So I'm now employed (hooray!) but I'm working a night shift (boo!) and as a result I really don't know when I'm going to be able to even think about Woods for the Trees properly.

Which. Fucken. Sucks.

Look, I'm grateful and all to no longer be unemployed but it's come with some hefty fucking price. My hours as of next week are 10pm until 6am which means me having to adapt the comic to accommodate my new schedule. Obviously 3 comics a week is going to be right out of the question - I barely managed that when I was unemployed let alone working 8-hour shifts five days a week - so that leaves the alternatives.

After much contemplating and mulling over while I worked the machines today I've come up with these alternatives;

1 - Indefinate Hiatus - (otherwise known as the "not an option" option)

2 - Go back to two-a-week and see how we go - (this is the "most likely to happen" option)

3 - Transfer cartoon to large "Xmas strip" style colour work and do one a week - (the "Mynarski Forest" option)

4 - Have no update schedule at all and verbally attack anyone who asks when the next strip is out - (this is know as the "most irregular webcomics attitude" option)


Now personally I'm looking most at option 2, but I've got a sneaking attraction towards option 3. I dunno, maybe because it's "different", maybe because I've seen many other well loved webcomics that do the same thing, maybe it's because he's the most oddly attractive of all the options.....but there we go.

So that's Woods for the Trees. Shafted by life.

I'm sure the animals understand.

Kids, you know how yesterday I was all "hey, so my data all got wiped - no biggie"?

Well fuck that. This is one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. The last five years of my artistic life have been wrenched from me.

At first I tried to be all cool. I had the idea that I could just copy the files from Comic Genesis's server using an FTP program. BZZZT Wrong! Comic Genesis doesn't allow copying FROM their servers apparently...

THEN I remembered an old back-up copy of my script folder, which turned out to be about two years old and thus only about half of what I'd lost. Small mercy I suppose, and having something to rebuild on is less scary than having nothing and starting again.

I'm going to take the clapped out drive down to my trusted local techies to see if they can pull anything off of it, and regardless of outcome I'm going to then destroy the hard-drive with a hammer.


But enough whinnying on about bad stuff, here are my plans for the future.

1 - First priority is to get something up on the site, and given that I don't have the scripts to draw it's most likely going to be a picture.

2 - Start uploading a comic-a-day to FA and dA. These will be older stuff, but will be one a day. I regret stopping uploading my standard comic to dA, I lost quite a few readers doing that.

3 - Basically just try to get the standard of my strip to a base level. Don't get me wrong, the art I love in my comic but the wording in the speech bubbles is shocking to the point I'm amazed anyone can even read it. I think it puts people off more than anything.


So yeah, there it is...probably not going to be a "cartoon" for a little while, but hopefully by the beginning of February I'll have managed to defuckulate myself from this shitty situation.

Oh, and I got a job by the way. Whoopee.

Kids, this is the story of how I lost every file I had from five years of Woods for the Trees, so bare with me.

It all started with the death of my PC, Shitboxington II. After getting the new Shitboxington up and running (Windows 7 btw, very nifty) I took Shitboxington II's hard drive and attactched it to the new one.

I then copied the "My Documents" folder - the folder containing the 500+ mbs of comic work - to the new C drive before formatting the old drive. I then placed "My Documents" back onto the newly formatted drive before thinking; 'hey, I'd better back this shit up' and attempting to copy it all again to my portable hard-drive.

This however, is when things took a tumble down shit mountain and landed in a turd glacier. The newly formatted Shitboxington II drive decided to have a brainfart or something and now the "My Documents" folder is unreadable and the drive is clicking and whirring...a sure sign that the drive has, and this is an industry term, "kerfucked itself".

So this leaves me in the situation that all my scripts, saved files, original raw scans, high-res copies, website data, art, gift art, and plans for the future are gone. GONE.

But I don't find myself feeling angry....I can copy the website and basic gif comics from Comicgenesis using an FTP program, so no worry there...and for some reason I find myself quite happy with the idea of having to start again when it comes to scripts.

After all, I remember the stories that I wanted to do and their structures, just not the jokes....so maybe re-writing them will be like forcing me to do a second draft? Maybe. I'm pretty sure that this means I'm going to be offline for a few weeks at least....which means I'm gonna just say that January is a writeoff.

