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Closed polls of 2019 (sandwiches, Scooby-Doo, surprise party guests, and more)

Closed polls of 2019 (sandwiches, Scooby-Doo, surprise party guests, and more) published on 6 Comments on Closed polls of 2019 (sandwiches, Scooby-Doo, surprise party guests, and more)

Just closed a bunch of the polls that have done their time below the Leif & Thorn comment sections. For posterity, here are the answers.

The poll about readers’ preferences for the Kolpovision-party storyline. Will any of you get your narrative wishes? Time will tell…

Best surprise guest to crash Thorn's Kolpovision-watching party?
  • MAGICAL BRAM and his ADORABLE CHILDREN 26%, 35 votes
    35 votes 26%
    35 votes - 26% of all votes
  • Future Thorn, pretending he's cosplaying 20%, 27 votes
    27 votes 20%
    27 votes - 20% of all votes
  • President Romarin, having ditched her security detail 17%, 23 votes
    23 votes 17%
    23 votes - 17% of all votes
  • All of the above? I honestly can't pick just one.* 8%, 11 votes
    11 votes 8%
    11 votes - 8% of all votes
  • Geirölul Lilblomma, trying to explore Ceannic culture.* 7%, 9 votes
    9 votes 7%
    9 votes - 7% of all votes
  • Holly and Cedar, for a magical intermission 7%, 9 votes
    9 votes 7%
    9 votes - 7% of all votes
  • Agent Delphinium and the Woman in Black on a secret mission 5%, 7 votes
    7 votes 5%
    7 votes - 5% of all votes
  • Kudzu's dog* 4%, 6 votes
    6 votes 4%
    6 votes - 4% of all votes
  • Holly, Cedar and Ivy, due to a misreading of the situation.* 3%, 4 votes
    4 votes 3%
    4 votes - 3% of all votes
  • President Romarin with her full security detail 3%, 4 votes
    4 votes 3%
    4 votes - 3% of all votes
Total Votes: 135
15 November, 2019 - 1 January, 2020
Voting is closed
© Kama

Continue reading Closed polls of 2019 (sandwiches, Scooby-Doo, surprise party guests, and more)

You can tell this comic is cutting-edge because it has a Dark Mode now

You can tell this comic is cutting-edge because it has a Dark Mode now published on 17 Comments on You can tell this comic is cutting-edge because it has a Dark Mode now

It’s finally time to reveal why I’ve been breaking the Leif & Thorn layout all weekend!

I’ve been pulling the CSS for colors and images into a separate stylesheet from the rest of the CSS (i.e. the fonts, the arrangement of sections, the padding…so much padding), so I could have multiple color/image themes and give everyone the option to toggle between them.

Starting with a seasonal Northern Lights theme. (And only halfway through December!)

Settling on the palette was the easy part. (And the fun part.) The hard parts were:

  • divvying up the properties correctly between the “Inkblot child theme” stylesheet and the color-scheme stylesheets, so nothing got duplicated, or accidentally dropped
  • updating a whole bunch of non-transparent images that only worked on a theme with a white background
  • combing through error-spawning code for the missing period/semicolon/curly-brace
  • learning how to keep stylesheets from getting flagged as “insecure content”
  • realizing the After Dark pages were going to try to load the default color-scheme stylesheet, so I needed a style that wouldn’t override it
  • realizing that, while keeping the default scheme from overriding the After Dark scheme, I had prevented it on loading from a bunch of other pages at all
  • giving the Firefox Code Inspector a workout
  • giving the W3C’s exhaustive guide to CSS properties a workout
  • giving Notepad++’s side-by-side document view a workout
  • truly appreciating the WordPress Header and Footer and Real-Time Find and Replace plugins
  • testing how it looks when you move an element 5 pixels to the left…then putting it back…then trying it 5 pixels to the right…
  • sitting back and waiting for the server-side cache to update so I could finally see if the live results matched the previews

…and now, finally, it’s in a state where I feel ready to show it off.

There’s a couple of new buttons in the left-hand sidebar that will let you switch between Northern Lights and the original theme, Blue Castle. Check them out.

The buttons are supposed to set a cookie in your browser that remembers your chosen theme when you visit different pages…but I can’t seem to get that part working. If anybody can take a look at the source code and figure out what’s missing, it would be much appreciated!

And in general, if you run into any new problems while browsing the site, comment here and let me know. Gotta tackle them while my debugging mojo is still flowing.

First look at the Volume 2 proof

First look at the Volume 2 proof published on No Comments on First look at the Volume 2 proof

The proof copy of Volume 2 has arrived!

