The Scoop – Page 14 – Studio NDR: Comics & Art by Dylan Edwards

Valley of the Silk Sky page 74 awaits you

December 28, 2017 Dylan Edwards

Want to read page 74 of Valley of the Silk Sky? You got choices:

This page references some stuff from chapter 1, so if it’s been awhile since you read it, pages 12 and 13 can help you out.

In other VotSS news, I’m about halfway through the pencils for chapter 9. Oh yes! I’m taking advantage of this quiet time of year to pad the ol’ buffer as much as possible.

Also, if I’m to hit my goal of having the Part Two book out by mid-April, I’ll need to have all the art done by end of February at the latest. I believe this is doable, I just have to knuckle down and draw draw draw.

Finishing chapters 9 and 10 will give me a buffer of weekly page updates through about July (this assumes a couple of breaks between chapters to post updates to the Appendicies on the VotSS website, for the edification of world-building nerds such as myself.

Finally, I just wanted to point out a new feature on this here website. Over in the right-hand column (which gets pushed below the main content on mobile), you will now see a “Newest Comic” widget that shows the most recent page I’ve added. This is a quick and easy way to jump to the latest installment of VotSS.

Anyhow, back to work on making more of those installments. See you next week!

Cheers,

Dylan

And now, page 73 of Valley of the Silk Sky

December 21, 2017 Dylan Edwards

Valley of the Silk Sky The Long Run — Page 73

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for another installment of Valley of the Silk Sky. Page 73 is now up, and you can read it here:

Since everyone knows teenagers always make good decisions, you can expect the next page to be the final page of the book. It just says, “And then everything turned out fine. The End.”

SPEAKING OF EVERYTHING TURNING OUT FINE: As I posted on Tuesday, I believe the redesign for Studio NDR is basically done. I’m sure I will find stray bits and pieces that need to be fixed/improved, but these should (in theory) be minor corrections.

So please do have a look around. I added a bunch of comics that hadn’t been collected on here before, and streamlined the content to focus on stronger, more recent work.

Cheers,

Dylan

Website redesign is basically done, I think?

December 19, 2017 Dylan Edwards

I mean, there are more minor tweaks here and there, and I’m sure I’ll find some typos or whatever, but the bulk of the work is done.

I took down about 300 pages of comics and art, leaving a mere … 250 pages of comics and art for you to peruse. The guiding principle for what got cut and what stayed was framing this site as more of a portfolio and less of an archaeological dig through every single comic I’ve ever bothered to create. So the focus now is on more recent work.

That does mean I took down the anti-Valentine’s Day cards. They were at one time the most popular thing on this site, but they don’t really fit in with anything else I do (so they weren’t driving traffic to the rest of my work), and I haven’t felt motivated to make any new ones in several years. So eh. On to new things!

I also removed all the comment boxes. In the five years I had comments enabled here, I think I got a grand total of sixteen non-spam comments. Obviously this was not a feature people were all that interested in using! I’ve found people are more likely to communicate via Twitter or Tumblr than a comment box. Other cute but non-essential widgets got pulled, like tag clouds, cuz mostly it was adding clutter more than anything else.

Because the redesign involved a major under-the-hood rebuild, I ended up deleting basically all the old pages and started from scratch. That means any permalinks you might have set up will probably no longer work, so I guess check yer bookmarks.

There are some big improvements: the new structure is responsive, so you should now be able to view the site on tablets and phones and have it adapt to your device.

I also learned a new way to save graphics that cuts the file size dramatically without sacrificing quality. A great many comics on here are now bigger and clearer while also chopping about 1.5MB off the file size. That should mean faster load times (and less data usage for folks on mobile devices).

I finally added a new section for my autobio comics. Most of these weren’t on the site before (or were difficult to find), so take a spin around and see what there is to see!

Cheers,

Dylan

Valley of the Silk Sky returns! Website still a construction zone!

December 14, 2017 Dylan Edwards No Comments

The first page of chapter 8 is live, and you can read it here:

Since it’s been a good while, you may be wondering, what does it matter where I read it? Well, I’ll tell you.

If you peep it here on Studio NDR, it helps with my view numbers for ad boxes (assuming you don’t have an adblocker enabled). If you prefer Tumblr, you can like and share the comic on there.

At the moment, of course, Studio NDR is a construction zone, with dust and concrete blocks and I beams strewn all over the place. I’m working on reassembling everything into a prettier package, but it’s going to take awhile (as in, a few weeks). So if you would rather have the site you’re reading on be stable and consistent, go to Tumblr for now.

Anyhow. Welcome to Chapter 8, and look for lots of improvements around here in the coming weeks!

Cheers,

Dylan

Messy website update in progress

December 12, 2017 Dylan Edwards No Comments

As the title suggests, I’m making a bunch of changes here. I took down a bunch of comics, some of which I will be adding back over the coming weeks. Right now I’m working on reposting Valley of the Silk Sky (with newly generated pages that have significantly smaller file sizes without losing image quality, yay!).

Anyway, things will continue to be a mess around here for a bit, but hopefully the end result will be a less cluttered, more user-friendly incarnation of Studio NDR.

Cheers,

Dylan

Valley of the Silk Sky returns on Dec 14; Mini Comic Con this weekend; Editorial Cartoon book now available!