I hate January.

For those who don't know, my beloved 9 year old computer - Alma Shitboxington II - died on Friday. She coughed, spluttered, shat herself, and died.

RIP Alma Shitboxington II.

Long live Alma Shitboxington III!!!!

Or so I thought....see a while back my younger, fitter, more grown up and employed brother gave me his old PC as he didn't need it anymore. Bare in mind that this is a machine that to him is dustbin fodder and is to me a shiny metal box from ze futures! and that says somewhat on my current position on the social ladder. But I'd only just got Shitboxington II, paid for with my own savings (£100 for a computer? What could go wrong!?) and was a little hesitant to simply chuck it away for my brother's cast off...this may have something to do with pride; I'm 5'9" and my brother is 6'5" and has been taller than me since I was 12. If you went through high school wearing your little brothers hand-me-downs then you'd probably feel the same about this as I do.

So when Shitboxington II died I initially thought "Great! Now I have an excuse to use the shiny metal box from ze futures!! It has Windows 7, a badass new graphics card, and 4GB of RAM! That's like NASA or some shit!"

But then my exitement turned to frustration...below is a list of the problems, the amount of time they took to fix, and the effect they had on my mental health.


1 - Wired motherboard into case incorrectly - took about 1 hour to fix and caused no more than a bit of light swearing and headscratching.

2 - Broke power button with my fat sausage fingers - took 5 hours to travel into town, buy a new one, and fix that in as well causing more light swearing, my getting wet in the rain, and my being called "Charlie Manson" by some cunt on roller-blades ( I have long hair and a beard btw)

3 - Sound not working - ongoing problem given my motherboard's sound chip decided to not make Windows 7 drivers. Caused me to smoke a heavy amount, purchase a £10 sound-card from Amazon, and assault a rose bush after finding out it will take until Friday to arrive (and no, compatibility mode won't work)

4 - Internet not connecting/wireless dongle not recognised - took about 2 hours to fix and caused me to drag my Dad into the madness which caused us both to swear a lot, shout at things, and drink heavily.

5 - Scanner drivers not compatible with Windows 7 - took 4 hours to fix with a lot of help from two ex-Define Cynicalers. This problem caused me to nearly eat my own face with frustration, anger, and made me miss lunch.

6 - Graphic tablet installation CD missing - took 3 hours of faffing about looking for the drivers on the Wacom website which is as easy to navigate as the Thames in the Exxon Valdez. This problem didn't cause me too much grief until I realised that I DIDN'T EVEN NEED TO FUCKING DO IT in order to finish my comic....


But here we are. Finished. Done. The first Woods for the Trees of the new year is up! woodsforthetrees.comicgenesis.com Everything's working (except the cunting soundcard) and I'm starting to dig Windows 7. Was it worth it?

No. Nothing is worth that. Bring back Windows 95 I say.

Hello there everybody, I'm going to let you all in on a little secret about me. And that secret is that when I started drawing Woods for the Trees I genuinely, genuinely believed that within two years it would be massively popular, have it's own loyal fanbase, and that I would be guest of honour at a convention.

Genuinely.

Of course it's near enough six years on now, and that hasn't happened unless I somehow managed to sleep through it - man, alcohol great isn't it? - although I no longer feel ashamed for my original ego-centric imaginings.

Y'see, until a few months ago I hated myself for thinking that because my comic didn't have the readership of other - and in my eyes, often shitter - webcomics that it must be because either a) I'm a failiure and the comic is shyte or b) because it's so far ahead of it's time I'll be dead before I hear the first laugh at which point it becomes a feature film that finally provides David Mitchell a vehicle to get off the comedy panel show scene.

Then I would start to blame myself for lack of readers in other ways - oh, it's because I don't update reliably enough, or it's because the site looks like a child designed it in Fischer Price's "My First HTML Designer", or because the written text on the strip is handwritten and therefore completely illegible.

I used to think all these things, but now - not so much. I still hold out hope that one day Woods for the Trees will become more popular than a video of a skateboarding dog, but I also now accept that if it doesn't - who gives a flying toss?

