'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Learn a bit of Sandra's past.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 250

I think Dude's going to die from overload shock any moment now... 😉

EDIT: Vote incentive is the Dude clarifying that last panel.

Also, full page is up!!

Schedule Change!

I'll still be updating Tues/Fri but the pages will be split.

Actually, what I'd like to do is put up one half and then simply exchange it for the complete page on the next update day. But that would affect my RSS readers and the like since they won't get a notice that there was an update. If you're adamantly against this, please let your opinion be known. If not, then I'll probably go with that plan. That way, the archive will have whole pages instead of half ones.

Also, this temporary change will last until the end of July. *flees incoming pitchforks*

The Reason:

The curse of the quest for better art. That's pretty much what it boils down to.

I'm better at drawing now (something that still amazes me each day) which enables me to draw more of what I see in my head instead of dumbing it down to what my art skills could handle. But I'm still short of what I want. And I really, really want to have awesome art skills when we officially enter the Game as well as when I start to expand on the Reality flashbacks. To achieve that, I've been experimenting more, attempting more difficult poses and angles. Last page is a good example of that. I mean, just look at all the feet that showed up!! Agh!!

Ahem.

I tend to fail a lot, however, and thus waste much time in fixing the many mistakes. And the stress of trying to make a deadline while also trying to make the art decent has been taking a toll on me and my once large buffer. In fact, it has completely depleted the buffer since I now average about 1 to 1.5 pages a week.

At first, I contemplated starting to dumb down the art again -- make it more to what I could produce and sustain at 2/week update. But remember how stubborn Kleya is? Yeah, she totally gets that from me. And that stubbornness REALLY wants to keep the better art style for the Game. But it also wants to keep the same schedule. I have this thing called pride or something...

Luckily, I seem to improve faster when I do art studies. It's like taking a class except I do it myself (classes and me never mixed well together anyway). I outline a schedule, plan all the lessons, and then tackle it. Yay for DIY.

So, for the next two months, I'm going to focus on leveling up my art skill with the extra time provided by the schedule change. I've actually already started and I'm already seeing improvements. Yay! And I'll hopefully regain a buffer in the meantime.

Oh, and there is one more glitch. *eyes the readied pitchforks*

I'm leaving for a two week vacation in Ireland and Scotland. I know: how evil of me to take a long awaited vacation, but I'm doing it anyway (and giving a chance for cheaper international shipping! See? I'm not so bad!). During this time, I will be posting a fan comic I received some time ago. Cause let's face it; I highly doubt I'll be very productive while on vacation. Plus, I think the fan comic is hilarious and well done and the author agreed to let me post it up while I'm vacationing. So it'll start going up next Friday and I hope you all like it as much as I did. More about this next week.

Anyway, that's my long and probably unneeded explanation. But I wanted you all to understand why I'm scaling back a bit. And hopefully, come August, I'll have a large buffer and AMAZING art skills. Wouldn't that be awesome?? *ohpleaseletitbeso!!*

Thanks so much for reading my story!!

*resumes quiet creator mode*

60 Comments

Studies? Have you thought of letting us see those as well? I am sure more than a few would like to see your efforts as you stride forth towards your goal. Might be worth letting us see on the main site rather than vote incentives, although I will leave that to a vote of my peers.

Also, for all that is holy, do take that vacation. The few times I have taken a holiday for myself, I never regretted it. Work might pile up, but its worth it. Treat yourself and come back with vigor and inspiration! 😀

Oh, and one last thing. Somethings can’t be compromised on. You become less if you do. So don’t compromise on your art, you wouldn’t do this unless it was a big part of who you are ^^. Take the time and become the artist you wish to be, or at least the one you can be with the time constraints XD. Wonderful thing about life is there is no reason why you have to be satisfied just cause time ran out. So even if you don’t reach your goal this time, so long as you draw breath you can keep trying. Give a battle cry to rally your warrior spirit, Aneeka!

Dude needs to calm the farm…
Would you be able to post a note (for lack of a better term) when the full pages come online? That way us rssers can know about updates and you get to have full pages in the archives?

Plan sounds good to me. 🙂 Feel free to post examples of your study projects for vote incentives– I’d love to see them!

Meanwhile… why am I not surprised that the mecha designers, victims of the hackers, we’re persecuted along with the hackers themselves?

