One year ago from last Monday the first Altsad page was posted. Part of me wondered at the time if I’d ever make it this far. It’s been a lot of hard work and there’s even been a few late Sundays spent scrambling to get a comic ready for Monday morning, but it’s all been well worth it. 

Everything started about five years ago when I picked up the drawing pencil and set a goal of drawing a new sketch every week. My first drawings were practices sketches of a fusion style comic book art that blended both east and west styles. I even started a blog, (http://altsad.blogspot.com), to post my work so my friends and random Internet peeps could keep tabs on me and make sure I was still working hard at it. Unfortunately I wasn’t very good at it and I realized I needed something easier to build upon. Doing some research into various art styles and potential projects, I eventually settled on creating a cartoon styled webcomic.

A friend of mine designed the Altsad website, and I spent the next three months cutting and coding it up in WordPress. Although anxious to post my first comic, it took me six weeks to create the initial batch of four and I could barely contain my excitement and nervousness as I posted the first one.

Now it’s a year later, and my art has improved, the story is moving along and there is a bunch of new and exciting things coming down the pipeline. Issue 2 is in the works, a new website is being designed by another friend of mine, and soon I’m going to start advertising the site. Everything is set to make year two of Altsad and even better year than the first.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed the webcomic as much as I have had in creating it, and thank you for helping make the first year of Altsad an awesome experience.

-Dave

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Apparently I’ve been watching too much Anime lately and it’s influencing the style of my Kendra character… Rough draft of part of page 49 below.

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The players in my DnD campaign, The Heroes of Undermountain, need to penetrate the walls around Moz-r-ten, the Evil Fortress City of the Duegar Clan Rockhider. What luck, they thought, as they got behind an armored carriage entering the besieged city. They could walk right behind the carriage and follow it into the city. It was only when they got past the walls and were confronted by the heavily armed guards, that they paused to think that things may be a bit more difficult than they expected. With none of them having any decent social skills, only one of them managed to make his way into the city.

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For those of you who haven’t seen Legend of The Seeker or read any of the Sword of Truth novels, they feature a list of tenants that all good wizards must seek to understand and abide by called simply Wizard’s Rules. They are a fascinating list, and the Wizard’s Second Rule has always struck a chord with me.

“The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.”

Most of the time in Dungeons and Dragon games, the heroes can never do wrong. Anything and everything they achieve is for the betterment of everyone. I think this line of reasoning is more in touch with the 80’s where the movies featured action heroes who were unstoppable and contained not one iota of selfish intentions. It has been a challenge of mine to bring my game beyond those tendencies to let heroes be good and just, and instead have them live in a real world, even it that world contains creatures of fantasy.

In my current game that I’m running, the Epic level group is trying to strive off the World Born Dead. They know it’s only a matter of time before it fully arrives and their entire planet is doomed. They are currently seeking a way to rebuild a weapon Hallister built to fight the World Born Dead, and are traveling deep in the caverns of the earth looking for the ritual book to power the device.

What they are going to find is the horrible true of the Second Rule. They are going to find the results of this undead war, which in some ways they triggered by destroying the first version of Hallister’s device. They are going to be faced with moral decisions about choosing between the life of a few over the lives of the many. Worst of all they may find themselves allied with evil creatures that before they would have attacked and killed with out a thought to it. Their intentions may be good, but if they defeat the World Born Dead, they may have to leave behind them a legacy that will do more damage than they ever realize.

I don’t want to spoil anything for the players, but I will keep the blog updated as the story unfolds, and their decisions come to light.

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With Darwin’s little foray with the statue and the leaves over with, Kevin now rolls out his plans for the group but is his devious plan to put space between Kendra and Allison a little too late? They didn’t seem to care much about him at that point, and more interested in fighting it out. Unfortunately Darwin wasn’t on this page, he’d probably not be able to keep a straight face as Kevin’s tries to unsuccessfully talk to the two crazy women. Although once Kevin’s announces the teams, even with forewarning on who he’s going to be teemed up with, he’ll still probably won’t help but have a shiver of doom over the prospect of Kendra as a partner.

