Tragedy has hit me! I was on my computer on Christmas day, playing some Christmas day video games (it might have been the Sims 3) and getting reading to upload a Christmas day page of Anatta when everything powered down like a post apocalyptic EMP. You know, the kind that eliminates everyone’s money and destroys economies because we are entirely too dependent on our technology (note to self – stock up on post apocalyptic items of necessity).

So, I lost all of Chapter Three, Page 7. Perhaps some other high resolution files as well. Hopefully it’s temporary, I’m like 75% sure its a motherboard problem with a 20% chance of battery contact problems. The extra 5%? Aliens. The bright side to all of this is, of course, that it wasn’t my hard drive that went kaput. I’d rather spend a little extra money on the fixing rather than having to deal with my fractured life without my important digital files.

On an ironic note, I was actually going to back up all of my comic files on to an external hard drive the next day. You know, because we got an external hard drive during CHRISTMAS.

Now, enough with the bitching and on to the giving! I have a new sketch page of AAW up on Top Webcomics, so if you send us a vote for Anatta, you will get a little something something in return. I know it’s bittersweet, because today is supposed to be Anatta update day. I have everything set up on my old laptop and the page should be finished by Wednesday or Thursday, depending on a variety of life factors.

Thanks for everyone’s patience, it makes it all the better knowing that people will actually miss Anatta and I have to get my ass in gear to get it done!

Oh yeah, click on Laelen’s icon on the left to see the new page of Airship Arc Winds.

Happy Holidays fellow webcomickers and readers!  Starting December 21, Anatta is going to have an exciting new vote incentive!

I’m currently working on a solo project, called “Airship Arc Winds”, and part of the process of making this new comic is to do the sketch version of it as a preliminary mock up.  The sketch version is totally readable – it’s in pencil without colour, but it has all the dialogue and fully rendered panels with simple backgrounds.  I want to get some feedback on Arc Winds, and I thought the readers of Anatta are the people to get first crack at it!

I will be uploading a new page of the sketch version of Arc Winds to the TWC voting incentive every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. All you have to do to read it is click our voting icon to the right of any page of Anatta, confirm your vote and read away!

I know that the holidays are a slow time for webcomic reading, people are going back and forth between family gatherings and holiday parties, so not many people spend a lot of time reading comics on their computers.  If you miss the first 10 pages or so, not to worry, I will be uploading the sketch comic to the Epidigm website starting the first week of January.  The people who vote for Anatta will continue to have the pages first until I simply can’t draw anymore or the story ends!

I’m looking forward to sharing Airship Arc Winds with you guys,  I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy drawing it!

In the meantime, if you’re interested in voting for Anatta please cast it at the Anatta voting gateway on the TWC website here.

Anise

For a little bit now, I’ve been streaming my colouring of Anatta live.  If you’re interested in watching, our channel is at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/anatta. The broadcast times are a little irregular, so if you want to the minute scheduling I recommend you come follow me on Twitter.

Watching comic artist work on their stuff is actually a lot of fun.  I spent some time today watching Karl from The Abominable Charles Christopher do the inking and colouring of the next update.  Karl is a whiz with the brush pen, and it really shows in his comics.  Almost immediately after I was transported to David Peterson’s channel where he’s drawing Mouse Guard on Photoshop.  Lastly, Jeph Jacques from Questionable Content started his almost daily live stream like 5 minutes ago.  If you’re interested in making your own comics, or looking to refine your drawing and/or painting style, watchng other artists on Ustream is incredibly useful.

I’ll embed our live stream here, happy drawing everyone!

It’s pretty exciting, we’ve been nominated for a 2009 Weblog Award for Best Comic Strip (which is ironically named, because many of the nominees aren’t strips at all).  If you would like to add your voice to our nomination, it would be greatly appreciated!  The nice thing about the Weblog Awards is anyone can nominate, login or no.  If you want, you can use your twitter or facebook account as well.

The Fall seems to be nomination season, kind of like we get all the crappy movies in the summer and have to wait until November-December to see all the great stuff.  It’s kind of exciting, because we have enough content for Anatta to be considered.

Thanks to everyone for reading!  I’m colouring pg 3 in about an hour or so, and I’ll probably ustream it as well for anyone’s interest.  Our channel on ustream is just Anatta, if you’re wondering.

Check out the rest of the 2009 Weblog Awards:

Lotus Root Children can be read here.  To take a look at some of the concept art, click the image below!

I’m currently colouring the new page of Anatta now.  It should be up tomorrow/wednesday depending on how lamely slow I am.  I’m getting faster with the painting, but it’s been a bit since I did Anatta.

If you are curious as to what Lotus Root Children is about, please watch the documentary film by PBS called “China’s Stolen Children.” Although the documentary only provides the setting, it was what inspired this comic.