Clearing the cobwebs

Hello, good readers of Lovarian Adventures. I'm not sure if anybody is actually still around given the lack of updates in over a year. I came in and there were all these cobwebs that I had to clear up before I posted this.

I have now removed the broken ads at the bottom of the page as well as the middle section part that points to my stuff at DeviantArt which no longer really shows the thumbnails to my old stuff correctly.

No, I'm not updating the comic with new pages anytime soon. I have some plans to continue the story along, though. However, that won't be anytime soon either. For that, my deepest apologies. I've always said that I wanted this story to be finished eventually but I always had to prioritize my real life over the comic. Anyway, hopefully, the idea I had in mind for Lovaria means that I can continue the story so that at the very least, the old readers will get some closure.

For now, I don't have a lot of stuff but I have been drawing a lot recently which you can see in my DeviantArt gallery.

But allow me to make this a bit Lovaria-related. Here are a couple of sketches I did. One is of Nadine and another of Helix. Well, it's been a while since I drew any Lovaria characters so I hope you'll forgive me if I drew them quite differently from before.


Nadine color test by ~ultorgabrihel on deviantART


Helix sketch by ~ultorgabrihel on deviantART

On Hiatus Again?

Well, yes, I'm putting Lovarian Adventures on a long hiatus for the nth time. I'm sure this is no longer a surprise to my old readers (thanks for sticking around despite the past hiatuses, by the way). With everything that's happening in real life at the moment, I don't think I'll be able to update this comic with any new pages until early next year.

I have free time, sure, but I just don't have the energy to script, layout, draw and add dialogue to comic pages at the end of the day from last week to the end of the year. I've been bombarded with work in the office and I'm still a bit burnt out with the two comics-related projects I had to rush some weeks ago.

My wife and I also have to prepare for our three-week vacation back home in the Philippines. That involves buying the traditional "balikbayan pasalubong" (homecoming gifts) for family and friends. So, at the moment, our weekends are spent going to markets and the mall looking for things to buy for people at home.

Anyway, enough with the excuses. The short of it is that there wouldn't be updates until we get back from our vacation in January next year. Of course, if I did feel like drawing a page, I'd draw one in before then but I don't want to promise anything.

I guess the best way for you to find out when I'm updating again is to just subscribe to my mailing list. You'll receive an email once a new page gets uploaded. Or, if you really keep track of your favourite comics on OnlineComics.net or DrunkDuck, then you can just add this comic to your faves in either service.

So, see you all next year.

7:17

Yes, it's another update, at last. I still haven't fully rested from the other comic project I was doing but I thought I've delayed this webcomic long enough. And so I sort of forced myself to finish this current page.

I feel it could've been better but I just wanted it done. There were things I couldn't quite do that I was able to do in the previous pages mainly because it involved the settings I had in Painter. And since I had to reinstall my PC along with Painter and not having saved the settings, I had to fiddle around with the settings again just to get to what I was using before. The frustrating part is, I couldn't duplicate the old settings. So, I had to make do with the settings I've come up with now.

Down the road, I may have to tweak the settings a bit more. Hopefully, I'll accidentally rediscover the old settings I was using in the previous pages.

Also, the style I've used in this page is slightly different from the style I've used a few pages ago. The style is something I sort of picked up while doing the Prey short comic. I think doing the earlier style I had was easier and faster to do so I'll switch back to that in the next page.

Anyway, hope you guys enjoy the new page.

Prey Got Accepted

Remember the short comics titled Prey that I drew last month? The eight page comics that I had to submit to a publisher for a possible inclusion in a literary magazine titled Going Down Swinging? Well, the editor of GDS finally got back to me. Here is a condensed version of the letter I received from him just the other day.

Thank you so much for submitting to Going Down Swinging. We were lucky to receive over 950 prose and poetry submissions for issue #24, as well as over 120 pages of comic art. This made for some interesting reading and, as you could imagine, a longer-than-expected selection process.

After all that reading, looking and deciding, it’s with delight that I can let you know that we’ve accepted the following piece of yours for publication:

PREY

This next issue will be our first in a while to be a book only (our last six issues have included a CD of spoken word), but in the place of the spoken word CD we are featuring the best in Australian comic art. So stay tuned!

We plan to launch the next issue in Melbourne, Sydney, Frankston, Geelong and Daylesford … and hopefully a few more places outside Victoria & NSW if we get the chance.

Many regards, thanks and congratulations.

I'm stoked! This will be my second published work in Australia and the first where I'll get paid. It wouldn't pay much, mind you, but paid nonetheless. That's still better than doing comics for free which is what I mostly do for the time being.

I can't wait for the book to get published and distributed.

Another Non-update excuse

I know it's starting to become a bad habit lately but I'll have to skip update this week (even though I'm about 60% done with the page) and next week. I believe I've announced that I am working on a comic for the Ponju Anthology book (no this isn't the "Prey" one I did recently) titled "The Busker".

Well, the deadline for the layouts of all the pages including the dialogue and one complete page is on the end of October. And, to date, I have only finished two layout/thumbnail pages out of a possible ten pages and I haven't drawn one complete page yet. With only a week to go, I'll need all the free time I can spare to work on this project as it has the potential to give me bigger exposure and possibly monetary compensation.

So, after the deadline has passed (at the end of this month), I'll be free to continue with updating this comic again. But, keep a watch out on this site anyway because if I feel like I'm not stuck with the anthology project, I might just finish the current Lovarian page anyway as a sort of diversion from doing the project.

Again, sorry for this. I know it looks bad but I hope you can all understand the reason for the delays in updates recently.