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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Why Hello

So no new cartoon for April. No new cartoon for May. Will there be a new cartoon for June...? June was the original goal for my latest project but it seems unlikely I'll complete it by then considering the amount of detail that needs to go into it. I may do a short stick figure animation but I don't want to make it just to have a new release in June, I want to make it because I want to make it. Technically I have been releasing a new cartoon each month, they have just been commercials which I don't put on my youtube.

On a side note, Directionless has been going strong ever since I started writing it again back in August so I'll ramble about that for a bit. The comic is almost 3 years old now. During the past 3 years there have been numerous changes made to Directionless in terms of substance and style. The biggest change that people informed me of is that back when I first started the comic it followed Jeff's day to day adventures and felt like a single story while now it's more individual jokes.

Each drawing style came with a shift in tone. 2010 was when I first started the comic and majority of the story was about Jeff searching for his direction. In 2011 I switched to black and white and did a whole series of comics about Dean and Jeff interacting. There was very little plot although there were individual comics which showed changes happen with the characters lives. The change in color was simply because I was having waning interest in writing Directionless. I spent less and less time on it until it finally halted on the year anniversary where I wrote this summary of the series. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the pilot but couldn't get it to feel right. I was very sad when I decided to cancel it.

August 2012 rolled around. I hadn't touched anything Directionless related for a few months and decided to write a comic for fun. I haven't stopped. It started off in with the same tone as the first black and whites, just Jeff and Dean interacting. But I slowly started to throw in plots and finally did a series of comics that talked about some of the changes that happened in Jeff's universe over the past year that the comic didn't cover. That series of comics also covers a little bit of the pilot's plot. This series also covers a big chunk of what the pilot was about. On a random sidenote, this series of comics was actually the first plot line I wrote for Directionless. It couldn't make it funny when I first wrote it but I eventually used it for my Halloween series in 2012. Many of the characters from the original comic don't appear in the modern comic. There are a variety of reasons for that.

I personally like where Directionless is right now. I see it as a mix of the first two years. There are plot based comics and there are solo joke based comics. What are my favorite comics? I'm glad you asked! I have a few actually. This was the favorite from 2010, it always makes me laugh because it's so stupid. I also like this one because is so ridiculous. My brother actually said this to me while we were shoveling. Many of Deans one liners are actually my brothers. As for the more recent ones, I really like this one and I like some of the ones coming out next week. Anyways, that's that.

The current project is grand in scope. A lot of lighting and atmospheric effects which I have never done before. The storyboard is all done and I've done primary animation for about half of it. My original goal was to finish it by late June but that seems unlikely at this point but one never knows.