Telaya & Dioman

Why the F*** Is This On Hiatus Again?!?

… yeah, why.

I’ll be honest: I need to make the last chapter’s title image … but I just wasn’t in the mood yet.

WHAT???
You call that EXCUSE??? O____O

Nope. I don’t.
It’ just the truth.

As the creator of this (unfinished) comic, my biggest issue plainly isn’t to publish stuff as fast as I can, but to GET IT DONE at all. “This Side Of Darkness” is an already solved problem, story line, drawings, text, all is complete – it’s “just” that little webcomic special of another chapter title page that’s missing. With “Hrug’s War” and its successors it’s different. There are still several gaps in the POV threads waiting to be closed … which results in a permanent itch somewhere behind my eyes.
I need to get back into a creative flow concerning the upcoming episodes of “Telaya & Dioman”, before I am again able to dedicate spare time to web comic chapter title images – its a mind thing to me.

With this restriction, the next (and last) chapter of TSoD will happen as soon as possible, the sooner the better, because that means I’m back in the game. 🙂
Be aware, however, that a lengthy hiatus after TSoD’s final chapter is looming near anyway – I won’t start publishing pages again, before “Hrug’s War” isn’t finished in roughs at least.

A little reminder for those of you who’d like to read/view TSoD to the end NOW: there’s still this option available. 🙂

Sorry for the Break …

… which grew a bit longer than expected, but well, that’s how life works.

Had to get several things back on track concerning my life (in fact, I’ve had partial success only, but hey, better than nothing) before I could come back and resume publishing TSoD.

Anyway,the hiatus shall come to an end now – next chapter The White Wolf is Waiting will start this week, Thursday, and will be published page-wise on Mondays and Thursdays as before.

Thanks for your patience. 🙂

How to Proceed: Next Chapter(s)

First: thanks to the lots of great feedback you gave “This Side” over the last couple of weeks.

I’m happy that you enjoyed it’s story & artwork, and am hoping you’ll drop by for the last, defining chapters of the prologue story.

For these chapters, I’ll try a somewhat different approach, an idea I owe to Egypt Urnash:
I’ll switch to page-wise update, twice a week, but will still stick to the one-url-per-chapter approach (i.E. the chapter pages will be built up over a couple of weeks, instead of been filled by a single upload).
This for once makes things a bit more consistent and thrilling, and for another has the advantage to get away of the large single files with potentially bad user experience concerning download times (however I’ll make the single-file chapters available via download link, additionally to the PDF version).

The next chapter, Moon Wanderer, will start next week, Thursday, 02/12/2015. New pages will be uploaded on Mondays and Thursdays.
I also hope to solve that chapter navigation issue until then …

The Crossroads Battle

Time for more “Hrug’s War” WIPs again.

I’m about to block out the comic’s first “real” “military” combat action:
south of the Great Cataracts of Melondel, two ancient roads cross – one, which once connected the North of Olveare with the ancient seaside towns at the Oriador opening, and another one, which leads from Eastern Olveare right to the Cliff (note to self: need to provide a map …).
It is Moruk land.

But Hrug’s minions and allies do not care.

Horseback Moruk warriors are about to drive a band of their old enemy, the Boneheads off, when they run into another enemy: a company of Northmen, well-trained elite warriors clad in iron, on their way to strenghten Hrug’s advancing forces …

Crossroads Battle #1
Crossroads Battle #2
Crossroads Battle #3
Crossroads Battle #4
Crossroads Battle #5
Crossroads Battle #6
Crossroads Battle #7
Crossroads Battle #8

C&C welcome.

Into Oriador!

Time for some new WIPs!
I’ve started to concatenate some scenes of the book’s PoV threads, which resulted in a consecutive sequence of 167 pages so far.
Things are gaining momentum slowly, but irresistably – the second-last scene of the sequence:

Descending into Oriador #1
Descending into Oriador #2
Descending into Oriador #3
Descending into Oriador #4
Descending into Oriador #5
Descending into Oriador #6
Descending into Oriador #7
Descending into Oriador #8
Descending into Oriador #9

At the moment, I’m indeed thinking about splitting Hrug’s War in two parts, as there’s almost a rated break point in it’s middle, which would provide a very nice cliffhanger, and yet result into two parts with sufficient pages to read, probably >300 each.

I’m also thinking about color.
A quick experiment: adding a quick color layer to a greyscale image:
Cin'Thele Cat Girl in B/W
Cin'Thele Cat Girl colored

Not sure yet, and there’s still plenty of time to make that decision … if you like, write me your opinion.

XMas/New Year Special Offer

Here’s your chance to get This Side of Darkness Movie Edition at a whopping 50% off, from now on to the end of 2014: the T&D prologue story with music from audiomachine!

Pick your’s up at sellfy:
at a whopping € 2.95 – German or at US$ 3.50: English

… and also make the creator happy. 🙂

Merry X-Mas all!

Announcing New Chapter and some Site Reorganization

Yes, the next chapter of This Side of Darkness will go online in a few days, at Sunday, twelfth of December.

Another year rushed past, and has seen this site in an intermediate state, a weird chimera of a near-webcomic and a production blog.

As the making of Hrug’s War will keep me busy quite for a while and, together with what one calls ‘life’, leaves only little time to deliver too much additional content here, it will remain that way even longer, but anyway, at least the site can use a bit of reorganization.

So I did the following:

  • Hrug’s War got a menu entry of its own.
  • … and in the same turn, “Read Comic” has been renamed This Side of Darkness.
  • The German version is offline, for the moment.
  • I’ve added a World menu entry. There’s not too much content available at the moment, but I hope to add more soon.
  • In general, I’ve cleaned up the menu a bit, and grouped some stuff which previously cluttered the menu bar into submenus

Comic Action

… part of “Spiel” fair in Essen, takes place this week, Oct 16 to Oct 19.
I will be there with books, prints and some Gouache works, sharing booth 2A-146 with my good friend Jenny Dolfen, who will present her freshly pressed Darkness over Cannae.
At Saturday & Sunday, our friend and fellow artist Katharina Rippel will join us, too. ^^

If you want to drop by for a chat, have a look … maybe even take some printed copies home, optionally beautified by our signatures or possibly sketches, we are looking forward to meet you there. ^^

Cheers,
Helmut

PS.:
… will need a glass of wine and plenty of meditation right ahead to get my nerves back … at least a bit … was quite an interesting experience this year at Comicsalon Erlangen, when I noted that under public/exhibition/fair conditions (a) I am not able to draw straight lines, because my hand trembles like mad, and (b) I get almost as blind as a mole after a while at small tables, under dim, diffuse electric light all day long. Shock treatment for a shy person. ^^