Posts Tagged ‘lines’
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Well, gone are the days of hatching to bring depth and shading to my creations. When asked, most people applauded the experimentation in Monday’s strip, they didn’t feel it meshed well with my pop art style. I’m inclined to agree. Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. Enjoy Theater Hopper Classic!
I’m pretty happy with today’s strip. I told Cami it’s like there’s a joke in every frame! I’m also pretty pleased with how the art turned out especially considering how sick I felt while producing it.
I don’t know what was wrong with me, but my throat was sore, I could swallow and I was all achy. I was certain I was coming down with something. Today I feel fine, but yesterday I felt like walking Death. I don’t know what it is about exhaustion or sickness that results in a more satisfying artistic result. Maybe it’s my subconscious giving sleep deprivation the finger.
Everyone should take a moment to give me some vote-love over at buzzComix. I’ve uploaded a brand new piece of incentive artwork that relates specifically to today’s big release of The Matrix Revolutions. That’s the only hint you’ll get. If you want to know what it looks like, click the link!
I’m excited to see Revolutions, but I’m not jumping up and down in anticipation. I think after the quagmire of Reloaded, everyone is a little more on their guard. Frankly, that film split the fan base so severely, Revolutions is really going to have to pull a rabbit out of its hat to recover. Of the reviews I’ve been reading, most critics say that they’re laying off the eastern religious stuff and just blowing things up six ways past Sunday. CNN’s Paul Clinton gave it quite the drubbing. But he pretty much admitted to hating the franchise up front, so how seriously can you take him?
Truthfully, I’m more excited about seeing Elf this weekend. I’m a huge Will Ferrell fan and I think every movie he’s been in is the better for it. Yes, even The Ladies Man. Okay, maybe not A Night at the Roxbury. It’ll be interesting to see how he does in his first starring role versus being a cog in an ensemble.
I wanted to mention something else before wrapping up today and that is I’ve added some donation incentives to the Walk of Fame. I’ve been lucky enough to have a few people give to the site out of the goodness of their hearts. But I always felt a little shady asking for money without giving anything in return. I mean, sure, the site has been providing free entertainment for over a year now, but I do that because I want to. If I’m asking for donations, it’s really no skin off my back to offer a little more in exchange.
So here’s the deal: Anyone who donates $4.99 or less gets their name on the Walk of Fame and a link to their web site (if they have one) for as long as the site exists. If you donate $5.00 to $9.99, you’ll get your name and link AND a Theater Hopper wallpaper for your desktop. (I’ll be updating these from time to time, so be sure to check back.) Anyone who donates $10.00 or more gets all of that PLUS their portrait drawn in the Theater Hopper style. All you would need to do is submit a photo for reference and we’re in business! And lastly, for those of you who are members of the forum, I will reimburse you with 100 points to be used in the forum store for every dollar you donate.
So, yeah. Those are the new donating incentives. I’m really excited about them and I hope you are too. As always, thank you for supporting Theater Hopper. You guys keep me going in more ways than one and I appreciate all of it.
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First things first. Hello, and Happy New Year!
As you can see, I’ve redesigned the site. This is something I’ve promised for a long time and have been working on even longer. Since October of 2007, if you can believe it. This thing has gone through so many revisions and so many different ups and downs, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to finally bring it to you.
The new site is being powered by WordPress and Tyler Martin’s excellent ComicPress content management system. Tyler was of great personal help to me putting the finishing touches on the site. He helped me not only to customize the archive, but with some of the CSS and page layout as well. He was a very patient teacher and a great help. If you have a webcomic, you NEED WordPress and you NEED ComicPress running things behind the scenes.
Of course, there were others who helped me along the way. I cannot understate the value that my good friend Brian Arnold brought to the project. Brian is a good friend of the site and has actually being hosting Theater Hopper for years. Not only that, but he’s been my go-to guy when things go kerflooey. He has an amazing talent for scripting and is always willing to help. I can’t tell you how many jams this guy has pulled me out of, but in regard to this latest revision, he was INVALUABLE in helping to transfer over 1,000 pages of content from the old database into WordPress. I can’t tell you how much time that saved and I am truly grateful.
Words of thanks also have to go out to Steve Wallace, who was an early contributor to the project. Steve helped me get my head around WordPress and helped me piece together a few layouts.
And last but not least, I have to once again thank David Buist. Dave put together the original PHP database that managed Theater Hopper for years and years practically from scratch. It was a great system, but I would always find a way to break it. He was always very patient and helpful when I sent panicked e-mails to him in the dead of the night. I have to thank him for his contribution or else Theater Hopper would have never lasted this long — and that’s the truth.
I’m taking special care to give a shout-out to all of these guys because this redesign was not an easy process for me. It forced me to adopt some new technologies that I didn’t completely understand and these guys patiently showed me the way. The best I could do was come up with the look and feel. These guys helped make it fly. This change would not have been a success without them. Thank you, guys.
Now, on to business.
There are a lot of big changes all around the site, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much at one time. I encourage you to look around. Hopefully you’ll notice that there aren’t as many dead links in the navigation like there was before!
Most prominently, I’ve brought back the Theater Hopper THorum. So, if you’re looking for a place to hang out and talk to other fans of the comic about movies or whatever, it’s open for business!
I’m moderating the board very heavily at the moment because the last THorum was overrun by spammers. I’m approving everyone individually right now, so it might take some time before you can participate. But I’m very much interested in cultivating a community aroud Theater Hopper and plan on working hard to make the THorum the kind of place that I want to hang out as well. So once you’re in the door, you’re going to like it a lot. I promise.
In the meantime, the second big addition are comments under every blog post. If the THorum sounds like too much of an investment, this is your opportunity to leave your thoughts and contribute to the discussion in a different way!
Comment areas can sometimes be dodgy and I’ve had some contemporaries talk me out of including them. But I plan on heavily moderating these as well. If things get hairy, I’ll take care of it. But, for now, I’m interested in them as an avenue for instant feedback to the strip, the site or whatever.
So what do you say we test them out? What do you think of the new site? Do you see any room for improvement? Some easy fixes I could make? What do you like about it? Let me know in the comments below and thanks for visiting!
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