I think this applys to everyone elses comics too. I've seen many comics start up, be funny for a few months - maybe a year - and then dissapear. I dunno why, I guess the artist got fed up spending their time drawing a comic for only a handful of people, or they just fell out of love with it, or someother really trite reason....

...But the truth is that most comics, at best, become cult hits - and of those only a select few provide the level of income nessesary for the artist to quit his dayjob. There are very few webcomics out there that make any profit at all, and as a buisness stratagy, drawing a webcomic is just about the stupidest thing you can do - indeed you'll probably end up losing money. Unless you draw about porn or computergames, in which case congratulations for being as original as the people who still Rickroll.

So what is this journal in aid of I don't hear anyone physically ask? Well voice in my head, it's mainly for me to point out that I don't care about being famous anymore, I don't care if Woods for the Trees ever gets more readers than the Bible, I don't care if I'll never make money off it, and I don't care if I ever win an award.

I'm just happy that something I do - to make me laugh - somehow makes a few other people laugh, and if you can make just one person other than yourself laugh then the joke is worth telling.

Right, I'm off for a Christmassey poo. Chin chin!

This week our "glorious" Prime Minister - Sir David of Cameron - has come out and said that he is a Christian and that the UK is a Christian country....

To which I call bullshit.

The UK is a secular country. It is very very rare to meet a UKite (was gonna say British but then remembered about Northern Ireland) who actually attends church, let alone one who defines themselves as a Christian. And also what about the millions of practicing muslims, hindus, and jews in the UK?

They apparently do not count.

Now I will concede that the UK has historically been a Christian country, but it was also historically an imperialistic country that stole other people's stuff and ruled their lands for no other reason than we had the biggest guns.

There was an article in the Guardian that I agree with, that Cameron isn't really a believer - he just says he is because of the misguided notion that a belief in something is better than a belief in nothing. This is balls.

One of the most famous atheists in the UK is Stephen Fry, and I'd trust him more than Cameron - and I believe in god!!!

It's just the patronising aspect of what he said, followed by the arse-covering when he realised that he had essentially said that all other faiths - and atheism - are wrong. Which is utter crap.

A belief in deiaties - or a lack there of - is an intimatly personal thing, and to parade that about for reasons of public relations is something that I personally thought we in this country were above. All this pandering to a tiny minority just proves one thing that a lot of people already knew - David Cameron is NOT a statesman.

He's a PR man. And a twat.



So yeah, there's some unstructured ramblings for you.

(Reposted from DA)

Today marks the last strip in the Woods for the Trees storyline "Twisted Sisters" - a story about Isabel and her sister Janine's never-ending sibling rivalry.

Now lets talk smack about it.

I first wrote this story about two years ago (yes, that's how far in advance I write them) and at the time it was little more than a mini-story with ideas above it's station. I wanted to show Isabel in a more fragile state than we're used to seeing her - ie, a mental psycho no-one in their right mind would talk back to. Originally it was only about 20 strips long....the final story ended up being twice as long as that.

How did this happen? Well I added another mini-story into it, which was about Ria's jealousy of Isabel hanging out with Jess - which became the side-story....only problem is, I really don't know what I'm doing and personally I think it shows.

I edited this story on the fly, changed the ending multiple times, changed character dialogue mid-cartoon, cut out exposition, added new exposition....basically doing what I should have done in the two years between writing the first draft and bringing it to air (so to speak)

When you work on your own, as I do, there's a tendancy to think "Well I know what's happening," without taking into reguard whether anyone else will. As a result I had to backtrack, re-read, change jokes, re-write stuff that was semi-offensive (there was a lot more "dyke" talk in the original script....foshame on me).

For example, the original merged script had Isabel kissing Janine rather than Sandy, and Ria smelling that they were sisters and realising that Jess had her pretend. Janine would then run away scared and Ria would then state that she's fine with Isabel hanging out with Jess and la-la-la happy days. This I realised about half way through the story would have been such a stupid ending considering everything else we learn of Janine and Isabel's relationship that it would be so out of character it might break the world....

The second draft of the ending was that Janine would just wonder off after Isabel kisses Sandy and that the story would end with a "isn't Sandy a ditzy retard" joke....which I realised about a week ago was a) lazy and b) nothing to do with the story at all and kind of a cop-out.

