Post B16CuJGpfebtaFI4qu by oblomov@sociale.network
(DIR) More posts by oblomov@sociale.network
(DIR) Post #B13I8XFmOb2lImWMPQ by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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In 1999 I started a daily webcomic called Avalon. (No connection to Arthurian legend, that's just the name of the fictional town it took place in.) It was a high school comedy/melodrama with a 3-year story arc, which ended without a proper conclusion in 2004 (with a brief continuance in 2006).I never settled on what to do with it next, but I'd rather pursue other story ideas than revive Avalon. So now I'm releasing it in #CreativeCommons CC-BY so that *anyone else* may do something with it!
(DIR) Post #B13IgpZomEIvyaFNo0 by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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Avalon is still online, but not in a very accessible or high-definition format. So my next step is to republish it all on my own personal site, https://bigraccoon.ca .There's a technical hurdle there: I saved all of the strips as greyscale GIF files (which was the best lossless format for web at the time), and they won't be hard to convert to PNG... but there are some large-format and full-colour strips still in the original Corel Photo-Paint files that I need to re-export 😖
(DIR) Post #B13IzbESKkqSzPCl72 by vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net
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@jsstaedtler 🙏 that is just awesome. well done.
(DIR) Post #B13JQr77OV9042llJ2 by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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There's also the matter of the story content: it was a different time back then, and I was a different person who created something I now find troublesome in places. Since the '00s, I've constantly wondered how I might be able to "fix" parts of Avalon, but that would mean putting way more work into it when I'd rather look forward to different projects.My big hope here is that, if anyone wants to see more of it or done better, that can still happen even without me having to be involved.
(DIR) Post #B13Jc1QtMw8TFlLKCW by aperture@snug.moe
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@jsstaedtler unrelated but i love that site name thats very good-carrie
(DIR) Post #B13Jc1yDN2n4v6vw8m by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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@aperture lol thanks, and I admit it really needs to contain more big raccoons
(DIR) Post #B13SGSfOKgeKvyv1o8 by sabrina@fedi01.unicornsparkle.club
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@jsstaedtler That's good timing! I've been re-reading webcomics I used to follow back in the day and Avalon was one I was considering next.
(DIR) Post #B13SGTp02RvgW4QDQG by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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@sabrina Oh wow, it's always great to meet readers from back then! Hopefully in the next week or two the whole series will be in a better state to read it again!
(DIR) Post #B13TZg5MlW8U0anMpM by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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Another technical issue that I have to laugh at: the strips I published online ~25 years ago were 600 pixels wide—fine for most displays and available bandwidth at the time, but barely readable on modern devices. So I'm going back to the original images made from scanned pencil drawings, which are over 3000 pixels wide, but plagued with roughness and artifacting that was smoothed over by converting to low resolution. :BlobCat_MeltTears: I'll have to do some batch processing for image quality.
(DIR) Post #B13Ufu5zgm1v9Tcb4q by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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It could be worse, and my less-than-half-my-current-age self could have not saved those original high-res copies.It was a weird workflow: I drew line art with mechanical pencil on copy paper, and scanned it to digital in *1-bit B&W mode*. The line quality was *terrible*, but I could quickly draw or erase bits of it to make the lines reasonably clean—entirely using a mouse. :A_BlobCat_Melt: I then did flood fills in greyscale, which were easy because of the sharp, pure black lines.
(DIR) Post #B13YKz7CEPUGSFSr6e by nabilzaq@mastodon.social
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Honestly, can't imagine creating like that, just trying to keep my kids safe in Gaza, but I understand the struggle to decide what to do with a project, just wish our daily reality was different
(DIR) Post #B15HUUIgLRfEsLhb96 by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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Current Status: There should be 603 total strips but I've only collected 598 of the original high-res filesKinda hoping those remaining 5 actually *exist* :A_BlobCat_Nervous:The low-res strips published to the web were numbered sequentially, so I'm gonna have to go through them one by one and confirm whether I have the corresponding original.I do still have all the pencil & paper drawings but I really don't feel like scanning and colouring any of them again 25 years later
(DIR) Post #B15o3bVWjnfvtfUzhY by orva@social.orva.fi
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@jsstaedtler Wait a second! I remember that being one of the webcomics I read in high school! What a coincidence to bump into it again like this.
(DIR) Post #B15o3kQBb1kbXi4M7s by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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@orva Yay, that's awesome! There really ought to be a directory of turn-of-the-millenium webcomics and what their authors are up to now, so us old fogeys can reminisce(We should just revive bigpanda and change the links to point to present-day resources)
(DIR) Post #B15z4m7zprdocZFn9M by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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Update: I have accounted for the 5 missing high-res files!3 of them were named incorrectly, but I found them and renamed them, bringing the missing count to just 2.For one of those, it seems I saved the original high-res scan of the line art, but not the coloured version. So I just have to colour it in (or, uh, *greyscale* it in—not terribly difficult).But for the last missing file... I don't even possess the line art. 😬 Just the low-res web version, which maybe I can upscale...
(DIR) Post #B15zOzahUS72ARJuLo by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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But here's something interesting: I drew a "bonus" strip at one time, but I don't think it ever got published to the web? I need to confirm, because that would be the first "new" Avalon comic strip in almost 20 years :BlobCat_Astonished:
(DIR) Post #B16CuJGpfebtaFI4qu by oblomov@sociale.network
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@jsstaedtler @orva you just made me think about the long list of dead links in my feed aggregator and bookmarks 8-/I don't think I followed many on bigpanda though? Smackjeeves and Keenspace are the ones I remember. I wonder how many are on archive.org?(These days, ComicFury is THE hosting I love the most.)
(DIR) Post #B16qoX81EOLOzYy6eO by tailsteak@mastodon.art
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@jsstaedtler ... this toot came across my feed and smacked me (one of the fogeys mentioned) in the face. God, the person I was, twenty years ago...
(DIR) Post #B17BUT9CQ8uhtInK52 by orva@social.orva.fi
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@oblomov @jsstaedtler I mostly discovered new webcomics through link collections that authors often had in their comic sites. Then I had the ritual to go through bookmarks in specific weekdays to read them (or google reader when I learned about that and feeds).And yes, those dead bookmarks and feeds are a bit sad. Not necessary because those comics have reached their conclusion, but the _feeling_ from those times. I don't know if it is just selective memories, but it feels like webcomics and blogs from that time were a lot more "pure". Even if ads and merch were present, nothing was optimized around that: stories contained advertisement unfriendly themes and imaginary, art and stories were more raw, etc. I miss that feeling.
(DIR) Post #B17BUb84kClge8KXRI by jsstaedtler@mastodon.art
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@orva @oblomov YES, I too had the browser bookmarks sorted into days of the week, and I always looked forward to getting to the computer and checking all of that day's in turnNow I try my hardest to get notified when new stuff is available, and RSS is a convenient means for that. I generally don't use bookmarks anymore, instead I keep a site open in a browser tab and refresh it whenever I remember it exists :BlobCat_MeltTears: