Thanks for reading.

5/22/12

I said this in my LiveJournal yesterday, so I probably ought to say it here too. Friday's cartoon reflected that I am once again considering, and more seriously this time, converting AKOTAS permanently to triangles from line drawing. As of the LiveJournal entry, in reaction to Friday's cartoon, I've received two lukewarm comments against the idea and none in favor. Yesterday marked eight years of consecutive daily updates at AKOTAS. I made the decision at the beginning to create it in line art because I knew that appeals better to a general audience than the triangle style. For much of eight years I have wished I had decided otherwise. Despite several occasions when triangle style has been evoked under emergency circumstances (usually for only a day at a time but, now, twice for weeks at a stretch), I have resisted making the change because I feel a reasonable expectation has been created for the readership that line art will be the standard. The thing about line art in webcartoons - the thing that induced the switch, in effect to this day, to triangle style for my fanfiction webcartoons in 2001 - is that line art relies on computer peripherals that break down and can't always be promptly repaired or replaced. Every other production decision I made at the beginning of AKOTAS - working in MSPaint, what font to use, to code the site myself in what HTML I know so that anything that goes wrong is something that I did and that I can fix myself - was in aid of streamlining production so I could produce cartoons at any Windows PC in the world, so AKOTAS would never miss a scheduled update. And I like the triangles. I like minimalism for its own sake. I deny it's a lesser style just because it's simpler and faster. For my purposes it's better because of those things. And it's distinct: it won't ever be confused with someone else's work. I like the triangles better. Yet there's still that nagging reasonable expectation I feel I've created for the AKOTAS readership. Plus - though I didn't think to say this for LiveJournal - when I do nothing but triangles, I do end up missing my less minimal style. But then there's this: This drawing from my deviantArt account appeared in an LJ entry of 2/20/12. In the comments then I said I wasn't seriously considering switching to this style for AKOTAS because of, in so many words, the reasonable expectation thing, but that was a little disingenuous. I could do this style without a scanner or a drawing tablet. It wouldn't be quite as time efficient as the triangles (though it's actually less time efficient to produce this style from scanned line art). It could be done with tablet line art or with the line or shape tools in MSPaint. I said at LiveJournal that I am probably going to switch to this style at AKOTAS sometime in the next week, to try it out. If I never switch back, I said, you'll know what I decided; but if I switch back to triangles about a week afterwards, that might represent a permanent decision. Then several people commented at LiveJournal that with triangle style it can be more difficult to remember who the characters are. With AKOTAS' large cast, that must be enough of an issue already. I'll begin the new style tomorrow and barring unforeseen difficulty I expect I'll keep it through the remainder of the AKOTAS run.

Webcomics I read mornings: Kevin & Kell, For Better Or For Worse, C'est la Vie, Tux & Bunny, Sluggy Freelance

Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: General Protection Fault, Nukees, Newshounds, Spacetrawler, Girl Genius

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa mornings: The Gutters, Ctrl+Alt+Del

Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly, LuAnn, Pearls Before Swine, American Elf, Narbonic, Schlock Mercenary

Webcomics I read weekday evenings: Something Positive, Girls With Slingshots, Questionable Content, El Goonish Shive, Striptease, Dinosaur Comics, Medium Large, Shortpacked, Wapsi Square, Starslip Crisis, Scenes from a Multiverse, Sheldon, Devil's Panties, Help Desk, Real Life, PvP, LitBrick, Mary Elizabeth's Sock

Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: xkcd, Two Lumps, Order of the Stick, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Bruno, Little Dee, Penny Arcade

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa evenings: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Darths & Droids, Let's Be Friends Again, Bruno, Little Dee

Webcomics I read bedtimes: B.C., Station V3, Sinfest, Skin Horse, Peanuts

Webcomics I read Sundays: Get Out of My Head, Blue Milk Special, Three Panel Soul, Hijinks Ensue, Zortic, The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, Megatokyo, Head Trip, Irregular Comic

Webcomics I hope will start updating again: Boxjam's Doodle, Punch an' Pie, The Angriest Rice Cooker In The World, My Name is Might Have Been, Dandy & Company, AppleGeeks, No Room for Magic, Li'l Mell, Breakfast of the Gods, Something Happens, Butternut Squash, Sketchies, 13 Seconds, Anywhere But Here, Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break, Count Your Sheep, Kismetropolis, The Magnificent Adventures of Hieronymus Bosch, esquire, The Green Avenger, I Draw Comics, Reasoned Cognition, Perry Bible Fellowship, The Whovian Observer, Gossamer Commons

See also The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, Talk About Comics, The Living Comic, Online Comics Day, The Belfry Comics Index, The Webcomic List, Mister Bloo, Nth Degree, 100% Originality Theatre, Brian Roney's Webcomic Reviews, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed), Fleen, Mr. Myth, Comixtalk and Websnark.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Early British Kingdoms - Arthurian Bios.
Historia Ecclesiastica.
Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.