Strip updates, news etc

[Tapewolf]

Page 51 is up.  Page 50 is also up for those who missed it, but that was just a cover for the second arc.

Anyway, this is the start of chapter 7, in which we not only introduce and kill off a new character in one page, but also steal the secret of trees from Amber Williams DMFA, and recreate the cover of Sergeant f'ing Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Aside from the sad ending, I hope people enjoy this strip - not least because it took me three days to colour and gave Ren a major headache as well

Since I'm sure people will love to go through the crowd with a fine-tooth comb to see just how many times Joshua is in it, I've put a half-scale version in the outtakes page (the strip is usually 1/4 scale).
Also check out the new fan art section in the archives, and the brand new cast pages, which uses code from Robbie The First. Thanks, man!

[Amber Williams]

WHARS MY NEXT UPDATE?

[Ren Gaulen]

WHARS MY NEXT UPDATE?

Patience. It will be here soon. *the sounds of digging can be heard* ..We can't seem to find where they buried Dorcan..

[Tapewolf]

WHARS MY NEXT UPDATE?

In a couple of hours, when I get home and fix a problem I've just noticed with the strip.

[Tapewolf]

The strip is now up, knock yourselves out.



You are reading page 52 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by DMFA.

Well, I'm sure most people who've been following the series (and a number who haven't) will probably have guessed that something like this would happen. The next chapter, when it starts, will switch back to the others, but Dorcan himself is in this for the long haul.

One of the things I did at Anthrocon - and elsewhere - was to focus on commissions of Dorcan ahead of his arrival in the strip. While his basic design is fairly straightforward, I made it a pet project to try and get as many references of him as possible so that Ren and I could distill them down to get the final design for when he eventually appeared.

At some point I will collect these and put them on the site. In the meantime, this is one of my favourites and was finally completed about 7 months after being originally commissioned: Dorcan in a foul mood, as rendered by Adam Fullerton.  It was definitely worth the wait.

[Tapewolf]

Erk, I accidentally 'updated' the comic to page 43  .   Anyway, here's the new strip.



20/02/2009
You are reading page 53 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by DMFA.

At one point I had a really awesome name for the strip title but I forgot to write it down and lost it. Consulting with Ren and Keaton and others, we came up with some alternate titles:

    * You wouldn't like Jakob when he's angry
    * Poor Dorcan, born in a studio
    * Regrets
    * Not Precisely Alive
    * We don't resurrect convicted rapists every day, you know
    * People have hobbies; Niall's is anti-death penalty fanaticism
    * It didn't really sink in
    * The Fantabulous Adventures of Professor Contupulary
    * Niall fought the law and the law... sort of won.

...I guess for clarity I should point out that the first panel depicts Niall's hanging, not Dorcan's.

In other news, Ren had a series of issues which ate through the buffer we had and the comic was almost late. Comic aside, for the first time I have apparently written a piece of software which physically destroys the phone it runs on. Sadly this discovery was made on a device which belonged to one of our clients.

[Tapewolf]

Okay guys and gals, have fun.  I've probably messed up some detail in the layout etc, but that'll have to be fixed on monday now.  I'm going to bed.

**EDIT**
I've revised the layout to fit its original design.  Consider the original version a collector's item.  NOW I'm going to bed.



02/03/2009
You are reading the somewhat-delayed page 54 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by DMFA.

Ren was sick for much of the last week, which finally killed the lovely buffer we had going. This likely means we'll be running pretty close to the metal on the next few updates, so background quality may suffer a bit. Still, his health is more important than the comic.

To stand in for the comic, I made up two bonus strips. The first was based on what happens to an old-style Quadruplex video machine when the head clogs up. That can be found here. Quad actually had 16 vertical segments, not 6 - my bad.

The other stand-in comic can be found here. It may amuse, especially people who follow DMFA.

[Tapewolf]

...and we're on the air!


13/03/2009

You are reading page 55 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

This strip is about 8 days late courtesy of Ren's internet outage. Fortunately that seems to be finally over, so hopefully we'll have the next strip up on Friday as usual.

In other news, I've finally fixed the iffy channel on my beloved Studer A807... this puts me in a far better position to mix songs, radio projects and so on.

In a related note, my 2009 album has just come back from mastering and I should hopefully be uploading it to Jamendo when the cover is finalised.

[Tapewolf]

29/03/2009

You are reading page 57 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

With a combination of artist's block and internet outage, I got the line-art about a day later than I'd expected. Nonetheless, here it is. Enjoy.
We'll fix up page 56 later, hopefully.

[Tapewolf]

03/04/2009

Mixed news here. As usual we're running late on the comic and it won't be ready until tomorrow or something.

The good news is that there is an update of sorts. Starting this week and hopefully running every fortnight, we have a new strip with a character backstory in addition to the current arc. Ren originally wanted to do it himself but after putting the project back about two months we had to admit that he simply couldn't fit it into his schedule, so the artwork is being done by Ivan 'Kipiru' Stariradev.

The first episode is now up - click on the new button to see it. It is called 'A walk in the woods' and is scheduled to run for twelve pages. If it goes down well, there may be other stories running in future.

