2/2/06 (SOH 1) - Well, readers, I warned you! Last week, there was no update because I was busy entertaining people from the world of cyberspace--in particular, a couple of my fellow wizards from the Endless Round MUCK, a textual roleplay world based on The Lion King, one of whom has been staying with me this last week and a half, with the other dropping by occasionally. I was busy enough between work and funtimes that Fabulous Clem completely slipped my mind last Thursday. This week, I have something different for you.

As I have previously expounded, drawing a weekly full-page, full color comic has proven to be just a little more than I can comfortably handle. It didn't seem reasonable to cut down to one update every two weeks, though, because one has to admit that's kind of lame. So I'm trying something new.

The plan is to have Fabulous Clem on alternate weeks, and on the off weeks to draw some kind of idea-based strip that stands alone. I won't worry about art quality for these strips (and yes, I do worry about art quality for Clem, believe it or not), which will probably make them easier to make. I'm not sure just what they'll be about, but I'm expecting them to be emotionally charged and somewhat wondrous. For reasons I may explain later, I'm calling this off-week series "Seven Of Hearts."

In the future, I intend to have two separate tracks of archives, as well as other things specific to Seven Of Hearts. For now, I'll just mix this first one right in with the Clems. It's a practice comic I drew while I was developing the idea for Fabulous Clem. I hope it's not too hard to follow.

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY: Is it ever right to thank your parents for giving you the genes you have? If you could be born into a new life as any creature, what would you choose? Would you take your descendants' desires into account?

I hope my few lovely readers enjoy Seven Of Hearts. Please let me know if you have comments on this solution.

1/19/06 (Page 33) - Well, I have gotten quicker over the weeks. It's just not enough, though, and I'm tired of being nervous and sleepless every Thursday. Don't be surprised if something easier to create shows up here next week, and Clem starts being done on alternate weeks. :/

One good little detail--I am more satisfied now with how I'm touching up the foxes. That is, their eyes, and Clem's cream-colored throat and belly. I think they're kind of attractive now, instead of just a pain. This is valuable to me because one thing I will never do is to give these characters cute huge cartoony eyes. It would be so easy to make them all twice as appealing to the reader by blowing up the eyes, but I have my principles. :-) Not that I have anything against cartoons that use such techniques...it's simply that I choose not to.

1/13/06 (Page 32) - One day late this time. I blame Friday the 13th. ;)

Another gradient this week, and this time neither of the base colors was white! Baby steps, you know.

If you don't remember the floor and wall from the reception hall being striped diagonally in wild colors, it's not just you. Those stripes are atmospheric.

(If you noticed the receptionist's chair has changed shape, however, kudos to you--if I had fans, you'd be just the sort of fan I'd want! Naturally, she got a new chair from one of the offices when someone stole her round-backed one.)

1/5/06 (Page 31) - Okay, so I was lying. I got a new scanner, and that's my excuse for missing a week. It works, though, that's the good news!

I'm really having more trouble making this lousy weekly schedule than I'd like. I don't want to only have something every two weeks, though, because I used to read a couple comics like that and it's really disappointing when it doesn't turn out to be something great. So I'm thinking maybe I could alternate Fabulous Clem with something else, some stick figure theatery thing that'll eventually become unexpectedly and hugely popular and define the rest of my life.

In the meantime, here's page 31. This is one of those times when I just gave up on connecting the speech balloons together, because they're all over the place. They read from right to left along the bottom, because that's the direction the characters are walking! Is that dumb? Is it hard to figure out? I don't know!

12/29/05 - Guess what? I got a scanner of my own for Christmas, which, if it works, will streamline the process and make Clem more reliable. For now, however, it has the opposite effect--since I haven't set it up yet, what with holiday this and snifflynose that, I don't have a page for you today. Sorry--but I do have it drawn and inked, and it'll surely be ready sometime...um...this year!

12/22/05 (Page 30) - Today's strip is a milestone for three reasons. First, there's that cute little zero at the end of the page number that proclaims it to be a multiple of ten, and thus superior to other pages with inferior numbers. Yay for page 30!

