Now on to book 2.

Book 1: Return to Anchor – 16 pages.

Just one more page.

It does feel good to be on track to make this first deadline. As you can see from the thumbnail sheet there is only one space left. The first and last pages are next to each-other on the sheet so that spreads can be grouped. If you look at it you may notice that I tried to layout the spreads, not just the pages.

Anyway, I used a utility that Frumph includes with comic easel to import the images and title of the old comics that are SFW. I am not entirely happy as it doesn’t include the commentary that I created when I posted each comic, and doesn’t include the reader commentary. However that information is not permanently lost, it just isn’t available right now. Eventually I will either figure out how to add that information to the imported comics, or figure out how to get the transported old site working. It will be well after book 1 start date though.

Now the ‘comic’ and ‘old comic’ links above work. I figured that having working navigation was a critical feature for my launch date.

I have received some questions already about why all the changes. In this first post I will answer some of the why. There are a few parts to that.

Early – Really? I drew this?

SailorsFreedom was initially started as a way for me to practice with a new Wacom tablet I got. The story took hold of me and I ended up putting much more work into it then I ever planned, but I continued to use it as a learning platform. I didn’t worry about continuity or consistency very much and treated every update as a little experiment. In some ways that adds to the experience I think. I can look back and see all the ways that my digital artwork changed, and I suspect some readers really like that aspect of the site. The downside is that as a whole it looked very amateur – because it was. Well, now I think I have figured out how to make a web-comic that looks good, tells a story, and really is the comic I want it to be. So I am making that comic.

Example 2 – getting better.

OK, that explains the format, but what about the content changes? Why did you take down all of my favorite comics?

The original SailorsFreedom was Not Safe For Work. This had a lot of negative consequences for me and the potential for more problems in the future. One, it was tough for me to share and get feedback from friends and family. By definition I couldn’t share it with co-workers. I couldn’t get a second opinion from my kids, and a lot of my friends and family would have no idea what I was doing artistically. Also my wife works for the State Department, and soon we are moving to a country where my old website might have been illegal by the local rules. That was a legal limbo I would just sooner avoid. So I retro-actively made the whole website something I can share with anyone, and I found that I didn’t really miss the comics that are gone. Yes, some of them were pretty good artwork, but none of them were truly critical to the story I really want to tell.

So now it’s SFW and I find myself pretty happy with the change. The old panels will still be available on another part of the site. If they aren’t there right now, I just haven’t gotten around to moving them yet.