Lovarian Adventures News and Prey

First, the cool news. I've only recently discovered that Lovarian Adventures was picked as a Featured Comic in the newly designed Drunk Duck home page. What a great honour. I so appreciate it, Drunk Duck admins!

Too bad though that the comic has now been bumped off the last 5 list. However, you can still see it listed in the Featured Comic archives. So, it's all good.

Meanwhile, I've just finished drawing the 8-page comics short, Prey, last night at around 2 AM. I just came back from the Post Office and had it mailed express post to the magazine editors so that it would reach them for sure on Monday (the deadline).

I was told that it was okay for me to post the comic online just as long as I don't have it published elsewhere so soon. So, if you are curious to see the actual finished comic, I've created a new comic space on Drunk Duck to host the 8-pager. Click Here to read it.

And here is a smaller version of the actual first page of the story:


Now, although I'm officially done with the 8-pager, I still won't be updating Lovarian Adventures this weekend. I'm just so tired from all the rushed drawing and CG-shading that my eyes, hand and neck hurt. I'll need a bit of rest from it, I think. I should be able to have a new page ready by next weekend though.

Prey (a short comic submission)

As some of you know, I haven't updated Lovarian Adventures for the past 2 weeks and possibly for one more week. And the reason being I'm currently doing a rush job at finishing an 8-page short comic for submission to an Australian literary magazine that accepts comics.

With the deadline officially on October 2 (Monday), I still have to finish it way before then because I have to give it time for my mailed submission to get to their office (maybe 2 days). So, I have to finish by Wednesday to be able to mail the thing on Thursday. I can maybe still finish it on Thursday instead and mail it on Friday but I have to pay more to get it delivered to the publisher by Monday.

Anyway, I've started cranking out pages Friday night and I've posted the first four pages of it in the forum. Note that there are no dialogue balloons or the Painter shading that will be added later. My priority right now is to finish the pencilled pages (I won't ink any of it). When there's time, I'll add the Painter shading. And again, if there's still time, I'll add dialogue balloons.

The original intent was that there wouldn't be any dialogue. But while drawing the pages, I was thinking of adding a few in there. So, if there's still time and I feel like doing it, yeah, I'd add some dialogue.

So, without the dialogue, is it obvious what's going on in these pages?

3 Weeks Off

Okay, I'm going to make this official. I'll not be drawing any new pages for three weeks (that includes yesterday's supposed page update). That means there'd be no new pages this coming Sunday and the Sunday after that, too.

I mentioned last time that I'm working on a short 10-pager comics, right? Well, the deadline of it is October 2 which is just 2 weeks away from now. Actually, I should finish by September 27 so that there'd be time for me to pass my submission via post and get to the magazine's editor. That's like 10 days left and I have yet to draw a single page of it! I already have a written script for the comic but I'm still currently at the stage where I'm designing what the lead characters would look like. Drawing a cute pre-teen girl was more tricky than I first thought.

Anyway, the one-shot comics I'm doing is for an annual Melbourne-based literary magazine anthology that features Australian comic art. Submissions should have a maximum of ten pages and in black & white. The best part of this is that there is a possiblity of getting paid at AU$100 per comic piece (regardless of the number of pages). I say "possibility" though because it is also possibe not to make the cut if there are a lot of other submissions better than the one I'm submitting.

And so, I really have to work on this one. The story I'm going to do actually only takes 9 pages. But you already know that I draw Lovarian Adventures at the rate of one page per week. Now, I have to draw a page a day for me to finish this thing in time.

Would I make it? I hope so. Although the opportunity to get paid for drawing comics has always been a dream of mine, a $100 one-off payment isn't really my primary motivation here. It's the opportunity to get something published in Australia again. Just to get my name out there, you know?

So, Lovarian Adventures should have a new page on October 7. Sorry about that. In the meantime, read my brother's new webcomic Life Again. It's a part of our new "Palabok Comics" group. I have yet to fully set that thing up. Ah well.

Also, wish me luck.

7:15 Uploaded

Delayed again, I know! I have a different excuse this time and it's not because I'm getting tired of drawing comics. So, no need to fear... yet. Apart from working on another short comic (around 10 pages) that I need to finish before October, the delays were caused by me caring so much about the final result of the page. Panel 1, it took me a while to work out how to show that they are in the mouth of a cave being blocked by a waterfall. Panel 2, I tried different poses of Lili jumping for it but I ended up with the one you see here. In the end, I just said to myself, "screw it!" I just drew those two panels to the best of my ability last weekend even though I wasn't completely satisfied with them. I figured I could doctor it up a bit when the time comes to add in the shading bits in Painter. Meanwhile, in Panel 3, research on how the waterfall exterior should look like and figuring out how to render the waterfall also slowed me down. And like in the first two panels, I decided to just go and draw it and be done with it.

I hope you guys still like it.

Other ways of leaving feedback

Hi folks. I just noticed that DrunkDuck no longer allows non-DrunkDuck members to comment on the official comment box. So, for those of you who are lazy to sign up with DrunkDuck, you can still leave your feedback in two ways.

1. I have reinstated the old Shout Box. You can now just leave your comments in there. You can even just chat amongst yourselves there, if you wish.

2. If you are an old reader of this webcomic, then you are probably alread a member of the Ponju Piggy Farm forum. You can also post your feedback there. I will now also include a link to the actual topic where you can leave your feedback on the forum at the bottom of the description for the current page.

I guess this is also a nice time to ask for some feedback from you guys. If you read this comic and you like it, please let me know. So that at least I know that the effort I put into drawing this comic again isn't all for nothing. And to those of you who are consistently giving me feedback, my many thanks.