Introducing the Engelbaum news blog!
Jul21
on July 21, 2019
Hi everyone! Ok so it took me a while to figure out how to split my comic posts and news posts into two separate thing on this layout, but I finally done it! Now I can create dedicated news posts for the comic without them cluttering the main comic page. It's also a good way to quickly catch up on Engelbaum happenings at a glance without having to trawl through comic pages.
This will also serve as a website updates thread so you know when I've added or changed something with the website. I used to do this on my old website a lot and I kinda missed it, so consider this your first update 🙂
I recently got back into swing of website building things because I want to make this my main point of focus for the comic. I love the third party websites like Webtoon and Tapas because they introduce new readers quickly, and I dunno if I'm showing my age here but big sites like that lack a certain kind of immersive magic to them. It's all about pageviews and popularity rather than being a relaxing way to absorb a whole story. The community always feels very fleeting there? I love having all my buddies in one place. I mean I -will- in the near future reformat Engelbaum for easier mobile phone reading (larger text, broken down panels etc) because the future is digital whether we like it or not, but right now I'm focusing mainly on finishing up Chapter 2 and getting things in motion for Engelbaum to be a physical product. I do love my bookshelf afterall~
This year while also pitching, I'm planning on taking a 1 or 2 month hiatus on the actual art for chapter 3 to rest my hands a bit as I have bad RSI flareups from overworking that I need to heal. But in that time I'll be writing up a storm! I need to start being more serious with writing scripts to draw to rather than working in small batches of draft pages and winging it. So I want Engelbaum to feel more organized on paper rather than always just being something I dip into in my head. Plus it means that my Patreons will be able to read miles ahead and not have to wait for my slow ass to catch up with the fancy artwork XD; I'm thinking of getting in a couple of guest artists to do fun little filler comics while I rest so you can see more of our community (AND HOW MUCH I LOVE THEM). So if all that happens as I hope I'll be back to do Chapter 3 at full speed and health. Don't worry, this comic is my life's work, I'm not running off anywhere, lol.
I'm currently drawing a bunch of new pages for the month and will have more pages online before the 31st, so sit tight and enjoy the rest of Chapter 2.
Thank you for visiting the site and reading my work, it means the world to me.
See you next update!
Engelmum
This is nice! I think having a hub for everything about your creation is very good indeed! Also, it's useful to have your own website nowadays with social media and services changing their policies about what they allow or not in art all the time.
… Now I need to figure out the avatar thing, I never had a WordPress account XD
Yeah tbh I'm tired of having to rethink what I do or don't have to self censor every 5 seconds when they all keep changing their ToS. At least here I can do what I want within reason.
Gravatar is a pretty cool avatar system that i only recently remembered how to sign back into *lol* I think it's separate from WordPress. Ideally in the future though I want to have people be able to just upload their own avatars here rather than go through long ways. But one thing at a time~
I'm glad you decided to do this. I'm also from an era when the Web was relatively decentralized. Ultimately, your work's own space is the best place for it to shine. I remember when Facebook introduced the "feed" and users revolted against it because they hated the idea that they would have to dig a bunch of random junk scrolling past in order to see the things they cared about. Now that's all most sites are.
While you're on hiatus, will you have a way for patrons to support you?
Yeah social media is nice for quick thoughts but it makes things like art and writing feel so damn disposable? And that makes me sad. Like honestly one of the thoughts I put into the Collector creatures being “consumers” is that the Creators are just throwing out their best work to the literal void to be chewed through in 5 seconds, like people on social media spending hours, days making something they really love, then it getting 5 seconds of public attention and it’s just a big cycle of repeat or be invisible/eaten by negative thoughts about the point of it all.
I’m not 100% sure on the way i’m going to do the whole take a short art break thing yet, but I’m trying to plan the best way that keeps me fed, keeps content going to Patreon, and keeps people reading.When I (hopefully this month or next) decide on what i’m doing i’ll run it past everyone first because i don’t want to be stepping on anyones toes.
Thank you SO DAMN MUCH for everything you do for the comic though TuT don’t think you didn’t just save my ass this month lol. Also I’m spending a week catching up on mail this month so i can finally send these damn parcels to everyone, i feel terrible about it aaa. I’ve been collecting your mail and it always cheers me up so much 🙂 Sorry for my hideous slowness, I’m hoping that after i break the burnout cycle a tiny bit i’ll come back faster!
It's funny how, with social media becoming increasingly bogged down in corporate buffoonery (as I keep calling it), we're slowly moving back to personal sites and older, non-corp. platforms like Dreamwidth. XD;
(And wrt: your comment about art on social media getting very little public attention–on tumblr, after I started drawing Marathon stuff, it felt like my already-low average note count dropped sharply. Like, I felt lucky if my art posts could garner a whole SEVEN notes. Lemme tell you, that did not help my fears that I'll never break out of obscurity…)