Flowerlark Studios

I changed my spam-blocker recently to get rid of that annoying catchpa that would discourage a lot of users from commenting. Unfortunately, my new one (invisible defender) is not as effective. I’m getting a lot of spambots registering to be users. If you register and do not post a comment right away, you will be deleted from the registry!! I’m doing this to get rid of spam registries. I apologise if any real people get deleted. If you do, reregister and post a comment.

FUNNY STORY. For a few weeks I’d been having bad insomnia. So last week I was taking a prescription of Ambien, a sleep aid. And it was a pretty high dose, too. It can cause things like sleepwalking. So guess what I was doing when I woke up one night? I was playing pokémon. In my sleep. And kicking butt, too.

I’m going to aim to start updating Ashes on Tuesday, September 7, 2010. The three page prologue will be posted on that date, then it will update once weekly every Tuesday afterwards. I have about 22 weeks worth of updates, so there shouldn’t be any breaks for some time. I hope to see you on the 7th!

Mood: Pleased
Playing: Pokémon HeartGold
Reading: The Sword in the Stone (T. H. White)

Edit 08-15-10: I upgraded the look of the website a bit. The dark blue was getting too dreary, so I lightened things up. I updated the links page, adding a new comic to me reading list: Ever Blue. And there is a new blog on the Ashes page with another panel preview and a look at how Rava’s character has evolved over the years.
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Even though the poll only got a handful of votes, I can see that it’s split pretty evenly between ‘update now’ and ‘don’t update ’til you have a big buffer.’ Also, friends and relatives are starting to poke me about getting this thing up so they can read it. So I’ve decided on a bit of a compromise for Ashes. I am going to aim to start updates sometime in September or October. That’s in the near future, but gives me a few more weeks to do some additional pages. I was originally going to wait until I had 3 chapters finished, but am finding that I have difficulty working when I’m not getting any feedback and don’t have update deadlines. So I have 1 chapter finished and the second barely started, but I will be updating only once a week, which I think I can keep up with. My buffer is about half a year long so I’m hopeful that by the time it runs out, my health will have improved even more and I’ll be producing comics faster. If my health gets shaky between now and autumn, I may postpone the start date, but so far, so good. 5 months without a crippling headache, which is the longest I’ve gone these past 2 years. So I hope that surgery really helped. Recovery is very very slow, but it is recovery. And I’m very eager to be sharing the Ashes redux, which is 100 times better than the awful original. So keep an eye out! I will try to announce a more definite start date in a week or two. In the meantime, enjoy the random artwork I’ve been posting in the ‘latest artwork’ gallery.

Comedic observation of the week: I am currently on 4 medications. They are called Florinef, Abilify, Remeron, and Tramadol. In order to easily identify my pills, I write the first letter of each pill on the cap. When the bottles are lined up, they spell FART.

Feeling: Excited
Playing: Pokémon HeartGold

I admit I was rather surprised to see Fawna’s Quest win the ‘Which comic do you want to return first?’ poll; and by such a large margin, even. I expected Dark Wings to win because it’s full colour and has more pagviews and readers. However, I am pleased with this outcome because I like doing Ashes (Fawna’s Quest) more. It’s more original and actually a lot easier for me to draw since it’s both greyscale and done traditionally instead of digitally like all my other comics. And call me old school, but I like the feel of pencil on paper much more than stylus on tablet. So I’m even more eager than ever to share the redux with you all. BUT I only have 1 chapter (16 pages) finished. So I’m kinda curious, which would you guys rather? That I update very soon, but only once a week for 18 weeks, then it’s ‘whenever I finish the next page,’ which would give it a sporadic and infrequent schedule of a page maybe once a week or once every few weeks. Or would you prefer to continue biding your time until I have a bigger buffer and then get one page a week regularly for a longer span of time? Even if one option wins, I may still opt for the other, but I will be influenced some by the outcome.

I have also decided not to post the prose version online just yet because A) I am an inexperienced writer and don’t feel comfortable sharing sub-par writing and B) I am an infrequent writer and wouldn’t be able to keep the prose current with the comic. I might post it later on down the road, but for now you’ll have to be happy with just the comic. Which, admittedly, omits a lot of the details, sub-plots, and character development that’s in the novel, but it still holds together on its own.

So go vote on the right or leave a comment here with your update schedule opinion!

Mood: Tired but happy
Gaming: Rune Factory 2
Watching: The Princess and the Frog

You may have noticed that there is now a ‘Latest Artwork’ thumbnail above the comic links to the left. I thought it would be nice to be able to navigate through the artwork like a comic instead of going to DevianART or trying to search through the post archives for past pieces. This way the blog doesn’t get cluttered with art.

As for comics…. They’re pretty much all on hold right now. I’m working instead on commissions and sculptures to sell on Etsy. I ought to be able to open up a store in a couple weeks if all goes smoothly. I do have Chapter 1 of FQ nearly done. Eryl is being rescripted inbetween other things, and I’ve got a backlog of ideas for Epic Fail and Easily Amused. You may have noticed the new poll off to the side. Unfortunately, it will have no bearing on what updates first. I’m just interested in seeing where peoples interests lie. I may be slightly persuaded to work on the most anticipated comic, but can’t promise that I will. It depends on where my inspiration strikes.