Second, it marks my first use of a gradient in Fabulous Clem. You wouldn't think it would have taken this long for to get around to using one, since I've used gradients in other contexts, but the program I'm using just doesn't do them. I finally have a version of Photoshop that I'll try and use to do the whole digital process in future. For now, it just brings you this one simple but attractive visual effect.

Third, this is the page that finally reveals the premise of the strip. I never dreamed it would take so many pages to get there, but I'm pretty happy with the lead-up. Now I just need to stick with this for another three years or so and I'll be done with a story arc. ;)

12/15/05 (Page 29) - For the first time in what feels like ages, I have a strip done BEFORE the day it's scheduled to go up. That doesn't mean I didn't feel rushed and nervous, and it doesn't mean I'm not pissed at the program I'm using, but it's something.

This is the fourth page that contains digital elements--i.e. program windows with text. I kind of like them. On the whole they're a little more work to create, but I expect I'll be reusing the Softwood Instant Messenger window, which makes it worthwhile in the long run.

12/8/05 (Page 28) - Here I am, back again! November is over, and with it National Novel Writing Month. For those who are curious, I did not "win" at NaNoWriMo this year--I only managed 21,000 words. But I did come up with a nifty novel idea that I intend to finish and revise eventually. So I didn't lose in spirit.

Fabulous Clem is back, but it's still proving difficult for me to find the time for it. I hope to start using Photoshop or some other program that allows me to save time by combining several steps of the process for me. That may make me more eager to work on the strip, thus saving even more time!

In this strip, the identity of the original narrator is revealed. Anyone who bet on him being a kangaroo can now collect at 100:1 odds...

Note the use of mild Gaussian blur in the middle center and upper right, but not over the rest of the picture. I'm toying with the idea of using selective blur to distinguish between levels of reality.

11/3/05 - Well, I eat my words. A few days into November, I now do see the point in taking a break from Clem. I'm sorry, folks. I have a way of giving myself a lot of unscheduled time and then filling it all with projects. I'm not going to be able to produce the comic this month, not while trying to write a NanNoWriMo novel, finish a couple of stories, open a MUCK, attempt to begin a tutoring hobby/career, transfer my cell phone service, and work thirty hours a week.

The good news is that I'm getting help from a friend. I may soon start using a better graphics program and a more fficient process from creating Fabulous Clem, which will mean less need to do this in the future. In addition, I'll finish the strip I'm currently working on and, at mininum, post that sometime during the month. I wish I had a sketchbook to draw on, but since I haven't, I'll try to fill the gap in some other way. Dialogue, if nothing else.

Never thought I'd have to pull this so early in a run. Hope I can come back strong.

10/30/05 - I finally have the completed strip up. I wish I could say I'm going to get this schedule under control, but it's probably just going to get harder. The reason? November is National Novel Writing Month, and I'm taking a stab at it. (This'll be my third year.) I'll be attempting to write a short novel during the month of November on top of everything else on my plate. At this point, I don't see any point in taking a break from Clem, but I may end up procrastinating like this every single week. Alas, it'll be good for me.

Just so no one worries unduly--the panels in this strip and the last one which feature death and destruction are not really happening--they're being imagined by Clem, because he was asked to imagine them. He's not having a really good time.

10/27/05 (Page 27) - This week, I have even less done, and I know tonight is going to be an extremely hard night at work, and I really need my sleep. Therefore, I'm just putting up what I have rihgt now (3:40 P.M.), and I'll fix it up tomorrow morning. If anyone is checking for updates expecting them to be there when I actually say they should be there, I'm very sorry. More comments when the page is complete.

10/20/05 (Page 26) - It's a race against time!! I'm actually writing this update 48 minutes before midnight, and I have yet to color and letter the strip. Do I have any chance of updating before midnight?? Time will tell!!!

Well, I got up the page three minutes before midnight...with no lettering. I don't know if that counts for anything.

