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03-15-2008 - NO NEW VISUALS, BUT THERE IS NEW AUDIO
Sorry for not having a comic up yesterday. I've decided that the best way to stabilize the schedule is to have weekly Monday comics instead. That is still only a temporary change. I'm working to get back ahead of schedule and make April a Monday/Friday month.
To appease you, my adored fans, I have recorded an audio commentary on the very first issue of UTC. It's not actually the first chapter of this webcomic, it's a 14-page book I made a year and a half ago that has nothing to do with this series.
You can read the comic at the Catomix website, and you can download the commentary from this source.
I've added links at the top of this site with the wallpaper from Christmas and all of the audio files myself and my friend Pat have done this year.
03-10-2008 - HEY LOOK AT THAT
No, I haven't forgotten this comic is about transformation. This page is proof.
Things are back to twice a week. Hopefully the last five pages of this chapter will arrive on time to conclude by the end of March.
***UPDATE 3-13***
Due to a horrible case of time mismanagement, I was forced to delay UTC again for the second time this month. I sincerely apologize. One day it will go back to twice a week. Just not today.
02-29-2008 - UPDATE SCHEDULE UPDATE
A little bad news. I got sick last week, and it was either do homework or draw UTC pages. As a result, I missed a few deadlines to get the lineart to Josh for coloring. I've decided instead of rushing to catch up to the schedule, to concentrate on making these next few pages as good as possible. As a result, UTC will be Monday updates ONLY for the next few weeks. I hate being among the scores of webcomic artists who can't meet their own deadlines, but it comes down to the hard truth that this is not a job, this is not an obligation. I should really be spending all of my time working on my grad thesis and graduating and getting a good job and forget UTC altogether, but I will never, ever do that unless it's a life-or-death choice.
Page 50 goes up next Monday, and page 51 will go up Monday March 10th. Thanks for your patience.
02-04-2008 - DOES HE EVER TAKE THOSE OFF?
Welcome back to the party. Let's have a round of applause for Josh Breidbart, our new colorist and the reason UTC can still appear twice a week. Updates have moved back to Mondays and Fridays indefinitely. Please enjoy Chapter 3.
Here are the links to last month's Jim and Pat Podcasts. You only need to download one of each part, it's just that in an effort to not exceed bandwidth we've put the same file in two different places. Pick one and enjoy our ramblings.
**UPDATE 3-15**
Links have been moved to the Audio section.
And here's the Cass wallpaper that was posted on Christmas.
01-20-2008 - JANUARY UPDATE
UTC will be resuming in February with Chapter 3. In the mean time, I've posted part 1 of a webcast between myself and Evil Penguin creator Patrick Webster. If you enjoy two nobodies talking incessantly about things, have we got a podcast for you. The links are posted above the teaser comic. Just choose which site you want to download from, and there you go. (Both links have the same file, so you don't need to download both.)
I'm also pleased to announce that Josh Briedbart will be providing the colors to upcoming chapters of UTC. Josh and I go back a ways, particularly in regards to his own comic Fenix Gear. He's already colored two pages to Chapter 3 and they look fantastic. A big thanks to the people who responded to my plea for help. I may be needing you still, once Josh's stint on UTC is over.
Finally, there will be some changes around here in the next few weeks leading up to the next chapter's debut. I'm working on revamping the website, under the official name of "UTC." "Urgent Transformation Crisis" is just too long-winded.
12-22-2007 - WINTER HIATUS
This concludes Chapter 2 of UTC. I hope you enjoy your holidays and, please, behave resonsibly.
UTC will return in February (exact date to be determined) with the second half of phase one. In the mean time, enjoy speculating over the teaser images and check here during the break for a Christmas gift and possibly some guest art.
Finally, and I will make a much bigger deal about this soon, I'm looking for a colorist to assist me in producing UTC. My schedule at school is going to be keeping me very busy for the next six months, and I'd like to keep the strip updating twice a week. If anybody is interested, please contact me at jwhale22@student.scad.edu. (UPDATE 1-20-08: Thanks to those who responded. A colorist has been appointed, as described in the post above.)
11-06-2007 - MOVING ON
The next story starts today. From now on they're going to be much shorter than the first chapter. That wasn't supposed to be so long, but it just evolved to the point where I thought it would be nice to start out at the school, develop every character, then get into the proper series arc a little later once we're used to everything.
