Happy New Year!

The holidays were nuts.

Here’s a Spring fairy to tide you over. :D

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I decided I would find out.  I copy-and-pasted the top 1200 comics* on Piperka (as of October 10, 2010) into a spreadsheet, then went through the whole list marking down my relationships with every comic that I recognized:

1. Read Regularly: I am up to date with the comic and read it on a regular basis.
2. Read Previously: I at one time was a regular reader but am not now;  a comic that is either finished, I lost interest in, or I lost track of.
3. Archive Trawling:  I am currently working my way up through the archives of the comic.
4. Reading List: I wish to read this comic, but I haven’t started to yet.
5. Know Creator:  I am friends or acquaintances with one or more of the creator(s) of the comic.  This is anything more than a casual introduction at a convention; they will more than likely remember me and my work.
6. Met Creator:  I have encountered one or more of the creator(s) of the comic somewhere, but it was only a casual introduction and they are unlikely to remember who I am if we meet again.
7. Heard Of: I do not read this comic, but I have heard of it.  This can range from knowing roughly what it’s about to simply having seen the name somewhere.

*The comics listed on Piperka also include some newspaper comics and image blogs, all of which are counted in their popularity rankings, and side projects for the same comic are sometimes given individual listings as well.

Overall, the data is interesting.  Out of the top 1200 comics, I have at least heard of 297 of them.  Of those 297, I currently read 44, and there are 36 that I used to read.  I have met 60 creators, and I know 17 of them.

When I first browsed through the list and came up with this idea, I thought these numbers would be a lot bigger, simply due to the fact that the more popular comics, duh, are more visible.  Still, I ended up including the top 1200 comics just because I kept recognizing other names every time I clicked through to the lower and lower ranks as I was collecting comics for the spreadsheet.

I’d be interested in some sort of social network that could plot these kinds of relationships in the webcomics world.  It would be interesting, especially for obscure comics, to see how many people recognize it by name versus how many people actually read it.

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In a return to humor comics, I present Alex’s Guide to a Life Well-Lived, a slice-of-life, sometimes-journal comic that began as one of my 24 Hour Comics in 2008.  It’s been a convention favorite ever since, and I’m happy to share it with you as a regular webcomic!

The official launch is on June 14th, which is (not coincidentally) the day after Garanos’ 4th anniversary, and will be updating twice a week on Mondays and Fridays.  You can read the original 25 comics on the website right now!

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The full piece for the cover of Garanos Volume III.  It’s been redrawn from a panel that appeared in the comic, and this version is actually a full 11 x 17 inches if I ever want to make a poster out of it.

Fire stock photos came from Photos8.

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And now the quartet is complete with Winter!  A sneak look at the keychains I’ve already made:

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Summer!  As seen in Summer’s Year.  I added the sheer tiered ruffles to her dress to give it a more visual interest, which I think I’ll carry over to the comic when I revamp it.  SY was hand-colored when I did it as a 24 Hour Comic, but I’m actually going to recolor it digitally so it matches the visual style of The Shepherd, and I hope to produce another story about Autumn and Spring to add to the collection.  Ideally, I’d like to make a combined print anthology of all three finished stories someday. ^_^

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Spring, second of four goddesses from The Shepherd.  I had the great revelation last night that I could– nay, should, enter these into the Marcon art show.  So I’m going to do that. :D

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It’s so shiny!  This is one of four portraits of the Goddesses from The Shepherd that I’m going to turn into new keychains and coasters.

Actually drawn ages ago, I just never had time to color it until now. :D

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My Sailor Moon R (2nd season) box set was quite dusty, in fact, when I pulled it out.  Unfortunately, I’d only gotten R when the first and second season box sets were available, since I got it for a Christmas present and the giver had gotten the two box sets mixed up.  I got about three quarters of the way through the second season when I decided I wanted to watch the first season again, so I tracked down a copy of it, marathoned it over two days, then finished R.  Then Chris and I watched Sailor Moon S together, since he hadn’t seen it.

He’s insisting we take a break before we move on to SuperS.  Nonetheless, here’s a picture of Sailor Mars I drew the other night when I was in the mood.

Watching Sailor Moon made me pine a bit for the days when I was drawing straight anime and not feeling self-conscious about it.  Fine art professors will do that to you, I’m afraid.

I made the hard switch to a significantly less-anime style for Garanos Volume II because of the pressure to perform for my academic superiors.  When the time came, I had a lot of fun doing the Volume I cover since it was closer to my old way of doing things; it was like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes.  Soon after that, it occurred to me that a) I’m not in school anymore, so my professors no long have jurisdiction about what should be in my portfolio, and b) I enjoy drawing anime-style.

I’m not doing this comic for them, and I never was in the first place.  In other words…

They can’t tell me what to do!  They’re not the boss of me!  I do what I want!

So I did just that.  I started drawing what I wanted.

Starting with page 337, there’s a significant loosening-up of my drawing style, which had effects on the final colored pages.  I stopped trying so hard to be un-anime that I was able to loosen up and settle into a style that’s now truly a fusion of then and now.

Ultimately, the artistic growth I’ve gone through from the switch has been worthwhile.  But sometimes I wonder what Garanos would look like now, had I ignored the chanting of “Anime is Just One Style” and continued to let my style at the end of Volume I evolve organically through the pages that followed.

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Wonder Woman. As I wrote, I didn’t actually look at references for this, so it’s probably got all sorts of imperfections.

Garanos drawn in moe anime style.  I feel kind of dirty for this one. ^_^;

For all intents, this is Garanos, but I never added her tattoo.  Her hair is also far more curly at the ends than I’ve ever drawn her before.  I’m kind of in a curly-ends-of-hair-phase these days!

Lastly, some more sketches I did of The Hues characters.  Andrea, Hannah, Lauren, and Maya.

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