Which brings us to the actual ending, which was more a comment on my creative process than it was a deep Ozy and Millie-esque observation on the Zen relays of lay-lines and all that new-age mumbo Mcjumbo.

In conclusion, I'm not very happy with the story. I think it had a few good jokes in it, some quite decent art at points, and character building and plot-device....I'm already editing and re-editing my next main story, but that'll come after X-mas. So enjoy the next few weeks of me doing joke-a-day and mini-stories until the Annual X-Mas Colour Strip.....also this Wednesday is the 400th strip, so expect a special colour strip for that as well.

Right, I'm off for a fag.

As some of the more keen amongst you will know, I don't like Fur Affinity. In fact, I kinda resent it a little bit.

Don't get me wrong, the people I've met - although few - through this site are great peeps, and the layout of the site is good and all that...it's just.....

....well it's "too" furry. Don't get me wrong, I am a "fur" and I'm not ashamed of that. But I'm a fur in the same way I'm a Trekkie - ie, casually for funzies.

FA makes it not fun sometimes, with the dramatic whinging on journals, the endless drama over sod-bloody-all, and the endless endless porn (and the fact that if you don't draw porn on FA you're a bloody nobody and always will be)

Q1 - why don't I just not read the dramaz or lookit da pornz?

Well I could turn the adult filter off, but that personally would feel like I've sensored myself. And yes, I realise that in having the filter off I have little right to complain about explicit content. But it goes beyond my frigidity and to the deepest depths of what I think are the bad things about this fandom. Even IF I turn the adult filter on so I personally can't see the porn, I still know it's there and so does anyone that knows even remotely of FA.

Put it this way, I'll tell anyone about my Devient Art account....I'm ashamed of my FA account as just mentioning that I have one makes me sound seedy.

Q2 - why not just go back to Deviant Art if you love it there so much?

I do. Only problem with DA is that it's TOO big. Like, enormouse - you read right, it's a gigantic mouse. I currently follow about 50 people and most of the are peeps I know from other places so unfollowing them might seem like a slight even though I haven't commented on anyone elses art on DA in about 3 years. Also I can't upload music there.

Q3 - WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT THEN!?!

Well that's the thing. This may seem like a whiney semi-rant about bugger all, and "FA isn't for me wah-wah" but it goes much deeper than that. I just don't....click with FA. Don't click with DA anymore either and haven't since about 2008. So where else is there? I've heard ArtSpots is ok, if a little tumbleweedy (if you know what I mean) and I've heard InkBunny makes FA look like a children's site.

Whatever happens and wherever I decide to "go" artistically don't think that means I'm going to bugger off completely. I'm not one of those whiney bastards - although I am A whiney bastard - what deletes their account in a mard and fucks off into the night like they're making the shittest answer to a question no-one asked. I'll still post here, and I'll still respond to my comments just like I do on DA now - I just might not look at your art any more.

And to be fair, I don't think those people I follow would notice nor care. Indeed, they'd probably be glad to see the back of me.

Right, I'm off for a poo. Laters!

...I've been an addict since I was about 0 years old. At first it's just "I'll do that later" and "Yeah, I've got time to sit doing nothing" and it feels fine. You see other people doing it, so why not you?

And then boom! It hits you....you realise you've just spent 5 hours reading Wikipedia rather than doing anything constructive what so ever. It's a shock the first time it happens, a little like the first time you see what a full-stop (period) does to the letter "r" in this site's text stuff.

I know it's not a problem I can solve by doing the little things, it's going to need a decent injection of the most powerful drugs the UAC has ever made. But I do feel that with all of you here, my sponsor Isabel, and my family at home I can get through the next week without

So the 20th of October marks the 26th anniversary of my arrival into this thing called existance.

Not asking for anything, but if any of you were planning to ever do something to show your appreciation of me then that would be a great time to do it.

Just sayin :D

Ok, so no rant on this journal - just an update about stuffs.

Woods for the Trees!

Ok, so as some who read it have noticed this week there was one on Wednesday - making three in a week - something that hasn't happened in a good long while. Now I did this primerily as an experiment to see if I could still do it or if my procrastinating brain would meerly shut down.

