It’s not being a good week for my dyspraxia. It’s a condition where my ability to control my hands can waiver from “just bearable” to “completely incompetent”. It’s not like Parkinsons, where they shake, or anything. It’s just an inability for my thoughts to correctly translate into the actions I want to perform. The worst part of the condition though, is its day-to-day variability. Somedays I have no problem at all, and you’d never know I had a condition. Other days I can barely hold a pen in my hand and make legible script. It’s like a giant game of Chinese whispers. I start off with what I want to do, and by the time it gets to my hands it is usually something similar, but just different enough to know the message changed somewhere along the way. And sometimes my body throws me for a loop and has that arse who always adds “purple monkey dishwasher”.

Hell, it took me three attempts to make the writing in that image legible… and it is still atrocious.  So no post for you today. I would have posted this as an actual comic, but I like the Reservoir dogs image above and I don’t know how long this blocks-for-hands syndrome is going to last.

My girlfriend has been staying with me for the last 5 days. I don’t get to see her very often, so I decided to focus on her rather than my hobbies. For that reason, today’s page is going to be late. Hopefully my dyspraxia will be safely under control and I will be able to get a comic done quickly. It will be my first priority after waking up, so expect something around midday-midafternoon.

Of course, should I fail, expect this message to vanish, and all evidence of its existence erased… making you wonder if it was ever here at all.

TL;DR: Jayden and Crusader is moving to a twice a week schedule

Is it better to occasionally update comic strips with the best scripts and the best artwork?

Or is it better to update frequently with adequate scripts and adequate artwork?

Over the last year or so, I’ve been pondering this question more and more. I didn’t update much, as is quite obvious if you look through the archive. It was a very difficult time. If I didn’t do a comic, because I was busy, or stressed out, or asleep, I then felt I had to make the next comic even better in order to make up for the infrequency. It stopped being enough to just make a J&C comic. It had to be the best script, the best artwork, it had to be the best comic I had done thus far, in order to feel like I was living up to expectations.

Do you know how stressful it is to feel you can only produce the best thing ever?

A week’s lull might turn into two weeks, three weeks, a month. Every time I sat down in front of photoshop I thought “Is this script funny enough? Shouldn’t I try and come up with a better one? A bigger one?” or “these sketches are terrible! I am not even going to bother to ink it! Bluargh!” and I’d put the comic to one side and do something else.

That’s not to say I actually made the best thing ever. By a long shot. Because eventually the dams of internal resistance would break and I would just say “Whatever! I don’t care! Just draw something and put it up!” and I would draw something. And put it up. Now, I like these pages, but they’re not of any higher quality than usual. They’re just pages.

But the trouble is worse than just when I miss an update. Updating only once a week means the comic moves at a snail’s pace. 54 pages a year is not enough for the kind of comic I feel comfortable making. That  means I have to sit down and work out better scripts, better art. I can’t let the quality drop because then people will have to wait a whole seven days for the next one. Quelle horreur.

So what’s the solution?

I’ll tell you what it is.

A faster update schedule.

When I started Jayden and Crusader I managed an update schedule of 3 pages a week, and many would say I should return to that. After all, most webcomics are three-times-a-week affairs (or better), why not Jayden and Crusader? Well, there’s a couple of reasons that would not be a good idea. Mostly, the principle of burn out.

See, Jayden and Crusader isn’t like other webcomics, not to sound immodest. Jayden and Crusader is not a gag-a-day strip, where 4 panels in black and white is acceptable. Jayden and Crusader has 6 panels, almost every time, in full colour. That’s a lot of work. When I started J&C a comic took an average of 2-3 hours, in 2009 it might take 4, now it takes me about six hours from putting stylus to tablet to posting it online. That’s 18 hours a week, minimum. Some pages can take a lot more than six hours. 18 hours a week for a hobby is asking a lot.

Jayden and Crusader is not a carefully thought out comicbook, with the script planned out weeks or months in advance. It’s not something I can make a production line out of, like other webcartoonists  can. Sometimes J&C has storylines that last a few comics, but they’re usually spur of the moment things. The two longest storylines in J&C history, the Ozimaar Arc and the Computer Returns Arc, exemplify why storylines is Jayden and Crusader at its best and worse. When I have a script written out too far in advance I get bored of the lack of room, my creative inspiration dies. After all, ‘I’ve already written it, isn’t that enough?’ my brain seems to ask. In Computer Returns there was  a lot more improvisation and twists and turns, and that let it stay fresh, but it was still not something where I could script 20 pages, then sketch them all, then ink them all, then colour them all, then post them all, like a production line. To really be J&C it almost has to stay in the slow production method of one page, from sketch to colour as a single article.

