Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on other sideprojects, and Dinerdate has suffered a bit because of it, mostly the update schedule. So I’m putting it on a temporary hiatus of sorts, maybe I’ll still update once a week, but I need to focus on two other big comic projects that I have to finish soon and they require a lot of work. Once those are out the door, I’ll get back to Dinerdate.

I’ll fill you in on those projects soon. One is for school and one is a little pet project that will hopefully be in print later this year. I’ve never really printed anything, so this is making me have to consider all sorts of things that I never had to think about, like page margins and having clearly legible fonts at any size. Very interesting.

Hey there dinerdaters!

The online video service Ustream has been catching on like wildfire in the webcomics community recently, so I’ve decided to try my hand at streaming the creation of my comic aswell. If you’re interested in watching me draw Dinerdate or whatever else I’m working on at the time, you can look me up at Ustream.tv.

I’ll post here, aswell as on my twitter, when I broadcast.

Keep an eye out.

Networking and building a readership is something I’ve been getting more concerned with in the last few years. Now that the content is there it’s time to stimulate interaction.

I’ve been working my way through HTMW, and so far I hadn’t really read anything too new (just a lot of confirmation that I’ve been doing things right), until I got to Dave‘s chapter on Interacting with your audience. I don’t know if it had to do with the fact that I’ve been a bit of a superfan myself the past few weeks about another artist that I’ve mentioned previously (I met her! I met her! I met her!), but what Dave said really clicked with me.

He talks about the notion that what you represent in your work represents what kind of fans you’ll get. He says:

“The readership you build up over time will be a reflection of the work and the words and the sentiments you put out there. And after a few years of filtering out this type of reader and that type of reader, you inevitably end up with a reader that reflects your basic personality.”

That little nugget of wisdom really opened my eyes! He goes on to comment:

“Think about that next time you’re tempted to say “my readers are lazy” or “they don’t support me”. Are they a reflection of you?”

I’m inclined to say yes, haha!

So I’m going to put together some ideas to stimulate readers a little more, and I’ve recently become involved with a small group of very talented and passionate artists aswell. This is really the next step.

update:
Starting with the return of the advertising and linking page!
update 2:
And a new, easy to use, no-nonsense forum!