Blog 2-18-16 – Sick

This is just a quick update. Since my last few were a bit longer, and I don’t want to just keep talking and bore. At the tail end of my (first bit of) moving I became sick, and have been since. It’s only gotten really noticeable recently, like today, where when I was trying to catch up I instead fell behind. So today’s comics will definitely be late, and maybe the next few days will be late as well.

(And then I’ll have to move more stuff so things will possibly be late again… just great)

-Austin

Blog 2-3-16 – Moving Again

Hello all! I (Austin Smith, the guy who runs these blogs) have been talking about how things have been going crazy recently and that posts may get behind schedule (and in some cases already are). I hadn’t mentioned the reason for this because I was hoping it wouldn’t affect as many projects as it has, but it seems like there may be some more delays now. I’m moving again, for the 3rd time in a year and a half, and each time it has put a severe dent in my ability to keep up with my posting schedule. This move in particular is bigger, and will take longer, than the previous two, meaning some of my more ambitious projects will be hit harder than before.

It is my hope that this won’t affect my main content like the art supply reviews and the majority of my comics, but there are some things it will affect, mostly on the Dragoncompany.org site. Articles and mid-week posts are still suspended until I can get reasonably caught up with them. My previous deadlines for doing this already didn’t work, so I won’t have one here. The “Weekly Feature” comics will also be delayed until further notice. I’m hoping this will only be a few weeks, but these comics take a considerable amount more time than the smaller comics I post every day. Editorial Cartoons will be posted sometime during the week, and not necessarily on Friday, to keep up with both the news and my fractured schedule. Nothing else should be changed but even regular posts could end up being late by a day or more. If it turns out I can’t make those either, there will be another post announcing that.

At this moment, I fully intend to post catch-ups for the weeks I delayed when I am in a better and more stable work environment than I was before and now during the move, and I do believe I have some very good ones in the works for that. Until then, thank you for your patience.

-Austin Smith

www.Dragoncompany.org

www.Dragonfunnies.com

www.Artsupplycritic.com

Blog 1-24-16 – Little bit of Late

Hello! As the observant of you might have noticed, Saturday comics were quite a bit late this time around. I apologize for this and will attempt to not have this happen in the future. That being said, this week’s Weekly Feature (which only appears on dragoncompany.org on Wednesdays) will be several days late due to scheduling issues.

I will be working to prevent things like this, but the coming month will offer many opportunities for me to be late. So depending on which way the wind blows there will be either a lot of lateness or (most) everything will be on time. Unfortunately there isn’t much in between.

I hope you have a nice day!

-Austin

Blog 1-1-16 – New New Years’ Setup

Wow, it’s another new year already. Each year is just better than the last in terms of the amount of people viewing and enjoying my content, my interactions with people, and my own satisfaction in my work. Still, this is the first New Year’s in a while where I won’t be incredibly increasing my workload by announcing a couple of new comics. Indeed, this is the first year where I feel like I’m in a worse creative position than I was the year before. Meaning my update here will be rather tame, and have some of both the good and the bad.

First things first: let’s talk about comics. This year I’ve put 3 on hiatus, which has helped me, but I feel like it’s not as much as I really want to be doing. So this year I will be rescheduling the way things will be done. Instead of having 1 comic on weekdays and 3 each weekend day I will be doing 2 every day. The missing slots will be filled by Walking the Roosters increasing from 5 to 7 comics a week, as well as adding in a larger-format comic every week that could be a part of one of many stories. Also my Editorial comics, which I have not really been keeping up with, should hopefully fill in the remaining spot (if not, there will be something there, though). This new schedule will be viewable on the “weekly posting schedule” page shortly.

And now for the stuff not about comics. I will be ceasing to use most of the social media accounts that Dragon Co. uses for a period of time until I feel like they are relevant or are polished enough that I can be happy to look at them. This won’t be affecting everything: the main Dragon Co. Twitter and Facebook account/page will still be operational during this time, but Tumbr, secondary Facebook pages, and Google+ will not be active until the problems I am having with them can be resolved or there is demand for them to exist (which at the moment there is none, and I don’t foresee there being much for any but Tumblr until I can get things straightened out).

I will also be changing the “reviews” I have been doing (or trying to do) in the middle of the week. Instead I will be doing more of a short “Blog” post about one or a few of the many varied items in my collection (this is part of a larger project that I’m hoping to get off the ground). This might take longer to go into effect, as I haven’t been able to catch up on my written material as much as I would have hoped entering the New Year. In fact, I am very much behind in that regard and I will be working as diligently as I can to get caught up (but as one of my teachers always said “it is easier to keep up than catch up”). This process, which I optimistically thought would be finished by this time, might now take until the end of February to get resolved. But I do have every intention of catching up.

And that’s about what I’ve got. As always I hope you have enjoyed and continue to enjoy what I put out, and that you had a wonderful New Year’s Eve and will have a wonderful new year.

-Austin

Blog 12-22-15 – Stickies is Ending

Hello! I know that, for my comics, this year has really shaken things up. And while I hope to make up for multiple comics being put on hiatus next year, I can also say that I feel like the comics I have created since those comics were put on hiatus have been better than the ones I would have made if I had continued with my other projects at the time. Still, it’s not my favorite thing to do: to look at my projects and evaluate if they are working and where they are going. But we are nearing the end of the year, and now is around the time I start looking at that sort of thing. And I have another comic I’m currently not convinced I can continue to make ‘quality’ for an extended period of time, and that is Stickies.

I very much enjoy the comic, but at the moment it seems the characters’ journey is getting close to ending, and indeed the next 2 Stickies comics will be the last for some time. I can say I believe the ending is fitting the characters and their dignity.

I do believe that in the next year I will be able to make up for the loss of content that I have experienced over this year, but that stuff is not ready to be announced yet. Until then I hope you all enjoy the end of Stickies and all of the other content I put out.

-Austin

Blog 11-3-15 – Things are late, and unfortunately will continue to be late

Hello followers and viewers. I value my schedule highly, and I believe I have done a good job over the last long while of keeping up with that schedule. That being said, if you view my content with any regularity you will have seen that I have been late the past few weeks on a few things, and have unfortunately exceeded previous records of my own lateness. This is especially not fun for me with my comics, which I consider the core of my online content.

Now I don’t want to just make excuses, but I have had a few things happen recently that have made progressing more difficult. I moved into a “limbo” situation that has not gotten resolved as quickly as I had hoped, and makes my work and living environments undesirable from a “getting things done” or “moving around comfortably in clear spaces” kind of way. I’ve also had to change jobs to one with irregular hours that prevents me from being in “work mode” for my various comic and article writing/drawing. And finally I have a large project I’ve been working on with a very hard deadline that is very behind schedule. I’ll talk about that more as it nears completion.

So with all of those things I was still able to be on top of things for a while, but it wasn’t going to last. And it looks like things will be problematic for a little while longer. I hope you can bear with me while I work this out, and I hope to have all of the items I have been late on and caught up to all of the new content by the end of November, but it might end up closer to the end of the year. I hope you enjoy the content regardless and I hope your holiday season is less stressful than mine is going to be.

Best Wishes,

Austin Smith

www.Dragoncompany.org

www.Dragonfunnies.com

www.Artsupplycritic.com