Well I'm happy to report that I didn't have a seizure or an incident at all, so for the near furture at least Woods for the Trees will be THREE a week! You lucky bastards.


Art

I've been planning some new artwork for this site and my DA as well as I noticed my output has somewhat dropped over the last few months. Now, this is more for my sake than yours as I want to get back into drawing the one-off pics but I suppose I can cut you lot in as well. I've also got a picture that's been requested of me by an old friend that I've got to complete and that I hope to have finished with colour and the like over the weekend. So there's that.


Life

As someone who's currently living with parents and unemployed I am of course somewhat overwhelmed with free time. Given that I am also jobhunting like a motherfecker it's only a matter of time before I become a tax payer again - I bloody hope. Dunno why I typed that, but hey I'm high on caffined.

Right, I'm off for a poo. Laters!

Once upon a time, difficult and somewhat embaressing feelings were dealt with in few simple ways; repressed with drink until the enevitable violent breakdown OR splurted out at a paid professional.

So why do we (not I, but you internet people) now feel the same need to spew that same information onto an open medium the entire world can read, take out of context, and laugh at?

I am of course talking about the very - some times disturbingly so - "open" journals of some furrys that sit on this fandom like a shit-mountain.

You know the ones, they start off with stuff like "my mother had a go at me" and blah, blah, and then says "so I drew a yiff picture and wanked over it" with the kind of candour that would get you kicked out of a brothel. It's the festering shitty underbelly of this fandom that truelly disgusts me if I'm being frank.

Now I've got fetishes, I'm sure most human beings do, but they're between me and the person I'm fucking. I don't then wake up the next day and scare the bejesus out of the old woman next to me on the bus with the details, nor do I tell my friends. For one, they're my FRIENDS - most likley they'd laugh, either that or get weirded out and leave. And that's MY fetishes, which by furry standards are pretty fucking tame (and no, you don't get to find out what they are)

The simple thing is that we furries get a lot of stick for a lot of shit that isn't true, but as one of me old internet chums so elequently put it to me on Twitter "though many things wrong with furries are found in other fandoms, the tendency to talk so casually about masturbation habits is unique to them"

Now I'm sure some would argue that it's just another sign of the "open" atmosphere of the fandom...well that's not "openness" that's "exhibitionist". It's Tom Green sucking on a cow's udders so people will like him. It's eating a spider so that the big boys will think you're cool. It's accidentally shitting yourself and running down the street yelling "I JUST SHAT MYSELF!"


Christ this fandom scares me sometimes.

So remember my last journal where I started on about how I couldn't figure why people disliked Priestraven's banner?

Well turns out they didn't. Dislike it I mean. As in it wasn't that particular banner they were talking about.

No, turns out it was the current banner, which is a subject I care even less about than people I used to know drawing suggestive pics - and that suject is My Little Pony.

I don't understand MLP. I didn't understand it the first time round, and I understand it less now. The animation looks like a drunk person attacked a copy of Adobe Flash, the colours make my head hurt, and the voice actors make me want to physically attack my own ears just to get them to stop.

Sure, script wise it can be mildly amusing....but then so can Jeremy Clarkson, it doesn't alter the fact that he's an insufferable conservative twat with the tact of an atomic bomb.

Basically what I'm saying is that the only thing I "get" less than My Little Pony's popularity, is the fact that people are proud of watching it. Grown men who use a nickname so sickening it makes a swastika sound like a preferable choice when confronted with the question "which of these two would you rather have tattooed on your forhead?"

Then again I don't like Thundercats or the band Queen so aparently I'm a retard.

But in all honesty, how many people actually look at the banner? And of those people, how many actually give a shit one way or the other? I get that some people think it makes a mockery of furs and blah, blah, blah - but in all honesty does FA having an MLP banner really make more of a mockery of this fandom than it's members? I mean, some in this fandom defend it - including all it's frankly fucken weirdness - with a terminal intensity on a par with patriotism not seen since Pearl Harbour.

Basically - it's a banner, and although I don't care one way or another I urge those getting angry about it to reassess their lives...there's wars, famine, floods, poverty worldwide. If all the people getting angry about the banner directed even 10% of that anger towards these problems we'd save the world tomorrow....and declare it "Fuck Off We're Furs Day"

So I've been reading that folk hate the new banner. Not gonna jump on a band wagon, don't really care - never look at the bloody things anyway - but I couldn't help but notice it was drawn by Priestrevan; a fur I "kinda" know...