It's all lettered now, but what you don't see is how long I struggled with formatting and conversion to keep the lettering from being distorted and the solid fields from being bleary.

This is my second use of a different font color than black for character speech. The first was in page 16. I think I'll generally only use odd colors for speech in rare occasions, and never with sppech balloons. But then, rules are meant to be broken.

10/13/05 (Page 25) - Time goes on with no change--I'm still making my updates, but just barely. I'm forced to record my TV shows and I can't go out on Thursday nights so long as I procrastinate. And I'm usually scheduled to work Thursday night, so it's a frantic day followed by a fatiguing night. Why do I do this to myself?

This strip contains a lot of text, as will next week's. This is going to be fairly common in Fabulous Clem. Sometimes you just want to go into depth, and the traditional comic strip format isn't best for that. Fortunately, when you're doing it for fun, you can do what you want, and that means I can mix a bit of the theatrical artform into this strip in the form of dialogue.

Fabulous Clem wouldn't work in any purely textual medium, which is, after all, why I had to learn to draw and make digital art, and why I need to keep learning these things. But I don't believe it would work as a straight comic either.

10/6/05 (Page 24) - Despite the fact that things seem to be stable for me, this week wasn't any better than last. I put off the strip until the last minute. I'm not going to be able to start going to the coffeehouse open-mic night I've enjoyed in the past if this keeps up--plus which, I'm sure to miss an update eventually. Not that it really matters much at this point, since I probably have about 25 readers, and only a handful of regular ones. But I need to get my act together if I'm going to be doing this for a while.

My best friend has created a message board for himself, and just for kicks he put in a topic for Fabulous Clem. I'll put in a link to it when it's ready, and whee, I'll have a forum. But will it be an ominously empty forum? Or will I be pleasantly surprised by the presence of actual readers?

I apologize for my complete inability to draw Gilbert Tate consistently. I'm still struggling with drawing humans, you know. ;)

9/29/05 (Page 23) - I'm just barely making it this time. I have to leave for work in less than half an hour. This was nerve-wracking and I'm going to ache all night and I really really need to mend my ways, one way or another. I have every reason to think I should be able to draw a page of this strip each week, and that it should take less than seven or eight hours of my time. Something needs to be done. Arrgh.

9/22/05 (Page 22) - I managed to complete a page on time this week, but only just. Actually having a deadline this week starkly revealed just how long it takes me to make this strip. And that's far too long. I've got to find a way to make it faster, and while I'm doing that, how about better, hey?

The quest for non-sucky lettering continues. A friend told me that illegibility is still the strip's greatest weakness. In this page, I gave myself plenty of extra speech in the speech balloons, so no more crowding. I then had to cut away the extra room by redrawing the balloons digitally. I wonder--maybe I should draw all my speech balloons on the computer. It just might be easier that way, and the line would be consistent...

How about I try it for page 23?

9/15/05 (Page 21) - Well, this is crunch time. My job exhausts me, plus I've been scheduled for 40 hours a week when I asked for only 30. I've been getting practically nothing done outside of work, and that means that my buffer is gone: this is the last Fabulous Clem I have done to date.

I don't intend to miss a day so early in my comic's run, so that means I've got to show the same qualities as Clem and use a bit of ingenuity. I'd actually like to get my buffer up to ten again, what it was when I started the strip. I don't know if that will ever be possible.

Normally, I use lots of bright colors. This strip is kind of bleached in that regard. I meant to show the desolation of the route our protagonist has been led on, but the other advantage of this page's bleak color scheme is that it makes the one splash of color really stand out. What is that glyph on the wall? What does it symbolize? I actually have an answer, but I won't be telling anytime soon.

9/8/05 (Page 20) - Blech. This page is worse than I remembered it. The passage of time is particularly clunky. Gotta work out some tricks.

Why, indeed, is Clem not going in the front? Because he clicked on the -Info- link from page 18 and got directions, which, among other things, told him to enter by the side door.

I've started a new, tiring job and my buffer is down to one page. Time to get crazy.

