Hello, friends! It’s Easter, Passover, and apparently Thank You for Libraries Day, and what with all that, it’s been a busy weekend for pretty much all my people. I humbly thank you for your patience. Happy holidays, if any of those ones are yours! Be sure to thank your local library!
Well, okay, they’re probably closed for the holiday but you can thank them tomorrow.
ANYWAY. I promised two (2) medium-sized announcements, and they are as follows:
ANNOUNCEMENT ONE
The very first chapter of this little comic is now *remastered!* This means I drew all the pages again, threw in some minor retcons revisions, and have put them on the Internet for all to see.
I started Simple, Inelegant so I could learn how to draw comics, and boy did I ever have a lot to learn. I mean, I still have a lot to learn, but things I have learned much more about include:
- Composition
- Color theory
- Basic human proportions
- Messing about with watercolors
- Drawing literally anything whatsoever
Looking at the original (hereafter referred to as Old Chapter One), I have to admit that I sometimes feel delighted with my own progress. But on the other hand, I can hardly bear the sight of it, and I want to make a good first impression on new readers.
However: when I got into webcomics, I was no older than the characters in this one, and I remember being impressed with how the artist’s style would change and improve as the comic went on. It was the first time I realized that art was a skill, and I could learn how to do it better if I wanted. To that end, I’ll keep old chapter one in the gallery so people can check it out if they are so inclined. As far as I’m concerned, New Chapter One supersedes Old Chapter One in the Official Canon, but I read Death of the Author like a good little English major, so your interpretation is up to you.
You can find the new/old pages here.
ANNOUNCEMENT TWO
I have launched a Patreon!
If you know what Patreon is, you can skip this paragraph. If you don’t, well, I’ll tell you. Patreon is a crowdfunding service that could allow you to become, well, my patron. You can pledge a certain dollar amount a month to help me pay for web hosting, watercolor paints, paper, music to listen to while I’m putting the paints on the paper, time to stay home and write new chapters, food – you get the idea. And in exchange, you gain exclusive access to *fancy bonus content!*
But what kind of bonus content? You may very well ask. Well, I have a few ideas. I do a lot of my worldbuilding in prose, which has led to the creation of a lot of short stories that are basically useless if nobody gets to read them. I plan to scan my sketchbooks every month and post them. I’ll probably do a blog-type thing, and patrons at certain tiers will get PDFs of my minicomics and side projects and suchlike.
Other than that stuff, I’m going to post a poll of some sort and find out what else my patrons might be interested in seeing. Give the people what they want, as they say. My page is still under construction, but you can check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/maddyspencer
The comic will always be free to read, and you won’t need to look at any of the bonus content to understand the story. But hey – it could be fun! If you have a few extra bucks kicking around and want to check it out, I’d be very much obliged.
Okay, I gotta go figure out matzo ball soup please send help, but I’ll make another announcement when I’ve posted the first round of bonus content. Thank you all so very much for reading!
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