And the last thing Jayden and Crusader is not, is a slice-of-life comic like Questionable Content. Now, they might appear similar on the surface, but they’re very distinct. Without delving into the thematic differences between them I will some it up as this: Only one day in Jayden and Crusader time has lasted more than 10 pages, and that was the Computer Returns storyline which, while I love it, was not an ‘average day’  in the lives of our characters. Jayden and Crusader is not about finding the wit and humour in everyday situations. Each Jayden and Crusader page is carefully designed to attack one aspect of life I find funny, annoying, ugly, beautiful, brilliant, weird or wonderful. They’re not designed to flow together into a seamless narrative. The way each comic stands somewhat apart from the one before it makes it harder to write scripts and re-use backgrounds. It wasn’t intended, it is just how it came about. I wouldn’t change it, but it does mean that each page is more of a challenge to start than it would be if each page followed on directly. That makes J&C more work than your average slice-of-life comic.

Are you sensing a pattern here? Jayden and Crusader is a lot of work.

I have not even covered the concept of running out of ideas, the workload alone is enough to create burn out.

You have to remember that updating three times a week doesn’t actually mean doing three pages a week. At the moment I am operating without a buffer, which means if I am held up by something, no comic goes up. To get a buffer back, I’d have to be drawing J&C pages four or five times a week for several weeks. That’s just too much. That’s more work hours than an actual job.

If I was updating three times a week Jayden and Crusader would stop being fun, would become a job that doesn’t pay me any money, and I would probably burn out, unable to continue working, and sink back into the depths of the internet.

This has happened a few times before.

So, thrice a week is too much, once a week isn’t enough. The solution? The golden sweet spot. Twice a week.

I was always happiest when Jayden and Crusader was updating twice a week. The story moved at a reasonable pace, the workload wasn’t too heavy. It was good times for all. I was limited by my parents during school and university to once a week updating but now I am free, free! And to twice a week I shall return!

But which days? In the past I used to update on a Monday and Friday. This seemed to make sense, as most webcomics updated Mon-Wed-Fri, and I’d just remove Wednesday. However a lot of comics these days update on Mondays and Thursdays (Looking For Group, Khaos Komix, for example).

So what do you think? What days should Jayden and Crusader update? Tell me in the comments!

And hopefully you’ve all made it through this long, long blog post of introspection.

Hey there folks.

Well, my 3 times a week updating seemed to be going smoothly for almost a whole two weeks when BLAM! blind-sided by the girlfriend. OK, so I had planned her visit for a few weeks, but her presence has still prevented me from getting Friday’s comic done on time. I will put one up on Friday, but it might be closer to Saturday before it is done.

Sorry about that guys.

I’ll have another post about update schedules at the beginning of next week, but for now we’re sticking to Mon-Wed-Fri, for at least another week. Though again, Friday’s comic will be late.

The comedy group I am a part of at Bangor University recently did a series of sketches about all around rich-man Orlando Reebok. They suit my sense of humour, so maybe they will suit yours, J&C readers.

As of yesterday, Friday, evening, I ceased to be the Media Officer for the comedy society of Bangor University.

I had been the media officer for two years, sat on the society committee and produced two gigabytes of posters, flyers and leaflets promoting our society and shows. It had become a not insignificant part of my life. Part of my way of defining myself was to say Adrian, Bangor Comedy Media Officer, and that’s no longer true. I caught myself on Thursday thinking about the publicity I would do for a show we have in April, likely to be our largest of the year, and realised that was no longer my decision to make. I had been passed over for the new Media Officer. I’ve given them all my files, and all my advice, and will probably be lending a helping hand this year and next, but it will be their decisions, not mine, which will control the future publicity of the society.

The future is rapidly approaching with the speed of an angry train and the loss of the position of Media Officer is an indication of that. I will graduate from university this summer, and will be moving back to Oxfordshire. My educational and academic life will be over and I will be forced to enter the workforce, a frightening concept. While I have worked before it has only ever been part time, or for a short period with a clear end in sight. The concept of having to work forever and ever the same job for at least twice as long as all my life up until this point is not one which makes me smile.

