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Neat stuff, Katt! The "ghost" effect was very successful!

That's extraordinary!

Nice work, Chris! Keep it up!

My characters frequently use swords, so I actually created "sword bones." One under the palm of each hand that is located where I want the hilt of the sword to be when they are holding it. I then have a similar bone in the hilt of my sword model and constrain the bone in the sword to the bone in the hand and I have it exactly where I want it.

Nice looking robots, Jake!

Myron, I came up with the basic storyline last year and know where it's going and how it ends. I am, though, letting myself play around in the getting to that ending. I did do a strip-by-strip outline for strips 55-100, but that was mostly because I wanted to have Greyhawk's first appearance be in #100. I also needed to know in advance when I was going to need the new characters that would have to be modeled and rigged. It was nice having that outline, but it did feel a little restrictive, too. I've got a rough outline of the major plot points for the next 50 strips, but I'm giving myself more freedom with it. The plan is that this will be 200 strips long. I'm afraid the storyline and the increase in the cast is going to make the second hundred much tougher, but I'm excited about it and hopefully they'll be much better than the first hundred. The only real scary part is realizing that I'm not going to have any sort of a break before starting the next story!

It was already a very impressive image, Mark. Very awesome!

Thanks, guys! Paul, it depends. Some days I do two, other days none. (Usually on the "none" days I'm modeling something I need.) Right now I have no buffer and am doing the next day's strip the day before. Hoping to get away from that.

Thanks, Gene!

Strip #100 is up today! If I really do end up doing this as a daily strip for ten years or more, this accomplishment will be dwarfed, but it seems like a big one right this second. :-) Triple-digits! This is also the strip where Greyhawk finally shows up in the big Greyhawk crossover story. :-) I've also put together a nifty cg Greyhawk and the Starbucklers of the Caribbean desktop wallpaper that you can get by voting for the comic in the link below!

Hey Gene, the really short version is that you create a material and change the attribute type to fluids. Then you create a model with at least one patch and apply that material to it. That will create an emitter that you can place in your choreography. Fiddling with all of the settings is the time consuming part.

Wow! The big 5-0! Happy Birthday!

You'd have to experiment, but one thing to try might be to put a container shape under the emitter and then animate it like you would the glass if you were throwing a glass of water in someone's face. Give it some time to "fill up" first.

I can't offer too much of an assist, but my first thought is that a sprite emitter would be the way to go for the high-pressure leaks. I really haven't gotten my feet wet with fluids yet (pun intended.) :-)

Hey Al! I'm having the same issue. I'm pretty sure it's a font conflict, but I haven't tracked it down yet. (It also makes the numbers on my timeline disappear.)

Thanks, Lee! That's a hard question to answer. I still *want* to do the movie serial, but the demands of the webcomic aren't really making it possible in the foreseeable future. However, when this current storyline is finished, I want to do the storyline that was going to be the movie serial. I can't help but think that I might be able to use that as a way to do a lot of the preparation for an eventual animated version. I'll be creating all of the assets and in a sense, doing storyboarding (although the gag-a-day strip doesn't really translate directly that way.) There's no question that afterwards, this work would go a long way towards doing the animated version ...but after it's done, I have to start working on another storyline and then the next one and the next one, etc. I'm committing to doing this for somewhere between 3 and 5 years. If after that point the audience doesn't grow to the point where it seems practical to continue, then I would consider dropping the webcomic. If that did happen, then I would have all of these assets and I think I would want to do one last hurrah with an animated project ...for a failed webcomic. :-) The best case scenario would be that the webcomic would take off and become successful enough that I could bring on help and maybe get enough capital to do a series of animated episodes that would have a ready-made audience from the webcomic. All of that is too far away to seriously think about right now. Right now the comic is the thing and it's got to be my main focus. LOL, when I started this project it was supposed to be an easy short that I could finish quickly! Now it's never-ending!

Thanks, Gerry! Sadly, self-promotion is something I'm having trouble with. Whenever I get a couple of bucks from the ads on the site, I do a tiny bit of advertising, but that's about it. I really need to be more of a go-getter in the self-promotion regard, but I find it so hard to do the "look at me! look at me!" thing.

Awesome!

Thanks, guys! There is definitely a sense of having more and more toys to play with, Rodney. If the audience ever got big enough to support it, I'd love to look into creating some figurines of some of the characters. The harsh reality is that there are too many regulations in place for us to ever consider making toys. I saw this company recently, which does 3D printing on demand: www.shapeways.com Don't think there's not a part of me that is remembering my Death Star Playset while I'm working on this. :-) LOL, the vinyl sticker boards you're talking about were called Colorforms. :-) I think any sort of drama like losing a tusk would be too severe for a Wannabe Pirates story, Rodney. Were you the kind of kid who broke your toys? :-)

I've been working on the interior bridge set for Greyhawk's ship. McCrary sent me some designs for it. As with everything, the Wannabe Pirate characters require specific considerations for their small legs. Still have a fair amount to do... I haven't even started on the lower level yet.

Myron, I'll say it again, this is incredibly original! Bravo!

Nice start, Lee! Are you going to do the leather "scales"?

Thanks, Gene & Darkwing! Glad you're enjoying it, Darkwing! Doing this crossover is a lot of fun. Greyhawk has been with McCrary and me since 1985, but the last time we did anything with him was 1997. It's been fun getting back to him and his crew! Public kudos to Mark S. for his face rig! I've said this many times, but it's been great how much expression I've been able to get out of K'Bor's face (and all of the others, for that matter)! Really brings them alive for me! Now back to the grind! I'm working my way up to strip #99 this weekend!

Gene, it's easy to see that this is going to be your best one yet!

I do find cases sometimes where the AI plug-in chokes on bringing in an Illustrator file, but I've been using CS4 for sometime now and I can confirm that saving out as an AI8 file works with the plug-in. Look out for weirdness in your AI paths before you export. Lots of times I'll Expand a complicated drawing and discover that AI has some points stacked on top of each other. The rounded rectangle tool does that if you draw something pill-shaped. The plug-in doesn't seem to like that.