I’m getting over a cold and feeling sluggish. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

I know I said I WANTED to do a little more writing, but this weekend I HAD to do a little more writing. I’d drawn the last of my Animus Wars scripts last week, and I was down to the last strip of the current storyline in Animus Funnies. I had to have something to draw NOW.

I draw Animus Wars a week in advance. I had a huge buffer and I let it all go before I started drawing again. Couldn’t get motivated to draw it. The necessity of having a new strip every Friday fuels me. If somehow I don’t get the strip done (which I thought happened not too long ago) I’d do without a Friday update, but I’d rather not. The last two Fridays I had some new written content about Pelaria, so I would have had something go up anyway. I just want to keep to my schedule.

Animus Wars is slow-moving. When I started it, I thought I’d get through the story in a year’s worth of installments (that’d be 52 strips). This Friday, strip number 17 will go up, which is a third of that, and I feel I still have a lot of story left to go. But then I think that it took me nine pages just to get through the opening crawl and within the next seven pages I got through the tinkers’ escape, meeting Tara and setting out to find Oonchie-Wan. I cut out the jawa stuff and Tara’s life on the farm for practical reasons (I have nobody to play Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru or the jawas). All this to say, who knows? I might make it in a year, or I might not. For right now, I just finished writing Prince Cyran’s first encounter with Darth Todrick.

In Animus Funnies, I just finished the current story sequence that will conclude in the first week of February. I set out that I wanted to start my next big story sequence in March so that the chain of events get me to a trek away from Bree during the summer. What to do then, in February? In particular, I needed something to draw on Sunday. I came up with a quick gag featuring the Pickle Patch Bandits, which grew to a trilogy of gags on the same theme. When I introduced the Bandits back in May, I didn’t think I’d have any use for them beyond that one story point. Then I gave them names in July and featured them in mash-ups. Now they’re recurring cast members. I like drawing the curve of Nolan’s nose.

For the rest of what I came up with for February, you’ll just have to check back in. (See what I did there?)

I started drawing new Mash-ups last week. You may have seen the sketch I put up on Facebook. The theme is Final Fantasy IX (my favorite game in the series). I’ll talk more about them (and the game) when they go up next week.

Okay, that’s all for now. Talkatchall later.

Back to work full time this week, so less time for fun stuff like gaming. Actually, The Old Republic is causing my computer to overheat and shut down all of a sudden, so I wasn’t playing as much as I wanted to anyway. It started on Saturday. After reading up on the problem online, I opened up my computer to clean the fan. It was DUSTY! That seemed to do the trick and I was able to play on Sunday without too much trouble, until I tried watching a video while the game was open. Then it shut down again. I’ll give it another try later, but I’m not holding out too much hope. Looks like I might be shopping for a new computer in the near future.

Okay, so drawing break. As I mentioned last week, it’s been a while since I’ve drawn any new mash-ups. Until now that was purely because I wanted to take a break from working on the site full time. I worked on new strips (standard Funnies and Animus Wars) and that was it. Well, yesterday I started working on a compendium of the little tidbits I wrote about different places and people in Pelaria (tentatively titled Ardebast’s Almanac). It got me thinking that I need to start writing again. Not to mention that it was kinda nice having more time to game. The problem is that drawing mash-ups takes up so much of my time and energy that I don’t feel up to writing (or anything else beyond watching TV). The solution is obviously then to draw less. New strips are always my top priority, so that means I need to take a look at the mash-ups.

The mash-ups are what’s getting the most positive feedback these days, so I don’t want to stop drawing them completely, just to go slower. Before the holidays I was working at a clip of 9 drawings every two weeks. I’d break down the posting to one week of five drawings and then the other four the following week. The new plan will be posts of up to three drawings per week. That gives me (at least) 21 days to do 9 drawings, which I think is doable without sacrificing my writing.

This is all just in my head right now and it’s subject to change. Just throwing it out there because I find once I’ve posted it, I’m more likely to follow the plan (Fun ‘n’ Fantasy crossover and Kerfuffle Shuffle plans notwithstanding). Of course, I have no obligation to post at all, but I know myself well enough that if I let myself off the hook too much, I’ll just drop the whole thing completely (as I have so many other projects) and I definitely don’t want to do that. Sometimes though I need to remind myself that this is a hobby and not a job.

So that’s the news for this week. I’m going to work a bit more on the almanac. Have a good week y’all!

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the site,
Not a picture was downloading not even a byte.
The blog was being plagiarized by the cartoonist, that knave,
I surely do hope Clement Moore won’t spin in his grave.

The animals were nestled all snug in their dens
In hopes that new visitors would want to be friends.
With no new ideas in my head on this night
I settled in front of my keyboard to write.

When tired I get, silly ideas in my head grow
Like talking like Yoda in verse don’t you know.
I’ve got in one window, a rhyming dictionary
For when my brain is shuttered and feeling contrary.

The moon on the breast of the recently deposited snow,
Reminds me there’s yet three months of winter to go
My brain is starting to wander, let’s get back on track,
As I slay this Christmas classic, like a big shameless hack.

There’s an old bird in the Funnies who’s wrinkled and wise,
I’m talking of Crismus, of course you’ll surmise.
And it’s on his birthday that to his house will descend,
The stars of the Funnies, each one is his friend.

Here Deema! here Big Oonch! here Nektara and Todrick!
Come in Cyran, Sass, Barnaby, Zoë and Red Rich!
Get off of the porch, come in through the door,
But I ask of you please, don’t track snow on the floor.

And then in a twinkling, in the room you could hear,
Each friend together wishing happiness and cheer.
A bundle of snacks laid on the table for the party
Were consumed by the visitors, all hale and hearty.

You know, there’s no way I’ll get through the rest,
So I think that stopping right here would be best.
And I’ll wish to you all who’ve suffered through this,
“Merry Christmas and most of all Holiday Bliss!”