Blog – Leif & Thorn

Cheers for all the Volume 3 backers

30 October, 2020 No Comments

This is the post where I credit everyone who backed Leif & Thorn Volume 3!

You’ve set a backer record, a funding record, and the wheels in motion for me to print a whole new book. Thanks to every single one of you.

A Hero and a Scholar

Clara Danao
Svirdilu
Izzy “Strontium” Hall
Jamie
Mikko
Judy

Long-Runner Print of the Narrative

Nikki W.
Kaldra
Katherine R
Punkin
Caleb Schirmer
Albert Cua
Richard W. Gombert
Andrew Webster
Brittany Kelly (TheGoodDrawer)
Peter Post
Tory S. Morgan
Triss
Hela
Cathy Green
Paul Cassella
Kyle Albert Anderson
Nolwenn Lahotte

The Book Where It Happens

Steph
Jonnie Irvine
Chimervera
gladdecease
KendallPB
Beth Culp
Alienea
Dorothea
Fir McGrevy-Gilmore
Angela Bacchi
Barbara

A Print Of The Narrative

Naomi Butcher
Eva S
Meghan McCusker
Liz the Lucky
Kris Preusker
Simone Pietro Spinozzi
Xanthipe
Ada Kerman
paralianBlue
Shizamura
Sailor-Cresselia
Susan Wilson
Julie L Spradley
Lenora Rose
BashMeNot
Tamvana
Kaitlyn
Victoria Linnea Conner
Dinglehopper
Tracy
MsM
Tim Sauke
Olivia Montoya

Long-Runner Scrappy & Digital-Only

H.
Cristov Russell
Jay Lofstead
James Post
Megan
Trip Space-Parasite
Einar Petersen
S. Stevenson
Lenore Jean Jones
Alaina
Eric Müller

Young, Scrappy, & Digital-Only

Anaxaphone
Lielac
maileguy
Jens Bejer Pedersen
Brett Bennett
CJ Gibson
David W
Owens
Esther!
AnnaDaEllie
Joann
Erin Subramanian

Taking ship prompts for #OTPober

1 October, 2020 44 Comments

Art request meme! I’ll do sketches (and sometimes more than sketches) for the first 15 people who comment with a Leif & Thorn ship, a prompt from column A, and a prompt from Column B:

Character profiles are listed on the Leif & Thorn wiki, in case you want to double-check somebody’s name.

I’m not taking prompts for blood relatives, but other than that, feel free to pick any 2 characters in the strip. (Or any 3+ characters…) Whether their in-universe status is established couple, budding romance, just friends, just enemies, or total strangers — as long as you think a sketch of the romance would be fun, go for it.

Honestly, the canon romances are going to get plenty of art anyway. So if you have an off-the-wall crack ship that’s probably never going to get drawn otherwise? Now would be the time to ask.

Retweetable thread of everything on Twitter here.

Voting on the exclusive mini-prints for Volume 3

23 September, 2020 No Comments

The Kickstarter to print Volume 3 is off to a great start, so here’s the part where you get to vote on “which art should be used for the exclusive mini-print that goes in every book.”

You have four options this year — the Leachtric one, the “magical girls out-of-training” one, the whole-team-having-fun one, and the classic Leif/Thorn one:

Note: even when there’s text on the preview, the print will be a textless version!

Don’t worry about the different sizes — they’re all high-res enough for these prints, and I’ll adjust them to look good at the right dimensions. Just follow your heart.

The poll will remain open until the Kickstarter fundraising deadline (October 16), and you can vote for your top 2 choices. So, without further ado:

Which illustration do you want on the mini-print with Leif & Thorn Volume 3?

Tell Your Own Story 35%, 22 votes
22 votes 35%
22 votes - 35% of all votes
Shelter From The Storm 24%, 15 votes
15 votes 24%
15 votes - 24% of all votes
Magical Trio 21%, 13 votes
13 votes 21%
13 votes - 21% of all votes
Anniversary Team 21%, 13 votes
13 votes 21%
13 votes - 21% of all votes

Total Votes: 63

Voters: 46

23 September, 2020 - 16 October, 2020

Voting is closed

Advertising Your Webcomic On Twitter (a how-to and a case study)

20 September, 2020 5 Comments

I couldn’t find anyone to talk with about webcomic advertising on Twitter…so I went out and did my own. Here’s how it went.

(This is part of the “how do I webcomic?” series, with useful information on all kinds of comicking-related topics.)

Done a couple months before the Leif & Thorn Volume 3 Kickstarter, because I wanted to see if it was a promising way to advertise the book.

Not going to describe all the step-by-step setup, because there are a lot of generic “how to run a Twitter ad campaign” guides out there already. But I’ll start with some general notes about Stuff I Did, then move on to Useful Tips I Learned.

Continue reading Advertising Your Webcomic On Twitter (a how-to and a case study)

Volume 3 cover reveal!

4 September, 2020 3 Comments

The one where I finally get to make a “do it for the Vines” joke. And only, uh, 4 years after it stopped being culturally relevant.

Here’s the new cover, along with the two that go before it:

Just think how pretty those would look all in a row on your bookshelf. Sign up on the Kickstarter pre-launch page to get notified when Volume 3 goes live.

There’s also an unlocked “making of” post on Patreon, which takes you from the original sketch to the final color decisions. (Here’s a preview for next time: Volume 4, at this point, is planned to be the red one.)

And if you like original hand-drawn lineart, pay close attention to this Kickstarter, because it just might be showing up as an offer…

A wave of low-key website upgrades

3 August, 2020 7 Comments

I’ve been rolling out a bunch of small-but-useful updates to the Leif & Thorn site lately, and wanted to show them off a bit!

Sorted by volume

As the print volumes build up, I got to thinking there should be an obvious way to jump between them in the digital archives.

…yes, you can do it on the Archive page, but I wanted something even more obvious. For the potential reader who picked up a paperback first, and is visiting the URL on the back for the first time.

So now those jumps are in the row of links above each comic!

Because servers would rather have browsers ask for “one large image” than “lots and lots of tiny images”, the base image looks like this:

If you got to make a live-action adaptation of Leif & Thorn, who would you cast?

25 July, 2020 6 Comments

Pretend for a minute that your budget is unlimited, the reach of your casting call is global, anyone you pick will have no trouble learning whatever language(s) we film in…oh, and the set/crew will magically stay COVID-19-free. It’s a fantasy, okay, we do what we want.

Which actors would you cast to play the Leif & Thorn characters?

Who plays Leif? How about Thorn? The knights? The servants? The magical girls? Your favorite secondary character?

The Leif & Thorn wiki is back up, and sparklier than ever

15 June, 2020 No Comments

After some serious code finagling, Crystalpedia is functional again!

In some ways it’s more functional than before. I decided to roll up my sleeves and edit the main template PHP — I’d been nervous about touching it, so I kept relying on plugins that splice in bits of code you have to upload in separate little files. Pretty sure an outdated plugin was part of why the site broke in the first place.