I think it’s great that you’re still trying to improve and you can definitely see it! Too many artists get to a certain point and plateau/get complacent.

So, like, do what you need to do. 🙂

Just now I noticed: “The hackers hunt” sounds very similar to “the witch hunt”.

Ohmigosh YES dooo ittt!

Splitting HURTS but it’s so, so worth it. I recently made the decision to cut down on the amount of stuff in single pages of my webcomic, after receiving some negative feedback about how my art and.. frankly.. readability was suffering from it. After making the transition, and experimenting a little.. I’ve never been happier with the output.

Your new art-style is beautiful, and I’ve been noticing you going outside the box lately too. The feet didn’t escape me (I remember the thing with Jane’s intro-panel XD), and I loved what you did with the perspective in the L.i.F.e. page where Danni pulls kleya past the crowd when they were uploading. If splitting pages is what it takes to keep the artistic volume turned up, and crank this thing up to eleven, then… again… worth it.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with…. but will, of course. 😛 Have fun on your vacation!

Um, “suffering from it” with “it” being the amount of stuff in one page. Sleepy brain forgets to use proper sentence structure when it wants sleep. <_<

New schedule works for me, Aneeka. 😀

H***, if nothing else better something than nothing, IMO.

well considering that i haunt this page typicaly every time that it updates, i think replacing it with a full page is fine. and you going on vacation is an awsome thing of course. so enjoy yourself. defantly intrested in the june 1st info on IHI we hardly have any real world info so it’ll be nice.

Hmm… given Sandra’s complete lack of technical knowledge… she was probably on the business or HR side of things, rather than an engineer. Maybe an accountant?

*agree*
Her city wouldn’t be looking to Tenka for help if she were a skilled programmer. She’d instead have been brought into Tenka, and Tenka would have seen to things in her city. Though, there may be politics- Tenka withholding aid until she joins their ranks?

I’m honestly thinking more janitorial, food service, or otherwise non-technical. Even HR staffers need to know how to navigate a DB. Competent ones can write their own reports. Management too. I’m not sure if clerical would fit her, but I could see mid level ‘grounds keeper’ getting to where she is now. Someone who can patch things up, even if it is just a busted outlet would have an elevated status in a post apocalyptic society.

Get her!!!!!!!! *Charges with pitchfork*.

In all seriousness though, be careful Aneeka! Obviously, if need to slow down, then you need to slow down and that’s all there is to it. We can’t ask you to do something that you just can’t do.

But I’ve loved too many web comics that have become defunct because the author felt the way you do now. The author “temporarily” slows down for some reason or another (they’re busy, the art here is hard, their cat dies, etc.) and they get lazy. They get used to the slower pace and can’t motivate themselves to do what they did before. Then the updates come less and less frequent. Then updates are skipped entirely – at first with written apologies, and guest comics. Then the author stops bothering with apologizing and eventually runs out of guest comics. And then the updates stop, and the web comic dies.

We can’t ask you to do more than you feel comfortable with (it’s your webcomic, after all), but if that is the way you’re going — maybe it’s time to wrap things up and bring the comic to an end, ya? At least that way everyone gets closure. It’s a sad thing, but so many good comics that I liked went that way… it’s hard to convince myself that this is different. So please be careful.

Well, if Aneeka is truly having some DIY classes, I doubt getting lazy will be a problem. Because if you are doing DIY classes, you a) have the motivation, b) being still busy, just not on ‘drawing’. I could argue there isn’t any slow pace, just different time allocation. From what I read, this is case of “I want to do better, but I need to work on that so I can make it better AND not miss deadlines”, and Aneeka seems to be the kind of person who won’t use it as an excuse and who has the passion to, once done power leveling, will stay committed to this piece of work. I have no reason for doubting Aneeka.
Now, this does not invalidate the points you have mentioned. I’m only mentioning what I could perceive. I suppose, if the situation required it, we could always get real pitchforks and knock on the door and make sure work is done. And spend a night at the police station!

then again this webcomic I loved called WhatDoYouDo suddenly died when the creator said the same thing. diy classes, want to improve my art….and then he died or something and was never seen or heard from again. eventually the hosting ran out and the comic went offline.

First, I’ll opt for the whole pages-option.

