Comic for Friday , February 24 , 2006

Can't hit a barn door

A break from continuity, and from actual writing (unless sound effects count :p). I just had a fun idea, and wanted to see if I could pull it off without anything being said (in complete contrast to my usual, highly wordy, style)

News

09.02.2006 - Err... yeah.

I must confess I wasn't expecting that week to stretch into eight months. Well, I'm back, sort of. I've done Strip 40, and I have plans for the next couple after that. I even have a couple of plot ideas for the future, albeit mildly lame ones.

What I'm not promising is any kind of schedule. When I do a comic, you get a comic. I'm sorry, but it's a condition of my return ;-).

24.06.2005 - I'm gonna skip a week, if you don't mind

Tomorrow I return home from Cambridge, so today I must pack, do laundry, clean, and so on. I'd also like to get some writing done. This does not leave much time for cartooning. I tell you what, I'll try and get a Tuesday update in as well to make up for it (effectively postponing today's strip a few days).

17.06.2005 - So... read any good books lately?

How about that, I've finally got round to putting some of my writing up on my deviantArt account. It's called "Beings of Light", it's sci-fi, and there's an introduction plus three chapters up there so far. A number of people have assured me that it's actually rather good, so yeah, consider giving it a read once you're done here.

17.05.2005 - Wheels are in Motion...

Okay, hopefully you'll be pleased to know I've written and drawn a couple of strips, and the plan is to cut back to a Saturday only schedule so I can hopefully come up with new stuff over the next fortnight before I run out of time. It's not the old level of productivity (not that that was very spectacular either), but it's better than nothing.

Anyway, despite the inactivity, I have two new pieces of fan-art from a guy called Leonardo Dellallibera, aka StupidWorm on the Team 17 Forums. I decided I may as well put the comic one he submitted up on the mian page, just to keep you all interested, but go check the Fan-art page to see them both together.

13.03.2005 - Placatory Material

As I promised, some extra stuff to make up for the hiatus. There's a new Goodies page with some wallpapers, the old bonus strips and (dun dun DUH!) the old hand-drawn versions of the Boot Camp strips. On the Other "Art" page, I've stuck up some music I've written/remixed. I've also generally scattered other stuff around the place as well, so keep your eyes peeled.

12.03.2005 - Oh. Yeah. Whoops. Sorry...

Well, it's a few things catching up together really. Between worrying about how I wasn't getting enough work done for Uni, and everything else, and having an idea for what I want the next few strips to do but not actual scripts, and the fact that I'm trying to design a more complex background to set said strips to and so on, meant that my buffer kinda ran dry while I wasn't looking.

So, um, yeah, no strip today. I was thinking of maybe doing filler, but I couldn't find time to do that either. I'm going to take a bit of a break to work out what I'm going to do next, and I think to make up I'll try to add more general stuff to the site over the weekend. I'll also start hunting for people to make guest strips for me (yes, I know I should've organised this in advance, but trust me, it's been really hectic the last few days). Again, sorry about this, and it's a shame I fell short just before the half-year milestone, but I'll try and sort it out somehow.

12.02.2005 - For Great Deviousness...

Yee haw, I got myself a deviantART account. The plan is to stick lots of my old drawings up there so a) I can have somewhere nice to keep them all stored and b) they don't take up room on here. Just as well, because once I start shipping major amounts of stuff there, there'll be tons of it.

Anyway, yeah... that's about it. Keenspace's servers went down for a while this morning, if you were wondering where the site was.

04.02.2005 - Woo! My first piece of fanmail!

Okay, a little bit of explanation first: Recently (while ego-surfing) I stumbled across a website devoted to the genealogy of the surname "Varley", my surname. Anyway, I got my first piece of fan-mail (of sorts):

Hello Powerful Paul,

Saw your hello in the Varley guest book, and couldn't resist a visit to your camp.
Very funny stuff. Enjoyed the visit.

Ann Varley-Bryant
Texas, USA

Not entirely sure where "Powerful Paul" came from, but all fan-mail is nice :-)

01.02.2005 - New Bonus Strip

Since it's a new month, I may as well use the opportunity that resetting the rankings provides for small comics and stick up a new bonus strip. I'll put the old one up on my site at some point. My ad in the Keenspace Newsbox (the thingy to your left) should start start working soon, too...

30.01.2005 - A Shedful of Ideas

Regular readers (I know you're out there. Someone must be providing these hits I keep getting) will be pleased to know that since I last wrote some news, I've had some plot ideas - just as well, as my strip buffer was close to running dry (only two strips left in it). Now I have four strips in the buffer and another three in script form, pending drawing - so everything looks okay for the moment.

22.01.2005 - Mozilla Firefox... sounds like the name of an RPG hero...

Not a particularly momentous piece of news from the point of view of this site, I'll admit, but it's interesting from the point of view of the 'Net as a whole: I, a diehard IE user, have got Firefox. It's not bad, though I didn't think IE was that bad either (which pretty much does count as a diehard IE user. And I was an IE supporter back in the days of the Browser Wars, mainly because of the handy MARQUEE and BGSOUND tags). Certainly the tabs are quite handy to avoid cluttering your taskbar, and the search box is a nice touch (particularly as I've never got the Google toolbar. I have a bit of a fear of toolbars, and though I know that Google are ever-benevolent ;-), it's always put me off getting it). Uh, anyway.

On a comicking front, I'm starting to worry a little as my buffer is beginning to dwindle (No! Never!), and I'm not entirely sure what idea to do next. I'm sure I'll figure it out in time.

19.01.2005 - Woo! A bonus strip!

Yes indeedy, I've made a bonus strip, which you can access by pressing the red button now... I mean, by clicking the buzzComix vote thingummaboob. It's the first in a series of "Weapon guides" - how and how not to use various Worms weapons, beginning with Old Faithful, the Bazooka. The bonuses will update sporadically, but I'll mention in the news when it happens.

18.01.2005 - Yes, I got permission...

I asked Team 17 for permission to use sprites for a few strips, and they said "sure, no probs" (Nice people). I've also added a credits page (it seemed a logical addition).

01.01.2005 - Ch-ch-ch-changing!

Yep, I'm changing my update schedule from one 8-frame comic a week to two 4-frame comics a week. The first of the new 4-framers will come out on Tuesday the 4th, and from then on updates will be on Saturdays and Tuesdays. So today's comic will be the last 8-framer you'll see for a while (In the future, I may do some for special occasions. We'll have to see)

Oh aye, and by the way: happy new year!

25.12.2004 - Merry Christmas!

With my grandparents visiting, my 'Net visits are a bit sparse and brief at the mo. Still, it's nice to see them. My presents included an LCD screen for my PSOne (so I can take it to Uni without a TV and thus without needing a TV licence), several DVDs, some books and other assorted stuff. It also snowed a bit here in Swansea today, giving us a White Christmas of sorts.

15.12.2004 - Extensive site renovations

Well, to the extent that I've added some pages, changed others, shuffled the Contents list around, and so on. The two new pages are fairly dull ones: an Old News page as the index page was starting to fill up somewhat, and an E-Mail Me page, as despite having my e-mail address on my "About Me" page, no-one's e-mailed me. There are two possible explanations: either no-one wants to e-mail me (in which case, fair enough), or I'd hidden my e-mail address far too well. So I've made it a little more obvious. I've also updated my Character Profiles and Guest Art/Fan Art pages. And, uh, that's it, really. So not as extensive as I claimed after all.