9/1/05 (Page 19) - I tried something ambitious with the panel format here: the interstitial panel, or panel between the panels. I think it works well. It's true that Glynis's approach is not as graceful as it would be in a more professional comic, but it would surely be even more jarring without the orangish nature scene to break up the panels.

I'm of two minds as to how much I like this page. On the one hand, I messed up the quality of the lines themselves, so the characters look ratty and ill-defined. On the other hand, I love what I did with color here.

On a side note, I relettered this page three or four times. I just could not find a good font for Glynis that looks vaguely Gaelic while being readable in a small size. I wonder if there's a better way to handle fonts.

8/25/05 (Page 18) - I don't like the look of this page much. I made some kind of mistake in converting file formats; I haven't reproduced it. Anyway, it was even worse than it is, with the solid fields all blurry and full of grays. Fixing it leaves the colors decent, but now the foxes are crude. I definitely have to avoid repeating this mistake. Maybe I'll eventually go back and recolor the whole thing.

I've added a link to the OzFoxes FoxWeb, just because it seemed like the thing to do. It's a fine site of fox-related information, artwork, and links overseen by Robert and Margaret Carspecken, the creators of Faux Pas. With luck, they'll add this page to their BackLynx page, a wealth of friendly and mostly fox-themed sites.

That link and the button from thewebcomiclist.com are in the Archive column now, where there was plenty of space. I've also upgraded the Webcomic List button so that it now shows Fabulous Clem's ranking relative to all their comics. Given that it's so new and unknown and that my skills have yet to coalesce, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's above average: around #1800 out of over 4000 comics.

8/18/05 (Page 17) - A bit of symbolism going on in this one. We established in the last page that deep purple is the color of sleep. Thus, the kits are just waking up to hear their parents arguing. The explosive image near the top is up for interpretation, though I have my own...

Also of note is the fact that the speech balloons do not have a specified order. They're divided into four snatches of conversation that don't have to be remembered in any particular order. It's enough just that they're heard.

In addition to the current page, this week I've gone back and made some changes to previous pages. Primarily, I relettered all of the male fox's dialogue, since I decided this week to change his font from Times New Roman to MS Serif. It's still probably not an ideal choice, but it looks less pedestrian. So, the dialogue is slightly different, and I've touched up some other little problems on the relevant pages that I couldn't bear to leave be.

8/11/05 (Page 16) - Aside from some small coloration issues, I'm really proud of this page. It's imaginative, it uses a bold arrangement, and it develops three new characters. (The fox kits couldn't properly be considered characters until this point.) The reader is simply asked to accept that while these younglings can't talk yet (which is why they don't get speech balloons), they are able to understand--in their own fashion.

About a week ago, I had a much-needed surge of productivity with regard to this comic. I drew and inked pages 18 and 19 in between Neopets games. ;) I've now largely lost interest in Neopets, and sadly, I'm having trouble focusing on Fabulous Clem as well. The main reason is that I'm looking for work, which distracts me from projects like this. I should be working soon, at which point I'll make building up my buffer a priority.

8/4/05 (Page 15) - I like the way this page turned out. The pastel colors really did their job of signifying the storybook nicely. As for the story itself...it's pretty passable, right? You might believe it was a real children's book. It was hard fitting the whole thing into two pages.

I'm coming to really like onlinecomics.net. As I mentioned previously, I've registered with their free service. The other day, I got an e-mail saying that comic creators could now associate their comics with:

• 2 genres
• 2 styles, and
• 2 formats.

Fabulous Clem's genres are Fantasy and Furry, its style is Full Color, and its formats are Full Page and Serialized. I tried entering some combinations of these and was delighted to see how close to the top of the list it was, presumably because it's relatively new. The next step is for me to upload a 3-page preview. I don't know which pages I should use, though.

I found that the new classifications really are useful! I took a look at some of the other comics listed in the same groups, and I like them. I'm going to go back to onlinecomics.net if I ever run short of webcomics to read.