Second, I think your art skills really are improving! I look forward to great Game pages and more Reality. So do what you must to match the high standards of your readers. 😉

No, really, it’s great what you’re doing here! Take your time and enjoy your holidays! I promise: no pitchforks! 🙂

I would personally rather have one page update per week, rather than half pages and stuff. However, I can just visit the site once a week instead of twice, so I guess you don’t need to change anything. Have fun in Ireland and Scotland! ?:

I like how, whenever anyone learns any pertinent information about another user’s real life, their first reaction is always “holy cow how did you survive this long?”

I read via RSS, that would confuse me greatly. You should be able to rig something up, though, where you swap out the image and then post a news post saying it’s up, which would hit my RSS feed and alert me to go look at it again. Some other comics do something similar, but I don’t know how your site’s backend looks.

Read via RSS too and it would make it hard to follow.
Just remembered that you did something similar during the “reality” phase of the comic, what did you do back then to keep comments and still have rss updates?

In it’s core a RSS feed entry is little more then a Text and a URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS#Example

I do not know how much control the backend allows, but right now it seem to use something suboptimal as GUID (this comic has the guid: http://navcomic.com/?post_type=webcomic1&p=3483). If you could tell it to just use actual random GUID’s instead, you may be able to delete and make a new RSS entry (after repalcing the comics picture) with a new GUID and my RSS reader (Firefox) can actually understand “hey, that is new!”.

But if it is too much work forget it. No point making more work when you actually want to save time 🙂

Regarding the comic:
A perfectly creepy appereance on Maries side as usual. In the “sneaking up on people” department this girl could give Batman and any Ninja a run for thier money.

Love the vote incentives with the rescripts. Love them. love love. You rest. Just enough. Please. How do I make that sound like a command from somewhere important?

Another re-script: They’re trying to use Kleya’s Nice special 😛

As long as the schedule change is temporary, and it’s for a good reason (improving art skills), I’m fine with it. Either way, I’m used to much longer hiatuses. I read Homestuck and Nuzlocke comics.

Maybe you should take the entire month off, put the comic on hiatus (at least uploading) and work on improving yourself, getting a buffer going again, whatever you feel might be necessary. If people are true fans of a series they should be able to wait YEARS for so much as a new chapter.

On one hand I’d be happy with a single, full page update once a week… on the other hand I am aware that you want people to visit your site more often because of ads.
I don’t know if splitting the page will work from a story perspective… you’d be limiting yourself to 2-3 panels at a time which could disrupt the flow of the story.
Perhaps you could post text updates alternating with comic pages, to explain a little more about the world you created. This works rather well for Erfworld but perhaps you want to tell the entire story with just the comic.

Your plan could work if you post the full page as a new update and remove the half page later – the question is what happens if you change the page number later, too.

Oh… and of course I love your comic and want to know what happens next in the story. I’ve been reading it for 2 years or so and your art is catching up to the excellence of the story these days. 🙂

If removing the half pages later would lose the comments, I’d rather not do that. I love the comic, but also part of what I love is the commentary. 🙂

I am so glad you are taking a vacation!!! I have no idea how you have found time to create a comic AND a book and not die (I would). Don’t worry about splitting the comics, they will be great anyway and the suspense of waiting for the rest of each page will just make me want to read it more! To be honest your story is what drew me in not the art, but it is an honor to see you dedicate yourself to your craft and I sincerely believe that you will continue to improve and make an incredible experience out this project. I can’t wait to see what you do next after this! Maybe another book? (I really really like your storytelling…)

By all means, do what you want to ensure greater comic quality. I imagine the majority of us are a patient bunch and are willing to wait for slightly slower updates. Heck, if you wanted to go with one update a week so you could update completely in whole pages, I’d be fine with that.

In any case, you’re still updating way faster than VGCats.

Since most artists start publishing to work on their art, I don’t see why it would be a bad thing to want to take the time to improve. I love your comic. I want to see where it’s going. The WORST thing would be if you were so annoyed at it and felt like it was holding you back,that you’d stop doing it at all. So, do your best! And this reader will be here, rooting you on, loving your story and the way you tell it. 🙂

OK, I’ll weigh in…

Basically, I agree with what everyone else is saying.

