Blog 1-1-17 – New Years Updates

(Post is late because the power went out at my house {everyone’s favorite New Year’s tradition})

Well, it’s the New Year. Time to settle in with my traditional Welch’s sparkling grape juice (I may have already). I hope your year was enjoyable and that your next will be better. Putting all world events out of the picture, I had a fine year, through it was far from what I had wanted. Those following my Blog and updates will know already about my moving house, along with social, work, and familial obligations that have really eaten into my capacity to finish projects for my various online endeavors (I’m even out of the house as I write this).

The daily posting schedule is still suspended. Even with the personal goals I set for myself, I am not any particular distance closer to getting it back on track. I have done better, though. Before leaving on my current trip I wrote a post a day (which are coming out a bit more sporadically as they need to be edited) and have continued to write into my “vacation”. So I won’t be launching anything new this year or changing anything up: my goal will simply be to take steps to returning to my former schedule (with comics likely coming back soon). I seem to be getting closer to that goal, but all projects need to be taken one step at a time. I will be posting regular updates along the way, and if all goes well things should be back to “normal” around this time next year.

Hopefully, this new year will bring as many opportunities and interesting events as the previous, and I’ve already got some plans for new releases to come once I’ve gotten back to a semblance of normalcy. I am excited about working on new projects as I try and catch up (I guess that the analogy would be that I have multiple legs taking multiple steps). I appreciate everyone who has enjoyed, supported, critiqued, found interesting, or left feedback on my work this past year. It should be getting better all the time, and with any luck more expansive in the coming year.

Happy New Year!

-Austin

Dragoncompany.org   Artsupplycritic.com   Dragonfunnies.com

Blog 5-2-16 – Reconstruction

Hey guys, Austin here again. I said I would post an update in May after my April suspension of my posting schedule, and I’m here to say the posting schedule is still suspended. Things in April didn’t work out as I had planned (at least as far as this Blog is concerned, my sanity might be slightly restored though). And thinking I could get it all sorted out by May may have been a bit too optimistic of me (see what I did there). I’m working on quite a few site- and content-related things behind the scenes, but they aren’t translating at the moment into much that is visible on the front end. Still, I do want to get things out there so it does look like I’m doing something, since I can say I am all I want but without any new posts it sure doesn’t look like I am.

Unfortunately I will still have to extend my schedule suspension until I’m caught up and can return to it. I don’t know how long it will take to do that exactly, but I will post an update about it by the first week of July. Once things do get back on track, though, be on the lookout for some announcements of cool new things, I’ve got a lot in the works.

-Austin

Blog 4-1-16 – The Good and the Bad

Hello again. I’m Austin Smith from the Dragon Funnies (dragonfunnies.com), Art Supply Critic (artsupplycritic.com), and Dragon Co. (dragoncompany.org) Blogs. And I have finally and unfortunately reached the point where work, social obligations, sickness, and just life in general have rendered me unable to keep up with maintaining my web endeavors. Over the past few weeks I have failed entirely to keep the deadlines I have set for myself on all three of these Blogs. And with more than 3 years of not missing more than a day that is a huge blow to me.

I will not give up on posting to these sites. And in fact I can see the crest of the mountain where I can go back to the normal maintenance of them. It is disheartening for me to still have this problem even after I have streamlined so much of my content. But it is still just a hobby for me, and it is a hobby I will have to “leave” on this side of the mountain and come back for once I have brought everything else to the top.

The real announcement here is, I will be suspending my posting schedule in April. That doesn’t mean things won’t be posted. It just means there will be no schedule. I will finish what I can when I can and then review my situation in May. If everything goes as planned (and things, contrary to how it seems, tend to go as planned, just not on schedule), I will catch up through all of these days by the time I am done. So the amount of content in the end will be the same, but will be posted in bursts rather than daily.

Until that is done there is quite a bit still on the site to enjoy, and I will still be showing my art and books in a gallery here in Alpine Texas from April 1st to 10th. There will be a lot of photos and maybe a few videos from that. And I will be working on a way to get some of the really cool new stuff I made for the show out and available on my site.

-Austin.

Blog 2-3-16 – Moving Again

Hello all! I (Austin Smith, the guy who runs these blogs) have been talking about how things have been going crazy recently and that posts may get behind schedule (and in some cases already are). I hadn’t mentioned the reason for this because I was hoping it wouldn’t affect as many projects as it has, but it seems like there may be some more delays now. I’m moving again, for the 3rd time in a year and a half, and each time it has put a severe dent in my ability to keep up with my posting schedule. This move in particular is bigger, and will take longer, than the previous two, meaning some of my more ambitious projects will be hit harder than before.

It is my hope that this won’t affect my main content like the art supply reviews and the majority of my comics, but there are some things it will affect, mostly on the Dragoncompany.org site. Articles and mid-week posts are still suspended until I can get reasonably caught up with them. My previous deadlines for doing this already didn’t work, so I won’t have one here. The “Weekly Feature” comics will also be delayed until further notice. I’m hoping this will only be a few weeks, but these comics take a considerable amount more time than the smaller comics I post every day. Editorial Cartoons will be posted sometime during the week, and not necessarily on Friday, to keep up with both the news and my fractured schedule. Nothing else should be changed but even regular posts could end up being late by a day or more. If it turns out I can’t make those either, there will be another post announcing that.

At this moment, I fully intend to post catch-ups for the weeks I delayed when I am in a better and more stable work environment than I was before and now during the move, and I do believe I have some very good ones in the works for that. Until then, thank you for your patience.

 

-Austin Smith

www.Dragoncompany.org

www.Dragonfunnies.com

www.Artsupplycritic.com