(Semi-spoiler content ahead.) Here's a little outline of how UTC is structured. The stories are being planned in "Phases." I've got a seasonal structure worked out allowing for a break at Christmas and possibly a short break in the spring before a long break in the summer. Every story has about 14 pages, except for Chapter 1, which was 28. Here is the chapter list and schedule for Phase One. (Titles and dates subject to change.)
Chapter 1: "Changing Times at Attic High" (Aug-Oct 07)
Chapter 2: "Get Your Freak Out" (Nov-Dec 07)
Chapter 3: "Mutation Fluxuation" (Jan-Feb 08)
Chapter 4: "Day of the Dork" (Mar-Apr 08)
Chapter 5: "Cotton-Stuffed Nightmare" (May-Jun 08)
I'll have some more important information to talk about in coming weeks, so please stay tuned.
11-02-2007 - FALLING BACK
No strip this Saturday, as we have now reached the end of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 will start next Tuesday.
10-12-2007 - YOU WANT IT WHEN?
As you may have noticed, the strip hasn't been posted yet. I appologize for this. Life unfortunately does have its busy times and its calm times, and right now it is the former.
I may have found a temporary solution, however. By shifting the schedule back one day I should have a better distribution of tasks. Right now, I can't stay up late to finish the comics on Sundays and Thursdays because I have other vital things I have to do for the next day. But Monday and Friday nights are much lighter and I can afford to spend a lot of time on the comics.
"Why don't you just finish the comics earlier Jim?" Of course that's what I'd love to do. That nice buffer I had up until I took those two weeks at home in early September was created for the specific purpose of staying ahead to prevent delays like the ones last Friday and today. I'll get that buffer back in November, since half the November comics ARE finished already and have been for months now. Until then, though, there are six comics that I'll have to finish and with the way things are going they'll be down to the wire.
In the long term, I will NOT be doing two pages per week. The current frequency is designed to get people into the story quickly and get the story to a good point where the proper pacing has been established. Beginning in 2008, UTC will be switching to a permanent, once-a-week schedule. The day has yet to be determined, but aside from specific weeks where I feel it neccessary to double up, there will be only one page posted each week from January on.
For now, Tuesdays and Saturdays are going to work better. It's the only chance we've got. I'm sorry that I'm only human.
I really am. 'Cuz having a tail would be awesome.
The strip will be on-line tomorrow. Peace.
10-05-2007 - MINOR DELAY
Today's strip will be posted this afternoon. Sorry for the wait, but you know how these things happen every once in a while.
09-24-2007 - JUST CHECKING IN
The date on last Friday's strip has been corrected. (It was accidentally dated 9-17.) Also, I've now made 25 strips. That's a quarter of a hundred. I totally passed grade school math.
09-10-2007 - BETTER LATE THAN...IT WAS LATE?!? KILL HIM!
Sorry everybody. I thought I had put today's comic in the archives before leaving last month. Here it is.
08-24-2007 - WHERE'S THE "URGENT?" WHERE'S THE "CRISIS?" WHERE'S THE "TRANSFORMATION?!?"
If anybody's wondering (and rightly so) when the titular plot is going to start, there'll totally be some action before September is out. Meanwhile, enjoy the three-armed man and the lovely catgirl.
Don't forget that, as of next Monday, UTC switches to its regular update schedule of Mondays and Fridays. I realize the first dozen strips are a little slow-paced compared to my vision for the series, and that's the major reason why I started UTC off with a three-strips-per-week schedule. I hope to maintain a two-per-week schedule for the forseeable future.
08-24-2007 - WHERE'S THE "URGENT?" WHERE'S THE "CRISIS?" WHERE'S THE "TRANSFORMATION?!?"
If anybody's wondering (and rightly so) when the titular plot is going to start, there'll totally be some action before September is out. Meanwhile, enjoy the three-armed man and the lovely catgirl.
Don't forget that, as of next Monday, UTC switches to its regular update schedule of Mondays and Fridays. I realize the first dozen strips are a little slow-paced compared to my vision for the series, and that's the major reason why I started UTC off with a three-strips-per-week schedule. I hope to maintain a two-per-week schedule for the forseeable future.