December 5, 2017 Dylan Edwards No Comments

I’ve finished coloring all the pages in chapter 8 – still gotta do cleanup, but the hard work is done! That means Valley of the Silk Sky chapter 8 will commence on December 14 as planned. If you want to refresh your memory or get caught up, you can browse the Table of Contents on the Valley of the Silk Sky website, or you can hit up the archive here on Studio NDR.

If you don’t want to wait, you can always drop $1 a month over at my Patreon and get early access to pages. Patrons will be seeing updates on Mondays, and then the page will go public on Thursdays.

Also, this weekend on December 9, I’ll be tabling at Mini Comic Con 2 here in Denver. It’ll be at the Sam Gary Branch Library from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, and it’s FREE to get in, so head on over if you’re in town.

You’ll be able to pick up my new books there: The Outfield collection, and Bleating About the Bush, which collects all of my old editorial cartoons.

And, of course, I’ll have all the rest of my books there as well, in addition to some Feeping Creatures art and merch.

See you there!

Cheers,

Dylan

Editorial cartoon book, and Valley of the Silk Sky progress report

November 19, 2017 Dylan Edwards No Comments

The next stage of my Big Cartoon Archiving Project is nearing completion: a collected volume of all of my editorial cartoons for the Texas Triangle and TXT Newsmagazine.

I’m currently awaiting a proof of the print version of the book. Once I’ve had a chance to look that over and approve it, I’ll make it available for purchase. As with The Outfield book, it’ll be available as a POD print volume, a high-res PDF for a few bucks, and a web-res PDF for free.

While I’m pretty sure most of the world isn’t clamoring for a collection of political comics from a dozen years ago, I can definitely see the value of this book for anyone studying queer history during the Bush II years, or librarians who have an interest in archiving material from the now largely defunct queer newspaper scene. Or, ya know, anyone who’s looking for a stark reminder that Bushism was absolutely a dry run for Trumpism. Ha ha. Whee.

ANYWAY. I expect the book to be available probably in early December, assuming all goes well with the proof review process.

On a totally different note, Valley of the Silk Sky chapter 8 is coming along. I have four pages completely colored (still need to clean up and letter the scans), so I’m looking at a Dec. 14 launch to start publishing the new material (or Dec. 11 for $1+ Patrons).

For those of you keeping track, this means I’m shifting my regular update day from Wednesday to Thursday. Mostly this is because Wednesday already seems overcrowded with webcomic updates. Will Thursday be any better? Who knows! It’s kind of an experiment to see if it makes any difference.

Anyway, point being, VotSS returns in less than a month!

Cheers,

Dylan

The Outfield collection is now available!

November 4, 2017 Dylan Edwards No Comments

As teased a few weeks ago, I’ve been working on a print book collection of all my old Outfield comics, and that collection is now available! I have it in three formats:

Also, as previously intimated, I’ve taken the old web archive offline. Most of those files were prepped in the days before HD monitors and were difficult to read on modern screens. In addition, the format used to create the archive is out-of-date and will break when I upgrade my website, so it had to come down anyway.

But that’s why I put together the free web res PDF – all the comics are still available for free, and the web res PDF is still better quality than the old online archive.

ANYWAY. Go forth and grab whichever format appeals to you the most!

Cheers,

Dylan

Asexual Awareness Week AND Bat Week??

October 24, 2017 Dylan Edwards No Comments

Apparently Asexual Awareness Week and Bat Week coincide, so here’s an Ace Bat for ya.

The bat art is from one of the $5+ Patreon backer postcards I sent out recently, recolored here to match the Asexual flag. (The original is orange, as this is a painted bat.)

Since this is freehanded ink-on-paper (no pencils), I guess it kinda counts as an Inktober as well. So many hashtags.

In quick other news, I have one page left to pencil for Valley of the Silk Sky chapter 8, and then that stage of the process will be done. HOORAY! I’m hoping to have it ready to start running by mid-December.

Also: The Outfield collection is in the proofing stage. First pass had a number of corrections, but I’m hoping most of that got sorted out. I’ll need to get a second proof to confirm. Anyway, it’s still on track for a November 2017 release.

Cheers,

Dylan

The Outfield collection in the works, and a complete website overhaul

October 14, 2017 Dylan Edwards No Comments

Now that convention season is over for me for the next few months, my goal is to redesign my website at long last, a task that has needed to get done for many a year.

At the moment, my site is more of an archaeological dig, less of a usable portfolio. I don’t even have my more recent award-winning comics on here because I don’t know where to put them amidst the clutter. So I’m going to remove all the series I no longer update, and archive them in one fashion or another.

In the case of The Outfield, the comics will be made available as a $20 POD print book, a $5 high-res PDF, and a free low-res PDF.

I’ve finished setting up the Outfield book in InDesign, and it’s currently awaiting approval to go to proof at CreateSpace. Once I have the proof and have confirmed there are no corrections, I’ll make it available for sale. $1+ Patreon subscribers will automatically get a copy of the high-res PDF.

I’m planning on a November release for the Outfield book, so stick it on yer calendar.

As to when all this stuff gets yanked offline here, I don’t know yet. I’m still giving thought to how I want to arrange things. I’m also probably going to have to change my WordPress theme, since the one I’ve been using isn’t maintained and is broken as fuck. Fun!

But I expect what I’ll do is wipe the whole thing clean, and then add things back as I deem them worthy. I’ve been making comics for 17 years now, and it’s past time to bring some focus to my body of work.

Cheers,

Dylan

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