:: stands around awkwardly, then wanders off ::

…Seriously though, I’m loving the evolving art style (and I’m clearly not even close to the only one), and you do deserve a vacation. It’ll be painful, not having NAV like I’m used to, but I guarantee I’ll survive it. ( I mean, people can survive hacked mechas and violent supervolanic eruptions, so who am I to expire due to delays? ;P )

Hi Aneeka,

This is the first time I’ve left a comment, but as someone who likes to dabble in writing and drawing (though so far, not yet in conjunction), I wanted to voice my appreciation of your work as well as leave you some encouragement. To be honest, when I first came across NAV a few months ago, I was a little amused by the quality of the artwork. But then I started reading… and couldn’t stop. I caught up with the entire story in one sitting.

Yes, the art might not be as polished as other webcomics out there, but it’s always done a fine job of presenting the world of the story to the reader, and not only the world, but the characters as well. I honestly think you do a great job in conveying expressions which is the most important thing as it allows the readers to understand and identify with the characters.

Last, but certainly not least, your story-telling abilities are beyond praise. It was your skills as a writer, not an artist, that drew me to this wonderful piece, and I’ve perused many a webcomic out there with wonderful art… but that haven’t captivated me nearly as much as this one. In fact, this is just one of only three webcomics with overarching plots that I consistently check every week for updates.

I think it’s great that you’re pushing yourself to better your skills. There’s no better thing than pushing the limits of your talents and heightening your standards. But don’t let yourself get distracted or discouraged if the going is slow. Speaking from experience, it’s easy to become dissatisfied with a project once you feel that its current state no longer meets or reflects your improved abilities, and I just wanted to throw it out there that, for what it’s worth, I for one don’t read your webcomic for the fancy art; I read it for the amazing story. And I just wanted to caution you against sacrificing one talent in order to better another. (Not that you will, simply that I’ve known many other creative people who have abandoned well-loved projects because they feel it no longer measures up, and it’s very easy to get discouraged by what we might view as past shortcomings.)

All that said, however, I wish you nothing but the best in your quest to becoming a better artist. I have certainly witnessed the improvement in your art from the beginning of this comic up to now, and I have no doubt that you’ll only get better and better. I eagerly await your next update, regardless of whether you decide to post half-pages or go with an above commenter’s suggestion of taking a temporary hiatus to rebuild up your buffer.

Many thanks and best wishes,
a big fan of NAV

I’m cool with whatever update schedule you adopt — heck, adopt OotS’s “pages are published when they’re done, stop asking” schedule if you want!

Having said that, I am an RSS reader — and not good at remember which comics I’m reading let alone when they update — so if you could by any means figure out a way to keep the RSS feed working I’d really appreciate it.

If it works out how you say, I will be pretty negatively hit as an RSS reader. I will not remember to check midweek. So yeah, I am happy for whatever, but if you could make it work with RSS, that would be pretty great, as I love NAV (Been here since the start!) and would hate to get really confused every update. 🙂

No Pitchforks. Promise. a) I don’t know where you live and b) I don’t own one… Half pages are good because it allows people (like me) to come back more regularly. If we have a burning need to see full pages it is easy enough to just check in once a week. It would be nice to get updates when a page is up though. I’m loving your story. I have had days when I have come back three times in a day. I hope you enjoy your study and holiday.

If the content is better for it, people will understand.

I dunno thing one about RSS feeds and only vaguely understand how comic sites manage content… But could you have page A link to page B0.5 with the half page, then publish a new page, B1.0 with the full image? Re-link page A to page B1.0 and make page B0.5 a redirect to 1.0. That should get you a double RSS advert, but I don’t know if the site content management scheme is too rigid to allow for it.

The story’s good, the art is fun. We as lucky readers wouldn’t even know you needed a break or to “level up your art” if you hadn’t told us. I think I speak for most of us when I say to go rest. You’ve hooked us this far. We can trust you to do what’s right. Please don’t burn out!

Cool background info on IHI in the new vote incentive!

Could you move the voting link back below the comic? I keep forgetting to click it where it is now.

I felt it made the site too cluttered?

When I get back, I’ll experiment with that again 🙂

AAAAAARRGGG!!! I’m glad you’re working on your art, but I’m getting desperate to see the girls new avatars! Curiosity… Killing… Me… blaaagh…

I don’t mind if you need to update less frequently, Aneeka. I’ll keep supporting your webcomic, reading every comic you post here. Good luck and Keep up the good work! 🙂

I read “The Noob” and that seems to update about one page every three months! Still follow it though. (Check it out if you haven’t already!)

