Page 236 - October 9, 2012

Aaand back to Ville! It's about time he figures out that something relatively important is missing. Let's see whether he starts crying or simply spazzes out on the next page.

Would you look at that, we've managed to stay in the top 10 of TopWebcomics for almost a week now (or maybe it's been a week?), currently holding positions as nr. 8! Last month aRTD only peeked in for a couple of days and with the aid of that very effective minicomic as an incentive, so I'm going to make the joyous assumption that the readership of aRTD has grown nicely over the past month. It's probably largely because of holding such a high rank on that list, since it is currently giving me a couple of hundred visitors every day, easily making it the top referrer  of new eyes to aRTD. Ah, it's a good month, and I'm a very lucky webcomicker to have all of you guys reading this comic of mine.

On the subject, I have a new, juicy vote bait thingie up for today: it's a whole new sneak peek page into chapter 5, not just a single panel this time. It's the one I finished yesterday, aka page 346 (yes, my page buffer is up to exactly 110 pages now) and it turned out both really well and it contains virtually no spoilers at all! It's basically just Hannu thinking back on going blueberry picking with Paju, for reasons unknown to anyone but yours truly. Okay yes, the bottom panel contained Ville in his next form, so I  had to cover that one up, and I removed the speech bubbles to make absolutely sure no-one gets an accidental spoiler chock.

By the way, chapter 5 has turned out really well so far! I have a whole bunch of new favourite pages, and there really aren't any that look absolutely, embarrassingly awful to me, like there still are in this chapter (especially in the first half of it.) Of course there are some weaker ones in the bunch, but I feel like I've reached a point in my comic skills where I'm able to avoid producing absolute hit-and-miss type of pages. The overall quality level really has become far more even than in the first 200 or so pages, where I feel there are many, many instances of completely weak-ass pages suddenly followed by a few nice pages, and then switching back to lame ones again. I'm truly happy about this, as reaching some kind of conscious stability in my comic drawing style was one of my main goals for doing this practice comic in the first place, so that hopefully none of that uneven uncertainty will show up uninvited once it's time for the real deal. ^_^

Auugh, my cat stole my sitting spot! I've been sitting on my bed with my cintiq screen and keyboard laid out in front of me for some nice morning time internet surfing, and while I went to the bathroom for just a second that little rascal set up base an my butt-warmed spot! Aww, she's so cute though, I can't make her move. I'll just have to sit awkwardly on the edge of the bed right next to her instead.