To keep creator expenses down, Whitlock sends these unbound, so what I got in the mail was a big stack of loose pages and an un-cropped cover. Check them out:

All this is well ahead of schedule — last year’s Volume 1 proof came on December 15.

As usual, I’m going to take a couple days and look through it, make sure everything came out okay. It’s hard to tell in this photo, but the cover printed a little dark — I’ll probably adjust the values and send the printer a new source file.

And then we go to press!

Behind-the-scenes on making Leif & Thorn Volume 2

Behind-the-scenes on making Leif & Thorn Volume 2 published on 2 Comments on Behind-the-scenes on making Leif & Thorn Volume 2
The Volume 2 Kickstarter has passed its fundraising goal!
 
Now, if we can also pass Volume 1’s record ($3,211) before the deadline on Friday, I’ll start handing out extra prints.
 
In the meantime, as we head into the final 48 hours, I wanted to share some backstory about how this volume came together.
 
Going back to the very beginning…

2011

…okay, maybe we don’t have to go quite this far back.
 
But 2011 is when I drew the first sketches for what would eventually become the Leif & Thorn cast, and I did put those in Volume 1, so technically it counts.
 

Continue reading Behind-the-scenes on making Leif & Thorn Volume 2

Choose your own mini-print adventure

Choose your own mini-print adventure published on No Comments on Choose your own mini-print adventure

With two weeks left in the Volume 2 Kickstarter, it’s time for a poll!

Every paperback Leif & Thorn book includes a campaign-exclusive postcard print, right? But I don’t have a top favorite “gotta print this one!” illustration. So I’m leaving the choice to you.

Don’t worry about the size of the images here — they’re all high-res enough for these prints, and I can tinker with them if necessary to make the dimensions fit. Just follow your heart.

Here are the options:

  • Glamorous Agents
  • Garden Parry
  • Stripes and Blades
  • GothPrideProblems
  • Gone Floating
  • Anniversary

And here’s the poll! You can vote for up to 2 choices:

Which illustration do you want as a mini-print with Leif & Thorn Volume 2?
  • Glamorous Agents 26%, 23 votes
    23 votes 26%
    23 votes - 26% of all votes
  • GothPrideProblems 24%, 21 vote
    21 vote 24%
    21 vote - 24% of all votes
  • Stripes and Blades 16%, 14 votes
    14 votes 16%
    14 votes - 16% of all votes
  • Plant Anniversary 14%, 12 votes
    12 votes 14%
    12 votes - 14% of all votes
  • Gone Floating 10%, 9 votes
    9 votes 10%
    9 votes - 10% of all votes
  • Garden Parry 9%, 8 votes
    8 votes 9%
    8 votes - 9% of all votes
Total Votes: 87
Voters: 52
27 September, 2019 - 12 October, 2019
Voting is closed
© Kama

Closed polls: Holly’s replacement, Volume 2’s bonuses

Closed polls: Holly’s replacement, Volume 2’s bonuses published on 2 Comments on Closed polls: Holly’s replacement, Volume 2’s bonuses

The comments-section polls are back on random rotation for a while. A couple of them have been retired because the answers were time-sensitive — and here are the results.

I’d been planning for a while now that the team’s new mage would be Tamaputian, because it’s been too long since I’ve had a regular excuse to draw Tamaputians. But this is the reason why Atarangi is a fire mage:

Continue reading Closed polls: Holly’s replacement, Volume 2’s bonuses

Leif & Thorn at Flaming River Con 2019

Leif & Thorn at Flaming River Con 2019 published on No Comments on Leif & Thorn at Flaming River Con 2019

Your artist will be a vendor at this year’s Flaming River Con, a one-day convention for LGBTQ geek culture!

It’s September 21, 2019, from 10 AM to 6 PM, hosted at the Cleveland Public Library.

I’ll be doing on-the-spot sketch commissions, and selling Volumes 1 of both BICP and Leif & Thorn, along with mini-prints, pins, and a whole heap of fanart.

Here’s a quick preview of the panel schedule:

Follow Flaming River Con on Facebook or on Instagram for vendor details, volunteer opportunities, and anything else you want to know.

See you there!

Say something nice about Leif & Thorn

Say something nice about Leif & Thorn published on 5 Comments on Say something nice about Leif & Thorn

The Kickstarter to print Volume 2 launches in just a few weeks!

It’s going to look something like this:

(Patreon supporters have already seen the unblurred version. The rest of you, hang tight.)

I also finished the giant full-cast portrait, as dictated by the Favorite Character Poll!

Here’s what that looks like…so far:Continue reading Say something nice about Leif & Thorn

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