Site Changes
Again...
Since I'm doing more Java stuff now, the site will be getting changed around some more over the following weeks or so as I try to gear the site more towards application development, stupid Java programs, and getting a "real job" to make enough money to live on. Major changes:
Spookle is getting taken down.
The forums are getting wiped, and integrated with the main site. (I haven't been able to find a way to import the forums to WordPress, and currently it's beyond my skill in PHP to do. I will however back them up, so hopefully I can import them at a later date, along with the vintage sediverse 1.5 forums.)
The Comics are going down as well, although they'll be put on the side bar as downloadable PDFs.
I won't be using ComicPress anymore.
The Links to the stores will be cut, and the merchandise no longer updated or supported. (So if you do a google search, you'll be able to find the old crap that wasn't worth buying, but I'm not going to pitch it or hope for sales.)
Why? Well, I don't really have any equipment to actually work on the comic, so continuing this site as a webcomic site is... rather silly, honestly. I will still work on the comic when I have spare time and motivation, but really, SED is becoming more and more of a doodle sort of comic. As I make more issues though, I'll add those to the side bar for download.
SED will probably end up as a cartoon on youtube, though, so at least there's that.
Still, SED is pretty much dead at this point, since I don't really have any way of keeping it going. Major thanks and props to everyone who helped me keep this thing going for as long as it has. Hopefully we can get everything back up to the point where the comic will be a regular project again. Cheers!
(P.S. - For those who didn't know (or didn't follow the news posts I left with a lot of the comics) The laptop I used for drawing broke down, then I decided to learn Java, then I had to sell my car to pay bills, then my phone stopped working, then my desktop broke down so I had to build a new computer with the broken parts from my next door neighbor, then the new computer broke down, and i had to borrow money from family to fix it... and my rent just went up (again.) So, all in all, point is: I've had a pretty crappy year, financially speaking, and that's why I haven't been able to draw the comic. On the bright side though, I did manage to go to the doctor in September or whatever, and now I do actually have medication for the migraines that were leaving me out of commission for weeks at a time.)
The Best Part About Volleyball is…
Wilson.
Seriously, I'm not joking. I love that little guy HE should have been the spotlight of the whole movie Cast Away. But this Article has nothing to do with The movie Cast Away, no that's for another time. It's about how much I find watching Sport it's a big snore bore, and well, evil.
He just kicked that Ball!:
With the world cup this past week or so Ive been questioning what all the fuss about this whole sports thing is about. So I traveled to an unknown far away place and meditated with the natives there. But that didn't help so I asked a couple friends what they thought about "soccer" or for you "foreigners" football. I'm not going to bore you with the responses because my mind was made up. So, bear with me here Soccer is fun to watch because every couple of times there's always a groin shot I could bury you with pictures of someone getting kicked in the nuggets but that would be cruel...
Okay, maybe just one.
Actually that’s not too surprising
So here ya go: In, America, there's this thing, called the Healthy People plan, that outlines goals for the country for "Healthiness" and whatnot. The current plan was just reviewed, and... well, it wasn't too pretty.
I tried to tell my doctor that, but she didn't believe me.
Did Americans get any healthier over past decade?. [link to PhysOrg.com]
Am I writing about this because of the raging obesity epidemic in America?
...no, of course not.
I'm writing this to say: "NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. AMERICA IS A GODDAMNED CAPITALIST COUNTRY AND FOOD IS A ECONOMIC LINCHPIN. THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO CONTROL OVER THIS CRAP."
Logically speaking, of course.
I mean, think about it. Capitalist country, run by it's economy, and the government tries to step in all lovey dovey, all outline a plan of "helpful" things to encourage people to live better.
News flash for that one, boyo: The Almighty Dollar runs capitalist nations, not the Almighty Bureaucrat. If letting people remain unhealthy is profitable, it will happen. If not giving a shit is profitable, it will happen. If crime is profitable, it will happen. If Death and Decay is profitable, it will happen.
Hopefully you have the glyph for it.
Until making people healthy becomes profitable, it won't happen. But to do so from a legislative standpoint would be to overstep the boundaries of government. Hell, just deciding that this is what you think is best for the American public, and then actually making laws to support your own agenda is overstepping the boundaries.
Premium Fue, then staying the garage all the time? Bad mix, brah.
So what's the better plan? Well, weight is gained when calories consumed is greater than calories burned. Keep that in mind.
Right now, we live in a society where we are expected to work very long hours with little purpose. People put in 9 hour days, but they really only have enough work for maybe half that time. But if you were to do all of your work in that amount of time, and then say, go home (if the boss was cool) they would only pay you half the amount, since you only worked half the hours.
Translation: You're not getting paid for the work you accomplish, or the job you do. You're getting paid based on how many hours of your life are spent on location. In a sort of hopeful spin, I assume part of the reason you have to stick around even though your workload doesn't justify it, is because of expectation that something might happen, and the company doesn't want to be shorthanded. Okay.
Right right. Easy stuff.
Well, that's a number of hours off your day. Now toss in commute time and logistics. Pretty much everything in America requires a car to get to. So now we have car related things to add to the time sink... And I'm sure you can see where I'm going with that. Point is, from my experience, working a 9 hour daily job, usually ends up taking around 11-12 hours a day.
But... The thing is, even though I'm running around a lot, and I'm stressed, and so much of my life is just ticking down...
...And as you sit it traffic, it all catches up with you.
...I'm not actually doing that much. I'm sitting in traffic, or I'm walking around a store, or I'm sitting at a desk for god knows how many hours. Not enough calories are getting burned to justify my diet.