Although there is an option for having something somewhat more pleasant. Writing. Some of you may not know it, but I am an avid writer. I have written 5 novels and two plays in my spare time, I’m an accomplished comedian and have many more projects in various states of unfinished. Given the free time of unemployment with the focussed mind of a man who still lives in his parents house, I could be churning out scripts, short stories and novels at a thoroughly unprecedented rate. If I could land a career in writing, in any industry, publishing, television, radio, what have you, I would probably be much more content to give up 40 hours of my life each week, or more if I really enjoyed the job.

For many that would be a near insurmountable task, but I think you will find I am up to it. It is to be my goal, for at least a year after graduation, to get a job, any job, where I can use my creativity in such a manner.

And Jayden and Crusader will be coming along for the ride of course. I can’t escape them, even during the ‘fallow’ periods of Jayden and Crusader when no pages are being made the Jayden and Crusader characters are constantly around in my life. Whether they are suggesting stories to me or making funny comments about the world, they’re there, and adorn just about every spare scrap of paper I own.

However the dedication required of me when I am looking for work, trying to break into a career, might be somewhat more than allows for Jayden and Crusader. I am not making any prophetations of doom without good cause but it is a sad possibility I see in the horizon, the possibility I will have to put Jayden and Crusader on hiatus.  Hiatus is something it has been on before. There was a period of 3 months in 2009 where Jayden and Crusader was on hiatus, but this time it would be different. For one thing, I had the Space Opera to run while we were on hiatus. It might have been fluffy, silly filler, but it was still something. I don’t have anything like that to run this time. For another I’d have no certainty when I’d be able to return to the Jayden and Crusader household. Any job in the creative industry is draining, whether I am a novelist locked in a room with a type writer or a comedian on stage every night, I would be tired and exhausted when it came to do a comic. Updates of once a month would probably be an overly optimistic rate. Therefore it would be a tempting possibility to put the Jayden and Crusader characters on a bus for a while…

Of course, I can’t escape them. Jayden and Crusader, Smic and Hannah, Third and Kat, they’ve somehow grabbed me hard by the brain and won’t let go. I do Jayden and Crusader to stay sane, to make me happy, sometimes even just as a coping mechanism to stop thinking about bad news. But there might come a time when I have to give up the dream of a regularly updating webcomic for a little while. I mean, I’m currently a student and I can’t even get out 1 comic a week!

If you had said to me at this time 3 years ago, when I put Jayden and Crusader on haitus for the first time, that in three years time I would be; living in Wales, an accomplished comedian, considering a career in professional writing and be considering putting Jayden and Crusader to one side when I get a job I would probably have laughed derisively at you.

Oh, the times. They are a-changing.

And now because that was all rather depressing, here is a panorama of my university in the sunshine.

It’s actually almost a month ago, but it was the same sort of weather.

Digging through my old files I came across this recording where I would improvise comedy against myself in various voices. The voices are reasonably distinct, even if they are all clearly me but the sketch is both bonkers and hilarious so I thought it was worth sharing with the world. You can find it the link below and I hope you enjoy it.

Colonel Colonel

Hello all.

I’ve just been making some tweaks to the site, changing the order of the sections at the very top and redoing the “New Reader?” page. Did you guys realise it hadn’t been changed at all since 2008? My, that was a long time ago. The New Reader page now consists of a summary of J&C’s story up until the end of the Computer Returns Arc along with an assertion that people should read it from the beginning anyway.

I should really work on getting some of those other pages an over-haul. Oh well. Until next time guys!

Over the last three years Jayden and Crusader has become part of how I define my life. I am the guy who draws Jayden and Crusader. My screen name on instant messenger services is invariably “The Writer” so important is it to my self-worth that I write things, be they comics, novels or comedic sketches.

That is why the current lack of Jayden and Crusader is just as annoying to ME as it is to you.*

And not just the last few weeks the entire year, pretty much from this point last year, has been one of the worst in Jayden and Crusader’s history. Not the storyline, I love that and consider it some of my best work, but I have barely written and drawn twenty comics. That’s abysmal. That’s less than one a fortnight. I am sorry.

