July 23, 2008

But I will come back…

Yes, it’s true: for the next month or so, there will be no new comics here at “Alone in a Crowd.” Allow me to explain this VERY hard decision I had to make.

When I started “Alone in a Crowd,” I wanted to make it something really special. I didn’t want to put it up a coupe months, then just have it stop for a while because of not being able to keep up with strips, or personal life, or work related issues, etc. This was me finally doing something I ALWAYS wanted to do and I wasn’t going to do it half-assed. The past six months have gone fairly well, but I’ve come to the point where I feel like “Alone in a Crowd” could be so much more. So I’m going to swallow my pride and accept the fact I need to take some time off from updating the comic to work on some of the site’s foibles.

First and foremost, “Alone in a Crowd” needs more readers. For the ones I have, bless you and thank you for sticking by me. It means more to me than you’ll ever know. The best way to get MORE readers, of course, is to get the name out there. You know, get the comic on more webcomic lists and links, advertise on popular sites…all around promote the living crap out of it. However, before I take the time (and make the investment in some cases) to do all this, there’s aspects of the “Alone in a Crowd” website that just HAVE to be addressed. If I’m going to be pulling in new readers, everything has to look it’s best. So here’s what I’d like to accomplish in the next month or so:

Create a series of banners to use for advertising “Alone in a Crowd.”
Actually draw images for and create a proper characters page.
Clean up and/or fix the page title images. The “store” logo seems kind of smudgy and the “characters” logo just has issues.
Update the images of Hope and Faith on the main page by the comic title (because lets face it, my style of drawing them has changed a bit since those two images were drawn).
Make the “store” page that has the links to Cafepress more interesting. I plan to put some pictures of the actual merchandise being worn by “models” (by which I mean good friends) so those visiting the page can get a better idea of what they’re following the links to.
Add new links to the “links” page. Not to mention take out or redirect a couple that are already there.
Get a real picture of me on the “About the Artist” page. Not mention one of Dyana and a profile/picture combo of Tim (who’s Tim you ask? You’ll know in time…).

And probably most important of all…

Go back and re-edit a great deal of the old comics in the achieve. As I look back on them, especially now that I have a high-def monitor, I really see how in the push to get them out, many of them look a bit sloppy at parts. There are either shadows from improper scanning or smudges from pencil and/ or ink errors that in the more recent comics I’ve been able to address and edit out. Knowing what I know now, I want to go back and make all the old comics look pristine and professional (or at least as close as my skill level can get).

I want to reiterate, this is an EXTREMELY hard thing for me to do. I hate to see the comic just stop for a while, but with a full time job that can really drain my energy, a freelance job writing CD reviews for Indie-music.com, and a new illustration job that’s come my way (more information on that when I am at liberty to give it to you), it would be next to impossible for me to have a new comic ready each week (at the quality I hold myself to) as well as address the eight issues that need to be taken care of before I start really getting “Alone in a Crowd’s” name out there. So, I throw myself at the mercy of my fans and ask them with all my heart to please just be patient while Hope, Faith, and Sara take a sort of Vacation. They WILL be back very soon.

Check back here in about a month for announcements of the comics re-launch. If you would like to have a notification of “Alone in a Crowd’s” re-launch date e-mailed to you, send an e-mail to tom@aiacrowd.com with the title “Mailing List” and I’ll be sure to send you the news right when it becomes available.

Until next time, keep Hope alive and have Faith.