My diet that is based on the cornerstone of Capitalism. Cheaper foods are worse for you. They're highly processed, with crap tons of things that the average person can't pronounce. The have no real content, just filler, because the filler that makes the food is itself cheap: See also Corn Meal. And I, like most people, have other things I need to buy, so I cut corners here and there. And as long as I'm sitting on my ass for most of the day to get the paycheck that can only pay for the cheapest food, I'm going to be unhealthy, because IT'S ALL I CAN AFFORD.
In terms of money, and in terms of time.
You want to encourage people to get healthy, you need to change the system so that people actually have the ability to do so. If I can finish my workload for the week in two days, then let me do so, then pay me for a full week. That way I can spend time doing other more enjoyable things, or get another job so I can finally afford fruits and vegetables.
Otherwise, you're just making all of us feel like crap by telling us that we need to get healthy when we have no money or time or opportunity to actually do anything about it.
------------
[As a side note to this: When I was in high school, I lost 180 lbs in a year, by biking every day and eating a good diet. I was also homeschooled at the time. I'm completely capable of doing that sort of thing again, but I can't, and that's why I realize that it comes down to a time and money issue. I lost weight back then because I didn't have any time obligations, and my mom bought all my food. Now, I have to work, and I have to buy my food, and I understand why my mom is overweight.]
Tools of the Trade v3.1
I was asked what combination of tools and setup do I use for the comic... and that made me laugh. This is the first site overhaul I've done where I didn't immediately throw up some documentation on the tools I'm using. So, you know, figures! Either that or, yeah, I get asked because I didn't post up the tool list that I normally do. I dunno, either way, I really should post all this stuff up again! (Normally, this information is available on the "About" page, by the way. Once I finish overhauling that, the current setup will usually be listed there.)
I use two different computers for making the comic, so I'll list of equipment and stuff first, then jump into settings from there:
The Toshiba Satellite Tablet PC (Courtesy of the Chinchilla):
Windows XP Professional
Adobe Photoshop CS3 (For almost everything)
Sketchbook Pro 2.0 (For quick sketches / some fillers)
The Undead Desktop (Also known as 108):
Windows XP Professional
Adobe Photoshop 7 (!) (For texting the comic / facemarks)
Microsoft Office 2003 (For the books)
Adobe Acrobat/Distiller (For packaging things into PDF)
Wacom Sapphire Tablet (They stopped making these like... 5 years ago.)
Now, on to Photoshop settings!!
Base_Template: 1605 x 2700 Pixels @ 300 Pixels per inch (5.35"x9") in RGB (Converted to CMYK during distillation to PDF)
Normal Drawing Brush: 9 Pixel Hard Round, Normal Mode, Full Opacity and Flow
Normal Eraser Tool: 19 Pixel Hard Round, Normal Mode, Full Opacity and Flow
Notes!!
- As you can see, I don't work in Mac Environments.
- Pages are resized to 600x1009px, bilinear resampling, jpg, quality 8
- The thinner grey lines/shading are done with the pressure sensivity. I rarely change the brush size.
- Fonts used: DIGITALSTRIP @ 24px (Standard Font), Space Toaster, Curlz MT, Stencil STD, Lithos Pro. I don't text with CS3, so I can't tell you what the font sizes are in pts.
- Method for achieving that "SED look" is to draw with basic shapes, then subtract from them with the eraser. So rather than drawing say, ears, on a character, just draw a black blob then eraser until you have what you want. After that, then you sketch shading on top.
- The Tablet PC and everything on it is courtesy of The Chinchilla. He's been trying to help me get everything back on the tracks again, and he more or less gave me the Tablet PC after he loaned it to me for a week. In his words, I used it more in that week than he did in the like, 4 years he had it. It was good timing too, because the Wacom Sapphire had more or less decided to start going through its final death throes.
- But it meant I had a new tool I needed to learn how to use. And while now I can see what I'm drawing with the TabletPC, it also lags in a way that the wacom never did, so as I'm drawing I have to think ahead and just imagine that I drew the line... Then wait a second or two and pop! the line appears.
- So, Wacom: Doesn't Lag, but can't see what you're drawing. TabletPC: Lags, but you can see what you're drawing. ...Either way, I need to get a Cintiq.
Services Used:
Lulu.com for PrintOnDemand and digital book sales
Printfection.com for PrintOnDemand shirt sales
Projectwonderful.com for Ad Services
Imagekind.com for Posters
JustHost.com for webhosting
wordpress with comicpress for the main site
SMF 1.1.xx for the forums
And that's pretty much everything I can think of offhand. I feel like I'm forgetting something important though...
General News about the Lack of Comics
I mentioned this on the forums, but this is the first chance I've had to put a message up on the main site about this: I just did one of those last second moves that have been happening a lot lately, so I wasn't able to actually make a comic on schedule. On top of that, the place I'm staying at now doesn't have internet, so I can only update from coffee shops, like now... and it costs a bit of money, so blah.
As for why the comic was late constantly the last few weeks,... that's because of the new site that I had to get set up. ...and moving to baltimore destroyed my buffer...
...which seems to be a constant thing. I move, the buffer is destroyed, and I can never get caught back up before I move again.
So 9, why don't you just go get an apartment and stop couching surfing so we can have the comics on schedule and you'll be less stressed out?
Well, I would, but I don't make enough money. ...I've got a plan, but it will probably be a few months before I can actually get it started, and on top of that, there's a planned hiatus in february to refinish the books in a higher resolution format... So... Blah... This whole thing is a giant pain in the ass.
The Raffle
Is being extended until minight on the the 6th of November.
Why? Because it gives everybody a couple more chances to enter, and I only started the raffle halfway through last month anyways.
...Was going to make a video for this blog post, but I've been awake during the night lately, so the lighting in the apartment has been too crappy for me to actually make a video.
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