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New Schedule (with Excuses!)

After a long slump, it’s hard for me to get going again. So five days ago I decided to try something out, and I added an Excuses section to webdisaster, figuring that if I can’t post something I’m proud of, I should at least post an excuse for why I didn’t post that thing I should have been proud of. It’s a way of publicly shaming myself, while at the same time giving me a hook to get me started drawing something at least…

Well, now I’ve posted excuses for the last five days in a row, and it’s becoming clear to me already that I will not be able to keep this pace up. I want to post something daily, but I also have an idea for a fairly regular strip that will be just a bit more than I can handle on a daily basis. So I think I’m going to do something I should have done a long time ago, and set myself a less-than-daily publication schedule. That way I’m not shooting too high and failing, but I’m also updating fairly frequently. I’m going to shoot for having something updated on the site every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Ideally it will be a new strip on those days, but barring that it will be a sketch or an excuse drawing.


Update

Since I went to the Center for Cartoon Studies Summer Workshop, I’ve been super jazzed about working on longer projects, namely producing a book. I’ve changed my schedule around so that I’m now getting up at 5am to draw for an hour before work, and the first thing I’m working on is a story my friend Todd wrote. It should end up being about 16 pages or so. That’s going to take me a while, so my infrequent cartoon strip schedule may get a bit more infrequent. I’ll try to post some quickies as I get the chance though.


Daily Sketches Again!

I’m starting up the daily sketch project again.  As anyone who has paid attention to webdisaster for any length of time will tell you, Scott Powers is nothing if not inconsistent. I start projects, then I get frustrated/bored/self conscious, etc, and just shut down altogether. So I realize that lately this site has been a bit of a, well, disaster. And I think it’s pretty obvious that it started happening when I tried to make my daily sketch project into something more serious and I ended up sabotaging myself. Then after that happened I got a very bad case of artists’ block. Plus it hasn’t helped that I got Dragon Age: Origins for Christmas and that has been eating up what little spare time I have to myself. So after a while I thought, I’ll just finish up the two current comics projects I’m working on and then start up my daily sketch thing again. But that artists’ block just didn’t go away…

So I’m going to do the daily sketches again, and this time I’m limiting them to 5 minutes and I’m going to stick to that. And hopefully that will spur my creativity so that I can finish the other stuff I’m working on and move forward.

I’m really sorry about the lull in posts, but this site is really about me finding what works for me creatively, and there have been and will still be many times where that process breaks down. I just have to figure out how to make those breakdowns less frequent and shorter…


Daily Sketches!?

Okay, so I guess my ‘Daily Sketch’ project is pretty much over… Sorry if you’re disappointed, believe me I am too. I wanted to do a sketch a day for a year, but lately I’ve been lagging far behind. And then I started this ‘Fun Facts’ project, and I’ve been stuck on it for over a week now. Turns out it’s a lot more difficult and painful dissecting my life and condensing it into panels than I thought it would be; every time I sit down to continue that story it makes me feel terrible. So it’s been easier to just not draw anything, and now I’m far enough behind that it really doesn’t make sense to continue pretending I’m on a ‘daily’ schedule.

So after 133 days, I  have 112 sketches. That’s not exactly what I was shooting for, but it’s not bad. It definitely ramped up my production level and I learned a lot. And I plan on continuing to post sketches as often as I can, so hopefully not much will change. And since I’m having so much trouble with the ‘Fun Facts’ story, I’m going to shelve it for a bit and start on a new one by Chance the Cool to take my mind off of it for a while.

Hope you continue to enjoy my scribblings. Sorry I’m such a mental case, but thanks for providing free therapy/confessional services, internet!


Site Navigation

Okay, so I think I’ve finally figured out a decent way to do the forward and back buttons. I’ve moved both of them to the center of the page and added a set to the bottom of the archive pages, and I’ve renamed them older and newer all around. Older is still left and newer is still right, but I think this should clear things up a bit. I believe there are two different ways of looking at it, where left is older and right is newer, and vice versa, and both are correct. It’s just a matter of how you think of temporal layout in a two dimensional space. So I think this is a good compromise between the two. Let me know if I’m wrong.


Archive Page Navigation?