I admire your vision and persistence. Go for it.

Full page is up!

Thanks everyone for your well wishes and support!!

Also, check the next page to see what my art studies are about (it’ll show up at midnight).

I like how Dude quickly changed the topic and Jane’s perfect timing ^_^

The gesture drawings look good ^_^ Are you, by any chance, using posemaniacs?

Yep. I like how posemaniacs shows the muscles. Helps me figure out how those should work as well.

This mood swing! Haha, the Dude is great!

I was going to post a relevant comment, but then I scrolled… and scrolled… and scrolled…
This page has a lot of comments. Cool!

So, Jane has no outfit change (maybe slightly shorter hair?) but I guess it’s for the best since her current avatar fits her personality perfectly.

Great job on The Dude’s expressions and poses, especially in the last 3 panels.

Nice studies on the next page, the deletable one.

I just discovered this page chock-full of drawing tutorials and some could be useful for you:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Sycra?feature=watch

The RSS reader I use shows the page as updated as soon as any text in the message changes. So I saw this page again when you changed the text.

For those using NetNewsWire, you can set this mode by going to “Preferences… ?,” -> “General” -> “Updated items” -> “Mark as unread” and make sure that it is checked.

My RSS feeder didn’t show the updated page, but it did show the deletable one, so that works for me. I didn’t realize it showed the studies till I clicked through though. Neat!

My RSS feeder didn’t show the updated page, but it did show the deletable one, so I am happy.

Gah, you’re killing me! I’m dying to know what Kleya and Dani’s new avatars look like.

But, despite that, the new update schedule is absolutely fine, especially since your art is practically improving with every page. Seriously, if I had a webcomic it would be stick figures, and not even decent ones where you can tell what they’re doing like xkcd, and I would still be behind on updates. 🙂

That’s so great! I love the next page, with all the drawings of poses. I need to practice those, too.

In fact, I’m probably also going to start practicing poses alongside you, just because I need to get better at them.

The ‘deletable’ page worked wonderfully for me! And that art study thing looked really cool! 😀

The deletable page was perfect for my update alerts, thanks!

Are you actually going to delete the ‘deletable’ page? I thought it was really interesting. Maybe you could post it in the extras section?

That’s a good idea. I just want them out of the archive but I could easily move the deletables to the Extras section 🙂

I think you’re improving greatly all the time. I actually like comics like this, where the artist doesn’t wait til he/she has perfected his/her skills and starts when they feel like it. It leaves a traceable track of how and where the improvement is. Another such comic I follow is Gunnerkrigg Court. And I want to say that comics like yours inspired me to write my own, despite the fact I’ve never done one before and I don’t have confidence people will like it. So, I just want to say, You’re doing a marvelous job with this comic, and I excitedly look forward to each and every update. Sometimes I’m so excited I trick myself into mixing up the days. So, yeah. That’s my tidbit of encouragement and appreciation. Keep on rockin, man. @3@

– Aneeka has defeated a Pose Sketch
– Aneeka Gains 2 Xp
– Xp needed until Aneeka gains a Level 9476
———————————————————-

Keep At it! 😀

I am beginning to have an idea about the backstory of Bloody Mary/Jane… Although my head is pretty crazy :/

On the one hand it’s so great to have this many followers–you can feel the passion–but on the other I’m feeling like I’m in the crowd watching Kleya go through those doors into a match. And frankly guys, it isn’t such a good feeling.

There are SO many fascinating aspects to this world-building (tech-, eco-, sociopolitico-, you name it), and character-building with enticing backstory, and we-don’t-even-have-any-romance-yet-tension, and who-really-are-the-villains-in-this-picture-tension, that as a creator, Aneeka, You Don’t Have Anything To Worry About For Years. Honestly. This is Golden. You could release one page or even a half page a MONTH, picking any ONE of these gazillions of threads, and we’d all be crazy for more, even if some of the less patient of us have to go into therapy (sorry guys). It is done, you know, and the strips have loyal followers.

Whatever makes you happy at this stage in your development, DO IT. Do what is good for you and surround yourself with those of us who want that too.

Make a good creative life for yourself, and the creation will flow, and the followers will be there. Never mind what choices other people made or are making for you. What’s between their ears is not what is between yours. So says the old crone.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 250