Blog 9-7-16 – September Update

So it’s September, and I said I would update y’all by the first week of the month, and here I am, proving again that I am not dead, and not much has changed in the way of the posting schedule.

I had no idea that the process of my moving would take more than a year, but, as many more productive people will tell you, when you can’t devote your full attention and effort to a single project, it will get done less efficiently. I definitely wasn’t able to get done what I had set out to do in a reasonable amount of time and I am sorry that in doing that I have severely diminished the amount of content that has been featured on this site (hopefully temporarily).

But, things are getting back on track, as hopefully the last few (and next) days of posts will prove. I didn’t do as many exciting things these two months as before, but here are a few photos from another art show “Clarity in Chaos” that I did with the new West Texas Collective (Facebook Instagram Twitter) in Alpine Texas. It was a really fun show, and I hope to do more like it in the future.

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I won’t be fully up and running for a while longer now, but I’m getting close to being back in a position where I can do so. It’s more than likely I’ll have something working by the end of the year. I’ll post another update by November, and be on the look out for that one, because there are a few other really cool things that I’ll also be doing in November. So stay tuned and thank you for reading/watching.

-Austin

Dragoncompany.org   Artsupplycritic.com   Dragonfunnies.com

Blog 7-10-16 – July Update

Hello everyone, Austin Smith here, and it is July 10th, also known as the absolute last day one could possibly consider in the first week of July. Though I must admit I believe I did fail when I said I was going to have an update up during the first week. I did spend some extra time making sure the two posts I put up as tokens of proof that I am still going to update this site were a little more polished. The update is: I have not reached the point yet where I am in a position to fully restart my posting schedule. But I have said all of the things before about how I’ve seen Internet projects disappear, and how not getting things done snowballs. So I won’t go over them again, instead I’ll tell you about some of the things I did that are holding up the content but were still great to do. I’ll post another update by the first week of September.

The first really exciting thing that I did was go out to California and administrate a wedding for a family member. Unfortunately for me right now the photos haven’t come in, and all of the others that have me in them aren’t great (but I wasn’t who people were there to see) so I don’t have a photo from the ceremony right now. So instead here is one of me in Texas in the same outfit that looks like the Lord is shining down upon me.

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I’m also still moving, and here are ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of what a literal ton of books (as in actually 2000 pounds) looks like boxed up and on the shelf.

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Most recently I went to both of my local 4th of July festivities, in Alpine Texas. The first one, Fiesta del Barrio, I attended as a vendor selling some of my books. But I’m bad at taking pictures so I only got one of the parade, and one of a horned lizard. I also missed the second parade and only got one picture of it as well.

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And here is a panorama someone took of me from the Reds show I was featured in in early April.

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Anyway, hopefully those photos and my posts from yesterday sufficiently prove that I am alive and dedicated to these blogs. Thank you for your patience.

-Austin

Dragoncompany.org    Dragonfunnies.com   Artsupplycritic.com

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

Reaching Milestones

Reaching Milestones is a strange feeling. I’m just never sure how to react. Last week I reached 2,000 posts on the main Dragon Company site (as well as 1337 posts on Tumblr, but that’s just kinda funny)(and yes, that was all me so far). And just yesterday I reached 400 Walking the Roosters comics, out of over a thousand total comics, which I can’t even believe I did.

2000 Posts on my website

I definitely (I’m glad that didn’t autocorrect there) feel grateful to the people who encouraged me to work at this thing that I enjoy doing; blogging/comics etc. But I almost just don’t believe I did it. It’s almost like when I turned 18, which happened fairly recently as well. Suddenly you expect something to happen, and nothing happens. Everything feels the same but it feels like it shouldn’t feel the same.

My followers are still low on Tumblr

My followers are still low on Tumblr

But nothing incredible and major happened when I reached a large number of posts. Instead, the amazing thing is that I can look back and see all of the Likes, and Comments, and Followers I’ve built up over the time it took to get that many posts. All those people (hopefully you), though not as numerous as other followings, made my posts an achievement. People enjoying them, hopefully, is what makes them worth doing as opposed to reaching a nice-looking number for their total. The fact that even on my posts that get one Like, one person enjoyed that enough to like it makes me feel more accomplished than any number does. (And since I have to be cynical at least once here: I don’t have the potential to make some money if no one likes it.)

So thank you, everyone who has read and will read my various internet material. I hope to see you at the next milestone.