Is the sketch archive page confusing to you? Kim mentioned to me last night that she’s always confused by the sketch archive page, and she thinks the newest post should be to the bottom right if the previous link is in the upper left. Makes some sense to me, I guess, so I thought I’d see if anyone else agrees. I’m still not 100% sure about how the navigation is laid out in WordPress, so I’ll entertain some feedback and change it if people agree…


Holiday Rules

The holidays are coming up, so my posts may be less frequent than daily. I’ll be going out of town for Thanksgiving, so I may miss a day here and there, especially since I’ve already missed a few days recently anyway. It doesn’t exactly fit with the ‘daily’ sketch idea, but I’ll retain the spirit and try to draw something each day and post catch-up whenever I can. I’ll still draw 365 days’ worth of sketches, but it may take me 400 days… =)

Also, I’m going to try some bigger projects with other materials and media, and I’m finding that my 15 minute rule is a tad restrictive. It forces me to add more than necessary to a quick sketch, and it doesn’t allow for longer work. So I’ll still try to use 15 minutes as a guideline, but you can probably expect to see some quicker sketches, then later in the week you might see one that takes quite a bit longer. I’m just trying to vary it up and find my voice, which is what mostly what webdisaster has been about all along.


Navigation Change

On the archive pages, the earlier and later buttons have swapped positions. So now whether you’re on the main page or an archive page, the earlier stuff is on the left and the later stuff is right. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that sooner. And while I’m at it, I should mention that if you haven’t looked at the sketch archive page, you really should. I’m really drawing these so the 100 pixel thumbnail will look cool.


DEAR USERS:

Please note that some sketch descriptions may contain LINKS that you can use for further info if you’re not sure what the hell I’m drawing. As a lot of you know, I’ve been having some computer issues. The hard drive in my home machine crashed at about the same time Kim’s internet stopped working. There was a struggle, which was hinted at in some of my sketches or comments. I resolved that struggle, but not a week later the hard drive of my home computer had problems and needed to be reinstalled (again!). Then on Monday the hard drive in my work PC gave out. I believe the computer god is punishing me for consorting with the art god. They don’t like each other too much.

So as for the art god’s territory, I’m really liking these charcoal drawings. I enjoy drawing them, and I really enjoy how they look when they’re scanned in and shrunk down a bit. The part that sucks is that it feels like I’m cheating, because I’m just copying from a photo or screengrab. But I won’t be doing this exactly for too long if my history tells me anything, and I feel like the subject matter as a group tells a story of its own. So I’m going to continue not saying anything about these drawings when I post them. I don’t have anything worth saying about them anyway. But I’m going to title each one, and that title will be a link to a relevant site so that if you’ve never seen Stand By Me or the Seven Samurai, for example, you’ll know where I’m getting this sketch from and that I think those two things kick ass.

So be aware there are links. And also be aware that I fully realize that a correctly designed site would not need a notice to tell people to click on links, it would just make it obvious. But I’m not about to start messing in the computer god’s territory, even just for a little CSS change. Who knows what else I’ll break?


Another Batch of Sketches!

My computers are finally fixed! Yay! So I posted a bunch of sketches today.


More Technical Difficulties

Now my computer won’t boot, so I have zero working computers in my house. Great. Well, when I get them finished I’ll post my drawings…


Technical Difficulties

I had some technical difficulties over the weekend, so I’ve got a backlog of sketches today. We went out of town for Mike and Mary’s wedding this weekend. I knew this was coming, so about a week ago I started thinking about how I was going to post from the road. I installed the WordPress app for my iPhone, but it had problems connecting to my site because I customized the crap out of it, and every time I fixed one problem, another would pop up. I still don’t have that resolved yet, so I thought I’d just bring Kim’s laptop and post from there. But her Norton Internet Security expired, and apparently either it or Vista decided that because of that the internet shouldn’t work at all. Thanks guys!

I spent a lot of time over the weekend enjoying the company of my friends and the contents of my groomsman’s flask, so I didn’t exactly draw one sketch per day. But I do have one for each day, so I’m still on track. Also a bit of a cheater, but still on track. I’ll try to get that resolved for the next road trip.


Cross-Promotion!

If you haven’t done so, check out Andy Erickson’s art blog. He’s originator of this sketch-a-day thing, I’m just copying his idea. – More »


Mission Accomplished!

Webdisaster has now been converted to WordPress. – More »


Under Construction

Please don’t mind the mess. I’m converting the site to WordPress. – More »