Category: Coming Soon

I recently did a new design for my girlfriend, Bethalynne Bajema at bethalynnebajema.com/scriptorium.

She is still adding items to the store, but, like this site, most anyone who does not get their internet through a can and a piece of string can easily subscribe to rss feeds for posts, comments, and new products added.

I highly recommend going there and clicking that link, while it is fresh in your mind.

On that note, I am thinking it is time for me to swap this site out with something new; It will encourage me to get those parts of the site done which I have neglected over the past year – bios, portfolios, resumes, publishing lists and the sort.

And though most every art or creative entertainment site on the internet, especially those of my genre(s), are typically pretty dark in color schemes – I am thinking I might switch over to a lighter color scheme.

I get a lot of good input on this incarnation of site, and see a lot of people say a lot of good things, to me and to others; I do however know it is not perfect… nothing ever is.

There will always be that guy who accesses the net on an atari 2600 modified to run some obscure OS, using a browser that is “better than all the rest” because it chokes on everything, shaking his fist because 8 billion people on the internet aren’t writing code that is compatible… completely clueless as to which person in that equation is the fool.

I haven’t done the terribly bad things; I don’t use frames, iframes, and tables. I don’t make huge annoying flash-dependent mystery meat navigation websites where in order to navigate to the contact page, you have to slide gigeresque artifacts about, in search of the chicken with the shortest mustache and the biggest hat – who of course has the key to activate the proper animated page transition.

The latter, not because I don’t think it would be fun; I avoid this because I like modern things like rss feeds, and crazy things like people being able to find things without having to load a movie with an introduction, five intermissions, a featurette,and credits – just to make a simple purchase.

The size however, is a problem. I kept it at 800 wide for as long as I could, for those people who were ten years behind the rest of the internet and still using such low resolutions. The problem is, it restricts me from showing images inline at larger sizes. I need to use thickbox for that… Those 5% of the internet who are unaware that the internet now uses a lot of java, especially with the advent of AJAX, are simply directed to the image itself. I’ll probably continue to use thickbox, but will need to use it for a lot less things.

I also feel the lighter color schemes will better showcase my upcoming artwork.

These changes are things I have been considering for a while, which have been blocked by my accursed popularity over the past year or so. The changes are not for the sake of “Mr. Lonely Mcwhimperpants”, an anonymous someone who I imagine has nothing better to do than to repeatedly write me to voice his dislike for my site, though he apparently has no idea what he does not like. He only knows that the mere thought of my site not being designed specifically for him, makes him curl up in a fetal position and wet his official Justin Timberlake^tm panties whenever he compulsively visits it… time and time again.

I will actually have to find some way to switch to a lighter scheme, while still using colors that traumatize his fragile mind as easily as those colors I currently use; It would be wrong of me to take away his futile attempts at getting the internet to conform to whatever he likes to pretend is a browser, because everyone needs *some* reason to live – even those who probably shouldn’t.

Stay tuned, don’t close that browser! The new artwork for Vernian Process will be released in Late January. The new children’s book should have a preview up by February.

There will be a lot of art in between as well, some new assemblages, and of course I will continue to point you towards weird, insane, dumb, and interesting things whenever I am goofing off.

Originally, I had planned to do this comic in straight black and white only (line art). It being primarily a comedy comic book, this seemed to be the going standard, and would make up for a lot of lost time.

I was also afraid that if I made the artwork too nice, it would distract from the comedic content of the comic; I’ve found that the books that I find the funniest, have plain black and white art, and it is all terribly drawn – I even tend to think that the horrible art contributes well to the comedy.

I would note that influence here, however, I do not think using the term “horrible art” with someone else’s name would be very wise in the legal sense.

Inversely, Roman Dirge’s Lenore, a fantastic piece of comedy is shaded and often colored, as is Eric Adams‘ Lackluster World – a wonderful comedic drama. 

So, I decided to shade a page or two, and after seeing them, I’ve decided to do the whole book. It makes one hell of a difference, too much of one for me to not do it or to only partially do it.

I am currently shading at a rate of about 2-3 pages per day, and currently just shy of page 14 (the end point for my preview). If I keep working at this rate taking one day per week to do other things, I should have the entire thing ready for the press by the 24th, just a week shy of my absolute latest acceptable date, meaning I can start shipping just before Halloween.

When the preview goes up, presale will be available, though my first focus is getting copies out to all those people who took a part in my last promotional offer.

Look for a preview to be available in the next two days, I will post details here, or you can bookmark someghoulswanderbymistake.com or (shorter) sgwbm.com (You can also add me on livejournal or on myspace).

… in the credits at least – still, something well worth 2 dollars, or one pound… of… I suppose a pound of anything would do, as there are no specifications – but $2 is probably much, much cheaper to send than brass weights or stone wheels, and much more precise.

I saw Pirates of the Great Salt Lake do this the year before last – and had I the $500 right then, I would have bought myself one of the Executive Fan Club Producer Spots (where they also read your name aloud at some point during the movie).

Actually, this Pirate’s campaign is actually where I got the idea last month to put out that promotion for getting your name in the credits to my comic book (buy merchandise = get in credits).

Now, several kids from someplace that measures money in pounds, rather than monetary units, are planning on making a Jule’s Verne inspired movie based on Jule’s Verne’s “Clovis Dardentor”, a lesser-known work about travels, adventure, wealthy industrialists, and con artists.

You can buy a credit in this film here – proceeds going into the actual making of the movie. 

It seems they have managed a bit of work already (you can see their progress via their “News” page).

You might notice some changes here over the next few days; You may even notice some of these happening as you navigate, depending on where you are.

I am working from the advice of colleagues, and from visitors, as well as my own observations – making little changes here or there for ease of use – from button colors, to re-organizing the store, to putting up better images of some of the older items that are available, and changing the ordering of those images.

I am even re-designing a lot of the older prints, and of course their thumbnails, as the graphics I put up for them were from when I had a super-insanely bright monitor, and the print designs themselves were too much like posters and not befitting the quality stock, inks, and finishes involved in making them. More on this in the next posting.

I have been meaning to change a lot of these things for a long time – and now that I have all this traffic, well I feel like I was caught with my pants down… except that that wouldn’t be embarrassing. This, however, is.

I am also going to start using this site more often, brush the dust off of it, and try to use it as my primary blog. Hopefully what you will see here over the next few months, will be more than announcements of sale items (but you will probably see those too).

I will probably also make some announcements here or there relating to the Miskatonic Archive: A Strange Fiction and Horror related site that Beth, Myself, and a few others do for fun.

I also plan to, once my comic book is off the presses, begin doing doodles and web-comic strips here as well. I am not yet sure if I am going to mirror those over at Some Ghouls Wander by Mistake, as I might opt to keep that site print content only to make it less confusing.

Now that I am done making this announcement about less announcements – I am off to make one more announcement.

Thank you for reading.

On September 19th, better known as “Talk Like A Pirate Day”, “Pirates of the Great Salt Lake”, a movie I have long been dying to see, held free screenings in five or more US cities. Unfortunately these screenings were nowhere near me, but I now have some added encouragement that the movie will be more accessible soon. Updates on their progress can be received through their myspace page.

Since I haven’t actually seen the movie, I can only tell you that the trailer makes me want to see it, pretty badly. The trailer is behind the cut, at the bottom of this post, or you can click the graphic below to see the trailer on their site in “Small, Medium, Large, or Pirate Sized”

Continue reading Pirates of the Great Salt Lake