Alternating mediums – wtf was I thinking?!
January 12, 2012
Updated All the Growing Things today, and mused a little bit (only a little bit) on violence as a means for covering lack of plot problems.
I’m still working on the Vagus page for Friday, but I haven’t really any idea what posessed me to try different types of mediums to tell the Vagus stories. For one thing, it’s challeging enough to illustrate a story someone else has written (especially since I always tend to feel that I’m letting other people down no matter what I do), but then I add to that with using “experimental” drawing techniques. *shakes head* It was a good idea that I’m just not sure I’m up to delivering on.
And the experimental techniques aren’t really all that experimental. Oh, sure, Musk was pretty experimental, for me. I used a heavy weight drawing paper, and then illustrated in dark grey, black, and white crayons, then went back in and scratched out details. That was pretty neat. But this current story is just using the Corel version of oil painting… it doesn’t react quite like using a digital medium, and it sure doesn’t act quite like using actual oil… as a master of neither, I’m sort of slipping and sliding all over the place, and I can’t quite seem to find my footing.
Thank goodness the next Vagus story is (I think?) going to be the straight up comic style again.
Comments (0) | More: All The Growing Things, Vagus Street
Mostly finished
January 11, 2012
Both webcomics are mostly formatted. I decided (once again) to pick my battles, and just go with the skinnier title headers.
I’m at the point where I NEED to draw or paint, or do anything other than staring at code. It is what it is, and I am now off to work on finishing inking tomorrow’s AtGT page.
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Vagus: still vague
January 09, 2012
Over the weekend, I have so far managed to set a repeating background pattern for Vagus Street, as well as add a black runny smear at the top. Eventually I will figure out how to put in the logo without absolutely crashing everything on the Vagus site, and maybe even get some nice box backgrounds in there, so that all the text isn’t just helplessly left to float on a sea of grey.
Funny thing about trying to make a child theme: I seem to be doing something uncouth every time I try to add .php files to override the comicpress files, and they erase… well, everything from the site. I can’t for the life of me figure out what is going on, but at least I’m no longer nauseous when it happens. Still, at this point you’d think I’d have something more to show than just a background pattern and a smear of ink. Although, that is a nice background smear of ink, if I may say so myself.
I have six days to figure this stuff out, but it will happen.
Geez, I hope it will happen.
I think I will take a break for the moment, and play around with some garden-themed mock-ups for All The Growing Things, and see if I can at least get a repeating background over there as well…
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*this* is my determined face
January 05, 2012
Welp, as a progress report, it may not look like much, but it’s taken me about two days to get here. I’ve figured out the “storyline” setting in the comicpress settings, and have implemented that for both The Vagus Street and the Growing Things comics. I’ve designed a fairly simple design for The Vagus Street in photoshop, and have hopefully sliced and saved everything in working order.
Tonight’s big push will be to make a static html page with the pieces, and see how/if they work out. Should everything miraculously come together, I will then create a dummy comic in wordpress, and see if I can pretty it up with the photoshop/html bits. If that works, then I will pretty up Vagus Street, and then Growing Things, and then, finally, Typodmary and the gallery pages I dream of having.
So there are a few learning curves happening over on this end, but with perseverance everything should come together. If nothing else, it’ll be a little prettier than the default settings, I hope.
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Almost done for the night
January 03, 2012
I’ve finished adding all the comics back into All the Growing Things, and I’ve also just finished adding all the comics back into The Vagus Street Rehabilitation. I still have to figure out how to make things look pretty, but at least they’re up.
I fear I’ve broken all the links that my readers have been using though, and now it’s a matter of trying to find the readers again (?) and let them know the new addresses. On the bright side though, I’ve given all those spambots the slip, at least for the moment.
Still to do (besides prettying everything up) is to add the art gallery content.
Also, timestamps are all out of whack… I need to find the master setting for that.
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It may not all make sense
I’m about 1/3 the way done putting the comics up for All the Growing Things, but I’ve just… started going stir crazy. So now I’m watching Archer and putting the comics back together with their matching blog posts. (The blog posts/comments and dates… everything BUT the comics backed up properly.)
Also: I super love Pam.
I was very disapproving of Archer, mostly because my husband wouldn’t stop quoting it… but honestly, I super love Pam. She makes the whole show.
Right. Right. Back to comic-uploading.
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Holy crap, it’s all gone to hell!
So much for fixing and updating the website, eh? Ah, if only I knew what I was doing and didn’t always have to do things the hard way. I’m working to get all the comics back in, but I think I’m going to mess around with formatting the themes first. I’ll use this page as a place to keep updates up to date, and let everyone know what’s going on.
So far it looks like I’ve figured out how to keep all the blog content, and I *just* figured out how to get the links to the images file working again (big hint: don’t move the image folder ever. EVER.) and I’m now slogging through putting the comics back to All the Growing Things. Which can be found here:
http://growingthings.typodmary.com/
Vagus Street is still down because I’ve not figured out what I did wrong with it. I think I confused the server by putting the subdomain in at the wrong place, and then I deleted it, but not until I found out where it’s supposed to go and I put it there. Now, of course, neither of those works. Maybe I can get John to change the name of his comic? No, I’d better not. I can fix this. I’m sure that I can.
Why this big mess, you ask? I found out about using the WordPress Multi Site option, and I thought, instead of struggling with two different wordpress dashboards, and then also having to deal with the html goodness of my other pages, I’d just convert everything into wordpress. Good idea or bad idea, it’s time for a change, and if I don’t do it now, I probably won’t have time until mid-summer.