Did anybody notice what was written on the robot? I bet you can guess who ‘K’ refers to…

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Darwin wasn’t too upset about the possibility of death as soon as he was perched soundly on the shoulders of Kevin. To him, the unknown lurker, the probable Slug Shark, would eat the person whose legs were easily reachable inside the tall piles of leaves instead of the person being held by the potential victim. Even if Kevin were to be sucked down into the leaves, it’d give Darwin plenty of time to run towards the safety of the porch. In some ways he felt it was like the Tremors movie all over again.

In other news I’ve branched out to the Digg crowd and I haven’t gotten any hits yet from it. Reddit is great, even if I get down modded some, I still get quite a few people seeing my comic and that’s really what counts, getting people to see it. I also convinced a friend of mine, Hunka, to try Reddit, and he got great replies from it too. I don’t think I can seriously stress enough for any blog or webcomic to try posting on the site. Even if you don’t get many positive points for it, you’ll still get a TON of hits. It brings a nice warm smile to my face when I see how many people have read my comic.

-Dave

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There faces may be all cute and cuddly, but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of puppies? Licking seems all nice and cute, until you realize they are just taste testing you, waiting until you’ve fully matured in flavor before unleashing their primal might.

Now that you are aware of the potential dangers, perhaps page 44 of Altsad may not seem so funny.  If Darwin *is* afraid of puppies, he has good reason to be, although, really, he has much worse things to be afraid of. His theoretical Slug Shark is just one such menace, lurking in the dim pile of leaves and sewer drains, it only appears at random to snatch helpless victims up in it’s jaws and drag them away to dark places where it can feast upon them.  Is that what bumped into his leaves then? Maybe, or maybe it was a puppy, either way Darwin doesn’t really want to find out. What really vexes him is how his friends can be so calm about the evil hiding around them, while he is the only one smart enough to stay up and away from it.

If only more people listened to Darwin…

-Dave

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I submitted this back in March to the World of Warcraft Comic contest. I didn’t win, and the contest ended in the end of May, so I’m posting it here. You’re probably only gonna get it if you play the game. Let me know if you like it in the comments section, maybe I’ll make some more of them.

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If Darwin could have read Kevin’s thoughts, he’d have fallen into the lava. It was bad enough that Kevin and Kendra shared a night, but Darwin wouldn’t have been able to handle the thought that Kevin is sleeping with Allison.  Darwin much prefers the Kevin he knows, the man who owns a geeky Fireball +5 lighter than the popular ladies man than Kevin appears to be. 

Thanks to everyone who read Page 43! It had a massive 233 visitors on Monday when it was published, which is the most visits of any page I’ve ever had before!!! It makes me happy when I get so many visitors. 

Brother’s Malarkey won’t be appearing this week due to enforced socialism, the kind that drags me out of the  house when I should be working.

-Dave

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For those of you confused about page 41, I suggest reading page 25. There is meaning behind Darwin’s madness, and not just his love of duct tape. Page 22 may also be some good reading, at least to review a certain shuffle. If Kevin was behind the sneaking around in the leaves before, then what was under the leaves this time that bumped into Darwin’s ladder?

Not sure if anyone’s heard about this yet or not, but Ada Lovelace is coming to the big screen. Ever since learning about her last March 24th during Ada Lovelace Day, I’ve been a big fan. She is known as the world’s first computer programmer, having written an algorithm in 1842. Zooey Deschanel is rumored to be in talks over playing Ada, which may be a good fit for the role. Deschanel’s got that intelligent yet incredibly awkward type of vibe about her, which a stereotypical geek would have, although how that type of take on Ada fits in with the period she lived in has yet to be seen.

Personally, my take on Ada, would be as a character in a Steampunk comic, quick sketch below.

-Dave

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