01/04/2009 - bonus update

You are reading page 57.314159 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Thanks very much to Keaton for making this page possible.

[Tapewolf]

08/04/2009

You are reading page 58 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Yeah, the final version is finally ready, about five days late. In case you're wondering why, it's been beset by difficulties ranging from Ren's ISP freaking out, to him using a new gel pen for inking, which promptly exploded and forced him to redraw the entire page from scratch.

This has blown our schedule out of the water so there may have to be filler on Friday. Things should get back until control around chapter 8. though whether they'll stay that way... best not to tempt fate, I guess.

Thanks again to Keaton for her April Fool strip, which is now in the outtakes archive.

[Tapewolf]

10/04/2009

You are reading page 59 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Owing to last week's problems getting strip 58 out at all, a full friday update this week was out of the question, so we did this instead. We should be resuming normal service next week, I hope, with a buffer to come in chapter 8.

Next week, we'll also have an update to the fortnightly backstory, "A walk in the woods".

[Tapewolf]

17/04/2009

You are (unfortunately still) reading page 59 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Ren's ISP seems to have gone down hard since he's been completely offline since Tuesday. This is unfortunate because for the first time in several weeks, we were in grave danger of having the strip ready before the Friday deadline instead of after it.

However, our fortnightly backstory, "A Walk in the Woods", has updated on time, so you might want to read that instead. I'll update on the status of the main strip when Ren returns, hopefully in a few days.



Update:

You are reading page 60 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Well, we very nearly had this strip up ahead of schedule and probably would have done had someone not cut Ren's phone line during rennovation. He did attempt to send the lineart via another means but for one reason or another it didn't get here until his phone service was restored.
Regardless, here it is, on the de-facto update day of Saturday. There is one page left of chapter 7, then we'll be cutting back to Jakob and Joshua

In other news, our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods, did update on time, so you might want to read that too.

[Tapewolf]

25/04/2009

You are reading page 61 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Well, despite a crappy week at work, and one or two other things I could have done without, page 61 is up, one day late and finally concluding episode 7.

Next week, barring disaster, we'll briefly return to the Arctic Base, where Jakob gives Joshua his tour, proving that there's much more to the base than meets the eye..
Episode 8 isn't particularly long, but we do finally get to find out what Project Future actually is. As for Dorcan, he'll be back in episode 9. But that is a tale for another month.

Anyway, our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods, will also update next week. See you then.

[Tapewolf]

01/05/2009
You are reading page 62 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Page 62 is up on our old update schedule of Friday, miracle of miracles. Hopefully we'll be able to continue that rather than having the strips in a state of limbo until the day they're supposed to go out. Time will tell.

In the meantime, our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods, has also updated. Enjoy..




08/05/2009

You are reading page 63 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Ugh.  Ren got sick, we did various other things as well and basically the buffer, such as it was, got completely destroyed.  It's only by the narrowest of margins that you're reading this today instead of Monday.

I'll be away for a bit, so if there are any problems with the strip, they'll have to be fixed later.  Right now, I',m going to crash as I have an early start.

Our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods, updates next week..

[Tapewolf]

15/05/2009
You are (still) reading page 63 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

No luck with the main comic update. Part of this is my fault for doing a change request at the last minute. Expect a strip saturday or at worst, sunday.

In the meantime, our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods, has updated.

[Tapewolf]

23/05/2009
You are reading page 65 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

This comes a week late, owing to renovation at Ren's place burying Ren's scanner under a bookshelf.

We'll see what happens next week, but right now I don't foresee any issues.

Either way, our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods will update next week.

[Tapewolf]

29/05/2009
You are (still) reading page 65 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

We'll probably update the main comic tomorrow or Sunday, owing to fallout from Ren's house renovation thing.

In the meantime our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods has updated. Enjoy.

[Tapewolf]

2009/06/02

You are reading page 66 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

This is late, owing to knock-on from Ren's renovation. I got the lineart monday morning and have been working like stink to get the strip up today yesterday.

The final stumbling block was naming the subtitle. It was almost called:

    * Let me think
    * Tape, Ren and Keaton couldn't decide on a title
    * The Room of Eerie Lights

Anyway, our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods updated this week, so the next update will be - in a fortnight.

[Tapewolf]

2009/06/05

You are reading page 67 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Ren has apparently been dragged off to some kind of family function against his wishes, hence the strip was done in something of a rush. Still, it covers what we need it to cover.

Next week's strip marks the end of chapter 8, and for those of you who haven't put the puzzle together yet, it finally makes clear once and for all what Project Future actually is.

In the meantime, our fortnightly backstory, A Walk in the Woods updates next week. This takes it to its halfway point, and things will shift gear.

[Tapewolf]

2009/06/12
You are sort-of reading page 68 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Well, we've finished chapter 8, but we have run into a bit of a problem. Ren was again dragged off to The Village, but before he left he discovered that his scanner has died, hence no line art for me.
Fortunately this page is dialogue-heavy rather than action-heavy so I was able to create this from existing artwork. It will eventually be replaced with the real thing, but if Ren's scanner has completely crapped out, this may not happen for some time.

