Pastel Defender Heliotrope

PASTEL NEWS ARCHIVE
For May 2006

May 3rd, 2006

Really Exhausted

This week has been physically bad, which is why there is no new PDH page. Instead, I updated by offering a brand new page of Enigmatic Ground, my little book in progress on Jenniverse.com.

So, what's wrong? I'm not sure. It's been fairly smoggy and very pollen-ish, perhaps that is the cause. All I know is I am very, very tired and everything kind of hurts. Also lots of headaches lately. I can't draw feeling that crappy. So that is why no new page of the very labor-intensive Pastel.

On the other hand, I just sketched out what was to be a filler page to say I was sorry to my readers, and it ended up looking good enough to be another page of Enigmatic Ground, so...that is what it became. It was fun, and within my low energy level, so I decided to make it my filler page as well. Some folks have been asking for more Enigmatic Ground, so it works out, I think.

It's odd...even though I get nothing for my work here - unlike many online cartoonists I do not have a donation thermometer going - I still feel bad when I am not able to put out a new page for my readers. Sorry, everyone.

May 30th, 2006

The Great Comic Race

After a bit of mental calculation, I have assessed that Pastel Defender Heliotrope is closing in on being just about half over. Perhaps the 60% mark, roughly. However, To Save Her is just getting started, and perhaps has reached the quarter mark, maybe 25% done. Something like that.

This makes it seem that Pastel will end before To Save Her, and that leaves me trying to consider how to handle that. To Save Her was begun for two reasons; one was because a strong idea was demanding to be made into a story that I felt strongly really needed to be told, and the other was the notion that I could please my readers more if I had more content during the week...closer to having something new every day.

To Save Her was originally designed to be simple, black and white, easy to draw...I kind of failed at keeping it simple. It ended up demanding serious detail somehow. It does give me an idea of what Unicorn Jelly would have been like if I had the kind of tools and computational power to run those tools way back in The Year 2000. I'm not even sure that they had decent tablets back then, at least not like now.

Even so, there is something I like about Unicorn Jelly being in such a curious retro-pixel style, really. It's kind of cool, and pixels, well, pixels are just plain amazing by themselves. In any case, I did the best I could with what I had, and tried to be as positive as possible about it all. I don't regret my DPaint days. It was all I had, and I think I made the best of it.

Anyway, back to the issue; To Save Her is likely to continue far beyond the end of Pastel Defender Heliotrope. What to do?

I suppose the most sensible thing is just to make To Save Her the main comic on the page, and put up a cover link to the finished Pastel below it. It's just kind of odd to have the website be the name of one comic, and the actual comic on that page be another thing altogether. Then again, I have a limited, constant, and eclectic audience, so it isn't like I am going to be leaving anyone out of the loop here. It isn't like I am going to be confusing vast swarms of new readers or anything...so I guess...it may not be a real issue after all.

It just isn't tidy.

After To Save Her finishes, it's on to Takozushi, for which I have already been preparing. I have gradually bought a collection of the most wonderful imported Japanese paper to use as backgrounds for Takozushi...it will be my first comic where the texture and look of the background sheet the images will be on will be of importance. My intent is to use these gorgeous paper backdrops to convey mood and emotion in the story...flashy red and gold paper for battle scenes, for example. I am considering doing the story in both English and Japanese as well. We'll see how that goes (probably to hell in a bento box, thanks to my terrible translation methodology, but, what the farg).

Lastly, I have finally broken down and done what other online comic artists do regularly; beg. This month has seen the establishment of an open Lucre-O-Meter based donation button to help me to get a new computer. I need one badly, and even saving virtually all of my personal allowance isn't going to make it before my old one gives out. So, that too is a race of sorts. My pride took a hit, but then, crap. I can't afford pride anymore. It's beyond my income level now.

PASTEL DEFENDER HELIOTROPE
By Jennifer Diane Reitz

A Part Of Jenniverse.com

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