Although Kalisoma Springs is a completely fictional place, the idea for it was inspired by an abandoned hotel called Vishnu Springs. Located near Tennessee, IL, the hotel offered medicinal water from a local spring that according to vishnusprings.org was advertised to cure a wide range of ailments including diseases “peculiar to women”.  Ownership of the hotel has changed hands several times, including at one point becoming a hippy commune, until it was eventually given as part of a larger land grant to Western Illinois University (WIU).

Having both read about and experienced the place, I couldn’t help but write up my own version of it. Although I can assure you Vishnu Springs is nothing like Kalisoma Springs in it’s history, I hope to capture it’s powerful and intriguing presence with in my own creation.

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Changes are in the works.

- New Header: A new header at the top of the comic is coming next week. I doubt anyone will really notice… but it will be different… I swear.

- Altsad 2.0 Website: It’s coming some time this year. I hope to have a beta site up at some point, maybe around June. I have lots of ideas but I’m not sure which will make the final cut yet for the website. I’ll post more about it as it get’s closer to reality.

- More Art and Comics: More Wednesday art posts and some mystery guest artists will be stopping by.

- Quality and Shadows: This might not happen until the second book, but I plan on starting to shade and highlight the comic.

- Advertising: The double edge sword of supporting a webcomic and trying not to annoy the readers. This will mainly be linked with Altsad 2.0 but will also include the RSS feeds.

- 1st Book Completed: The first book will be done this year, and I hope to have it for sale around November/December. There will be multiple covers…

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Here is the Kevin Background in various sizes, enjoy.

1600 x 1200

1152 x 768

1024 x 768

800 x 600

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December 14th will be Altsad’s 6 month anniversary. A big thanks to all the readers and friends who have supported me in it’s development. I couldn’t have done it with out. I have a special sketch coming next Wednesday to celebrate, but I thought it would be neat to show how Darwin has evolved over the first 6 months of this comic.

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It’s never been so hard to concentrate in the early mornings or at night to write for NaNo or to draw for Altsad, until I bought Dragon Age. The game is a load of fun, but I’m always much addicted to RPG’s. Right now I’m sacrificing sleep to play it, so hopefully it won’t cut in to my time for drawing. It reminds me of how much I would love to draw out a Fantasy comic line. One of incredibly high-magic and artifice and many an undead creature, my favorite bits from fantasy.

As for Page 19, I still can’t believe that Kevin could lift Darwin. Darwin’s logic is sound btw, big guys get screwed in this type of arrangement. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in his shoes and looking up at the skinny dude on top of the wall or cliff or whatever, and been wondering how the hell does he expect to help me up? So despite Darwin’s nervousness they continue to venture onwards, and they are doin it for the ladies.

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I’m a co-Municipal Liaison for the Champaign/Urbana area for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I encourage everyone to sign up for NaNoWriMo, it’s a personal challenge to write 50,000 words on a Novel in the month of November. It’s a great opportunity to work on that book you’ve always wanted to write one day AND meet fellow writers in the area. Common activities are group writer-ins (where everyone meets at a coffee shop or where ever to write and chat) and word wars (where people compete to see who can write the most words in a set amount of time). It’s great fun, and it helps stimulate the imagination into creating new worlds and great new works of storytelling.

I love NaNoWriMo, but it does take a lot of my time. I’m going to try my hardest to keep the updates rolling out every Monday but don’t be surprised if a guest piece of artwork or a filler shows up. I’m also looking at adding a section of blog posts talking about news articles that would make for great stories and a host of other bloggy blog type posts, but these may not happen until closer to December.

All this and more at Altsad; your pine-scented, nightmare filled, home.

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I’ve updated the shipping options in the Altsad store. Now it provides accurate shipping via any and all forms from USPS. This means that shipping for the Altsad posters is cheaper than ever. If you live close enough it might even be as low as $0.95, although I would still recommend priority shipping because the envelopes offer better protection for the posters.

Lucky for Kevin that Darwin’s Barbarian Rage can’t manifest when he’s tired or else those could have been fightin words.

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Thank you to everyone who has been politely waiting for me to get the promised posters online and for sale. They are finally here! For $5 (and $5 Shipping and Handling) you can have an autographed copy of Darwin’s Nightmare printed on 10pt cardstock shipped to you by priority mail. Just click on the “Altsad Store” sign to the left or on the side bar by the blog on http://www.altsad.net .  For now I’m only accepting Paypal. If you are a fan or just wanting to support an aspiring artist, please consider buying one of these. If you want more than one, please contact me at dave@altsad.net so that I can setup some special shipping options at a cheaper rate than the flat fee the store has.

Darwin’s Nightmare

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The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 has rules for creating allies, characters that help the party but are not quite as powerful as them. Inspired by this part of the DMG2, I’ve decided to showcase 2 potential allies that are guaranteed to be the highlight of any game; Darwin the Barbarian and Kevin Manlystaff… I know, I know… I didn’t make up Kevin’s character name, he did. So blame him.

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