Fingers crossed he'll be able to revive it or purchase a new one fairly soon, but in the meantime we may have an unexpected intermission before chapter 9 appears. But fear not - I have some filler, which should if need be take us past Anthrocon before things start to get awkward.

But the trouble doesn't end there. Owing to a combination of factors, from a special project, me forgetting to prod him about it and a busy real-life, A Walk in the Woods is also delayed, just as it was about to get interesting. Kipiru is hoping to get me the lineart prototypes on Monday, so we're probably looking at a status update on Wednesday. Annoying, but there you go, I guess.

[Tapewolf]

2009/06/22

You are reading the delayed page 69 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

As mentioned, this is late owing to Ren's birthday and his subsequent trip to The Village. Since then he's started a new job. Congratulations!
However, this is liable to impact his schedule. Neither of us is sure quite how that's going to play out, but we are both sure that we're going to carry on with this comic come hell or high water.

So far things look manageable, but we'll see. Also, Anthrocon is around the corner so updates are liable to go a bit screwy from that as well. Expect a Question from the Readers or two.

As for Walk in the Woods, still no word on the final lineart. Kipiru's job seems to have thrown things adrift there, but we'll see how things pan out. Just my luck that it had to happen when the backstory was about to hit high gear.

I'll put Ren's birthday present and chapter 8 in the archives ASAP.

[Tapewolf]

2009/06/26

You are (still) reading the delayed page 69 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

The comic will be a bit late, we're tentatively thinking it'll be a Sunday update. That's worst-case, with luck we'll update before then.

We do, however, have a snazzy new cast picture for Daryil.

In the meantime, A Walk in the Woods has finally updated, about two weeks late. We're hoping that this delay will be a one-off... fingers crossed.
All things considered there may be something of a delay on my part owing to Anthrocon, but we'll see how things go.

[Ren Gaulen]

2009/07/03

Tapewolf:

"I'm at Anthrocon, so as promised here is some filler. I now have the lineart for page 70 but can't colour it. Expect an update next weekend, and also for A Walk in the Woods.

After that things get more sketchy as Ren will be heading to The Village again for a fortnight, so there may be another week or so gone before he returns. Stay tuned for more details."

Ren:

"Yeah, I'm leaving soon. I won't be back until the 19th, but Tape should have enough material to be able to update during that time. So, see you all in two weeks. "

[Tapewolf]

2009/07/10

I'm now back from Anthrocon, a stupendous time was had by all. Those who are curious may wish to look at the photos here. Next year we'll try to drag Ren there. Somehow.

Anyway, our fortnightly backstory, A walk in the woods has updated. The main comic is still being coloured but should update either later today or worst case, Saturday.

After that we'll either have another dose of filler, or fingers crossed another comic, depending on when Ren gets back from The Village.

[Tapewolf]

2009/07/20

You are reading the delayed page 72 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Ren was away the last two weeks, but since he was going to work on the strip during his trip to The Village, rather than run the filler I decided to wait until he returned. Page 71 has also changed, as Ren spotted a mistake in Dorcan's clothing which he wasn't able to advise on during his trip.

Anyway, hopefully that's a one-off - we should update at a more regular time Friday/Saturday.

In other news, our fortnightly backstory, A walk in the woods should update next week.

[Tapewolf]

2009/07/24

You are still reading page 72 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA. God, we suck at this updating thing.

The main comic is going to be a bit late. Not sure how late yet, but we're probably looking at a late Saturday or Sunday update. I'll be annoyed if it's Monday again...

For now, our fortnightly backstory, A walk in the woods has updated, so you have something to read until then.

[Tapewolf]

2009/08/06

You are reading page 74 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

After a sensational run of bad luck, Ren has managed to get me the line-art,
so we're finally resuming the story, either early or late depending on how you
look at it.  We're probably looking at an update next friday.

In case you missed it, Kipiru's filler picture has been moved into the fan-art page.

In the meantime, our fortnightly backstory, A walk in the woods should update tomorrow but owing to issues on Kipiru's side it may run a little late. We shall see.

[Tapewolf]

2009/08/21
You are reading page 75 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Well, I didn't expect this. We have the comic updated on schedule, but Walk in the Woods is still MIA. I'll update it as soon as I get the line-art from Kipiru.

In the meantime, Ren is better. We have an evil plan to try and ensure that the comic updates in a more timely manner. We'll have to see if that's going to work out - fingers crossed.

The next page will take us out of the base and introduce a few new characters who until now have only appeared in flashbacks. See you then.

[Tapewolf]

2009/08/28

You are reading page 76 of Project Future, a weekly strip inspired by Amber Williams' DMFA.

Okay, our evil plan to update on time didn't quite pan out, this has something to do with Ren and Warcraft 3, but with luck we'll get it going for next week. Fingers crossed.

It didn't go that badly, it's still a Friday update, at least in the US, anyway...

Meanwhile, our side-story, A Walk in the Woods has hit a critical phase after a week's gap. Enjoy.  The next one should hopefully update in two weeks time.