Blog 1-24-16 – Little bit of Late

Hello! As the observant of you might have noticed, Saturday comics were quite a bit late this time around. I apologize for this and will attempt to not have this happen in the future. That being said, this week’s Weekly Feature (which only appears on dragoncompany.org on Wednesdays) will be several days late due to scheduling issues.

I will be working to prevent things like this, but the coming month will offer many opportunities for me to be late. So depending on which way the wind blows there will be either a lot of lateness or (most) everything will be on time. Unfortunately there isn’t much in between.

I hope you have a nice day!

-Austin

Blog 1-1-16 – New New Years’ Setup

Wow, it’s another new year already. Each year is just better than the last in terms of the amount of people viewing and enjoying my content, my interactions with people, and my own satisfaction in my work. Still, this is the first New Year’s in a while where I won’t be incredibly increasing my workload by announcing a couple of new comics. Indeed, this is the first year where I feel like I’m in a worse creative position than I was the year before. Meaning my update here will be rather tame, and have some of both the good and the bad.

First things first: let’s talk about comics. This year I’ve put 3 on hiatus, which has helped me, but I feel like it’s not as much as I really want to be doing. So this year I will be rescheduling the way things will be done. Instead of having 1 comic on weekdays and 3 each weekend day I will be doing 2 every day. The missing slots will be filled by Walking the Roosters increasing from 5 to 7 comics a week, as well as adding in a larger-format comic every week that could be a part of one of many stories. Also my Editorial comics, which I have not really been keeping up with, should hopefully fill in the remaining spot (if not, there will be something there, though). This new schedule will be viewable on the “weekly posting schedule” page shortly.

And now for the stuff not about comics. I will be ceasing to use most of the social media accounts that Dragon Co. uses for a period of time until I feel like they are relevant or are polished enough that I can be happy to look at them. This won’t be affecting everything: the main Dragon Co. Twitter and Facebook account/page will still be operational during this time, but Tumbr, secondary Facebook pages, and Google+ will not be active until the problems I am having with them can be resolved or there is demand for them to exist (which at the moment there is none, and I don’t foresee there being much for any but Tumblr until I can get things straightened out).

I will also be changing the “reviews” I have been doing (or trying to do) in the middle of the week. Instead I will be doing more of a short “Blog” post about one or a few of the many varied items in my collection (this is part of a larger project that I’m hoping to get off the ground). This might take longer to go into effect, as I haven’t been able to catch up on my written material as much as I would have hoped entering the New Year. In fact, I am very much behind in that regard and I will be working as diligently as I can to get caught up (but as one of my teachers always said “it is easier to keep up than catch up”). This process, which I optimistically thought would be finished by this time, might now take until the end of February to get resolved. But I do have every intention of catching up.

And that’s about what I’ve got. As always I hope you have enjoyed and continue to enjoy what I put out, and that you had a wonderful New Year’s Eve and will have a wonderful new year.

-Austin

Blog 12-22-15 – Stickies is Ending

Hello! I know that, for my comics, this year has really shaken things up. And while I hope to make up for multiple comics being put on hiatus next year, I can also say that I feel like the comics I have created since those comics were put on hiatus have been better than the ones I would have made if I had continued with my other projects at the time. Still, it’s not my favorite thing to do: to look at my projects and evaluate if they are working and where they are going. But we are nearing the end of the year, and now is around the time I start looking at that sort of thing. And I have another comic I’m currently not convinced I can continue to make ‘quality’ for an extended period of time, and that is Stickies.

I very much enjoy the comic, but at the moment it seems the characters’ journey is getting close to ending, and indeed the next 2 Stickies comics will be the last for some time. I can say I believe the ending is fitting the characters and their dignity.

I do believe that in the next year I will be able to make up for the loss of content that I have experienced over this year, but that stuff is not ready to be announced yet. Until then I hope you all enjoy the end of Stickies and all of the other content I put out.

-Austin

Blog 11-30-15 – Thanksgiving and Artwalk

Hellooo… It’s Blog time again. I’m still sort of in a Thanksgiving vacation type thing where everyone I’m around acts like I shouldn’t be working, but I still work but a lot fewer things get done. Anyway, I’ve got a few things I feel I should keep posted about.

First of all, my Artwalk showing in Alpine went wonderfully and it was much less cold than previous years (though at one point it did get quite cold). I met a lot of great people and talked to many more I’d met in previous years. And since I’ve officially unveiled my new books at the event, I will just leave the link to my Amazon author page where they can be purchased here again.

My Thanksgiving also went well, and I hope yours did too. It’s the first time I’ve really celebrated (had dinner that wasn’t just my normal dinner with immediate family) in a few years, and the occasion was much more pleasant than when I was last celebrating it because I was able to eat foods prepared closer to how I’m used too. Anyway, enough about me that doesn’t relate to this site: I hope your Thanksgiving went as good as mine or better and that any traveling done went smoothly.

And finally, due to several factors, including the two events mentioned above, it being the cold season and several other things, I am still behind schedule in my written items. And any lead-time my previous advanced planning for this site gave me has eroded. So things will still be late and at wonky times into December. Which, while past the date when I had hoped the problem would be solved, is not past when I actually thought it would be solved. And if things go well everything will be mostly back on track for the New Year.

Thank you,

Austin Smith

Blog 11-19-15 – It’s Artwalk Time

Hello! This Blog is a bit late, all things considered, since it’s about something that will happen tomorrow. I will be participating in the Alpine, Texas, Artwalk festival this weekend. I’ll have, like the previous years, a stand displaying my work, mostly webcomic collections. But this year I’m going to be adding a novel to the lineup. I’ll be debuting two new books the event, which takes place over the 20th and 21st of Novemeber. But if you can’t make it, the books will also be available to purchase through Amazon, via either the tab in the (dragoncompany.org) site menu (labelled “store”) or this link.

Whether or not you’re planning or able to go to the event, I hope everyone has a great weekend and a restful Thanksgiving.

– Austin