just need to add everyone up till now, and add all their info, which, considering that Pylon is a new strip, shouldn't take long. Why bother making a cast page at all, you ask? Well, this guy for one(may have to scroll down to find his entry on cast pages), suggests that it's the smart thing to do. And frankly, I think it's smart too. Predictably, as Pylon grows, the cast will grow, and I'll need something to keep the readers on track on who's who. Plus, I know that if I don't do it now, while the cast is small, I'll never get to it when the cast is larger. And that's terrible.

And some of you may have noticed that the site's a little different. I've been messing with the code a little, and as I get better with it, It may change from time to time. Some days it may be something small, other days it may be a whole site overhaul. I can't really be bothered to report all the minor tweaks I've done so far. It would eat around 10 of these blog posts a day, with "added another frame" or "deleted some excess codes I don't use anymore". So, if you come, and the site's different, that's why.

And That's Because! for today!