08-18-2007 - WAY TO ALIENATE YOUR READERS, JIM
I should have anticipated this earlier, but I've decided not to take any chances. UTC will be switching to a Monday/Friday schedule one week earlier than planned. I'm going out of town for two weeks, and I know it's going to be tough to get the post-vacation week's strips finished on time. So starting August 27, there will only be two strips released per week; one on Monday, and one on Friday. I definitely hope to keep to this schedule at least until December.
Woah, deja-vu. I said something similar while making the October 2003 strips of Evil Jim, right before I crashed and produced only one strip for December. Well. Hopefully that won't happen this time. (You will forgive me if I take a short Christmas break, though, won't you?)
Now there IS an alternative that I considered, until some friends talked me out of it. I was going to ditch color and go grayscale. But they told me I was a fool, a nitwit, and just plain stupid to even THINK about sacrificing quality for quantity. So I backed out.
I once met a guy who said he never reads black-and-white comics because "Black and white isn't interesting." I think that's just sad.
Anyway, the strips will still be going steady for the near future. Not nearly the rocky beginning we could have had.
08-17-2007 - BUFFERS AND YOU
There is now a small section off to the side on the home page detailing the UTC "buffer." To those new to the webcomic scene, a buffer is something a comic artist really really wants but can't ever keep. It's like when you're a kid and the school bus is zooming past your house. You run down the driveway and along the sidewalk as fast as your little legs can take you, and just when it seems you're catching up, you trip on a split in the concrete and you scrape your knees. Except in this scenario, the school bus is the unrelenting passage of time, and instead of scrapes to my knees, I disappoint a ton of readers, damaging my reputation as...as whatever the hell I am.
I purposely set an August premiere date for UTC when it was in production as early as February, specifically because I wanted to build up a buffer. With Evil Jim, I hit the ground running and had no plan. (Because at first I didn't intend for it to be a regular comic strip.) Unfamiliar Reflection's buffer existed before I even decided to release it onto the internet.
Now the buffer I've got isn't as big as I intended, but at least it's something. I'll try to keep it updated as often as possible. The "Strips Completed" indicate exactly how many strips of UTC are finished. "Strips Unreleased" takes the "Completed" figure and subtracts the number of strips that have already been released. "Strips In Buffer" is different from "Strips Unreleased" because I've been making these things out of continuity order. (I'm planning for the future.) So this number actually reflects the number of strips in direct continuity that are done and ready to go on-line right now. "Last Strip In Buffer" gives the release date of the final strip in the buffer. This is my personal guarantee to you that strips will come out as scheduled until that date. (Barring server issues, but that's another topic.) If the date equals a date in the past, then I have officially lost my precious buffer and that ain't good.
On the plus side, because I've been drawing future strips, when we get to those dates, I get to effectively skip the strips, which will give me an opportunity to replenish the buffer. Oh the drama of being an unpaid webcomic artist! Why do we choose this way of life for ourselves?
Cuz it's fun. And I really mean that.
08-10-2007
Three strips old and UTC is already getting noticed. To everyone who followed me here from Unfamiliar Reflection, thank you for giving me another chance to make a decent comic. I'm working as hard as I can to make UTC the best Catomix series yet.
The update schedule is three days a week all month to kick-start the plot, but unfortunately I can't keep up with that kind of pace for long. (Unfamiliar Refleciton was 99.9% finished before it began, whereas I'm only a month ahead on making UTC strips.) I'll let you know the September update schedule once I learn the best way to balance this workload. At best we're looking at twice a week starting September 3rd.
So everybody have a good weekend and we'll see you back here on Monday!
08-06-2007
Welcome to the premiere of Catomix's latest webcomic, Urgent Transformation Crisis! The website is still under construction, but the comic is updating and that's the important thing. You're probably wondering exactly what this comic is about. Hopefully your questions will be answered in the coming weeks. I do hope you enjoy these strips as much as I enjoy making them. Updates for August are scheduled for three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so come on back in two days for the next installment.
Ultimately, this comic will be hosted through ComicGenesis, but the FTP permissions are still going through. Should be any day now. When the move finally happens I'll put a redirect on this address and let you guys know about it.
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