The truth is, I don’t know why, I simply do not have the energy to make the comic. I have the story outlined, I have the next few written I have the next one sketched out but I can’t seem to summon the energy to pick up my stylus and work on it. This has happened before and in fact often happens in August, so much so I commented on it last year. It was much easier to ignore in the past when it wasn’t as important to me. When I didn’t draw any comics in October 2007 I didn’t beat myself up about it. It didn’t matter to me, it didn’t define who I was as a person. Even last November I assumed it was just a stumbling block. But this has been going on so long now I can’t keep fooling myself.

Something is wrong in Jayden and Crusader land and I don’t know what it is.

Some people define writers block as an inability to write, that’s not entirely true. I call that ‘Writer’s stuck’ when the thoughts are inside but can’t seem to get out. You get the same with artists. True writer’s block is an emptiness. It’s a hole where there should be drive and energy and thought and a myriad of creative colour. Write now I am suffering from true writers block.

There’s just nothing up here straining to escape to the page. I don’t understand how, or why, the storyline is there, the jokes are there, the important character pieces and awesome one liners are there but some how there is an emptiness of drive.

Jayden and Crusader is not going on hiatus. Jayden and Crusader has never gone on true hiatus and I never want it to. One day perhaps it will end when there are no more stories for Jayden and Crusader to tell. That isn’t now. Right now I am just…. lost. Stuck. Empty.

It’s as if a divine force reached into my head and plucked the energy out of me. I cannot explain it.

I don’t have any answers, I don’t know when you’ll see a new J&C page. Maybe it’ll be next Monday, maybe it’ll be years from now. (I doubt the latter). Right now I don’t have the drive to do anything, I struggle even to sketch. I am not writing, I am not doing anything of any creative output.

As ‘The Writer’ this pisses me off.

I’m sorry.

I don’t want this to sound like I am trying to explain why it’s ending, I want it to explain my absence. I care, I care so much but right now I just… I just can’t do it.

(* possibly more)

After having quite a pleasant relationship with the software since I installed it 5 years ago I have now been forced to face facts. I hate steam. I hate it a lot. I want to rip it apart from my teeth. I would happy write  the software  to floppy disks for the privalage of the visceral pleasure.
For the last 5 years Steam has been rather like the metaphorical neighbour next door. We don’t really know each other, but he seems nice enough and we’ve had tea together. He’s even given me a few things cheap when he no longer needs one. The metaphorical borrowed lawnmower. But then we both joined the same tennis club for the summer and decided to avoid meeting strangers by playing against each other. And then I discovered I hate him so much I want to punch him with a rivet gun until he is dead.

To explain the metaphor, I downloaded the odd piece of ultra cheap software from time to time (Audiosurf for 1.99? Sign me up!) but it wasn’t until I got Empire Total War I was forced to face the horrible truth of my hatred.

First: When installing it tries to make you download the whole 15GB game. That alone will kick the crap out of most monthly download limits, let alone the sheer amount of time it would take to download the game I have a hard copy of in my hands. But I am a smart man, I figured out how to make it install off the disk pretty swiftly and sat back with a book for a much faster install, about half an hour. I even listened to the football game. Things were going well.

Then it decided that I couldn’t play my game. It said I had to download 2GB of updates first. Which will take longer than installing the entire game off the disk. And this isn’t just me complaining about the speed of my internet. Some people can pull down 2GB in ten minutes, great for them. But even for them the audacity to say “No, you can’t play this.” like some mad bureaucrat is beyond belief! A fully installed game. That I can’t play. Because Steam says so.

I would be happy to download it in the background while I am playing the unpatched version. This was something I was free to do with Rome Total War. Even Medieval 2 Total War, just a few years ago. I could start patches downloading through Firefox while I pootled around having fun on the unpatched game. But no. That’s not allowed. I am not allowed to have fun while playing my legally purchased game. Instead of rewarding me for not giving in to the mass culture of piracy they stamp on my fingers.

There are lots of things I like about steam. I love their store, with old games I never got to play or old favourites long forgotten at absurdly low prices. Their community is a great experience, only rivalled by Xbox live or World of Warcraft. Even just as an authentification method, to say that “Yes, this account legally purchased this game” is fine. I can hack that, I used to like that. I liked not having to deal with securom “I am going to punch you in the crotch now, valued customer.” But being told how to play my games drives me bananas. It makes me angrier than I thought I could be at a piece of software.

I will continue to use it. I have to use it. But I will secretly plot the murder of my metaphorical neighbour, and when he doesn’t expect it WHAM! in the back of the head with a hammer.

(An alternate title for this post was ‘computer says no’)