...or at least used to. Used to be on Define Cynical back in it's glory days before DCS damned us all to hell, pulled out backing for the forum, and left it to turn into the ghost town it is now all for the forum having the audacity to sugggest that maybe Raine Dog was a steaming pile of shit not worthy of being Ozy and Millie's sucessor.... but hey, it only ruined the first online community I ever gave a shit about so why should I be bitter, right?

Anyway, just thought it was interesting....also, considering the last time I checked PR couldn't draw for shit it's a kickass thing that he's now got practically a bajillion followers.

But that's what happens when you draw porn on FA - people flock. Not that I'm implying his art is in any way "bad" just personally, for me, disconcerting....I remember talking to they guy, and considering I've never understood porn at all it still weirds me out with stuff like that. Hell, there's apparently a quite famous "smutty" fur living right here in my small Cheshire market town - but FUCK right off ringing him up and asking him out for a pint...what would i say?

"How many sweaty adolescent furs have jacked off to stuff you drew this week?"

Bring back Animals Of Farthing Wood, National Service, and child labour. I say

This refers to something that recently happened on my Deviant Art page - yes I have a DA account FA overlords, please don't ban me for disloyalty to the furry art reich.

I've had someone, who I'll not name as they don't watch me and as far as I can tell has never been on my page before, send me a PM telling me that my Deviant ID picture offended them.

You know, the picture of me with a fag up my nose staring into the ether like a drunken savant?

http://whatupwidat.deviantart.com/ That one.

I tried to get them to explain to me exactly what offended them about it. Was it my drunkenly gormless face? Was it that my hair is parted on the same side as Hitlers? Was it my friend's disgustingly upholstered sofa that looks like it was stolen from a blind man in the 70s?

No, apparently it was the fag - or cigarette for those of us too stupid to realise some words mean different things than they do in Amernica. They told me that I was "glorifying smoking" and that I had "offended them".

Firstly, if that picture glorifys anything then I'm Jesus of fucking Nazareth and secondly, so bloody what?

Be offended. Nothing happens.

I'm sick of whinging little fuckers complaining about every little thing that it offends them like they deserve to be taken into consideration. I don't care about your opinion, and I hope I offend you again soon.

This however doesn't mean that I don't care if people have an opinion on my glorious webcomic - the now world famous "Reuben Swears" incident was a miscalculation on my part and for the fans that wrote in not one of them said they dissagreed with it because they were offended but more spelt out that it was a stupid idea to throw an established fact (ie, the characters do not openly swear) and throw it on the dung heap of history.

For their part, the fans that wrote in (all four of them, which I assume means that one of my three fans wrote twice under an assumed name) were very articulate, calm, and non offensive to me about it. There was no flaming, no crying out for an apology, and as a result I listened to them, I agreed, and I changed it back.

Surely that's a better way to be than being a whiney little shit, eh?

Ok, due to overwhelming demand from critics and public alike I now have joined Twitter - which has now made Twitter good.

http://twitter.com/#!/Whatupwidat

Let us rejoice.


Now all I have to figure out is how to emplant it onto my homesite like Tsar Al Foreman does....


When in doubt, copy a more successful person - thus is my modus operandi.

I know what none of you are thinking, "But Roo" you'll say "don't you hate Twitter and think it's an excuse for idiots to write stuff that no-one in their right mind would even give a shit about?"

Well yes my peeps, that is true. I do think that. But you should have heard the stuff I said about Fur Affinity before it's gravitational pull finally drew me past it's event horizon and sucked me into it's foul depths - and now I kind of like the place...you know, except for all the porn.

It would definatly be a better method of news-giving about the comic than here or DA, as not all my fans can access DA or FA - something to do with their assylum's internet policy or something. Something like what SSDD Tsar Alan Foreman does. http://www.poisonedminds.com/

Thing is I already have a sort of "twitter" myself, known as the Squawkbox (ok it's just a Cbox, but whatever) and no-one uses that.

Do any of my three fans even have Twitter? I know my Mam doesn't...but then my Mam thinks "eBay" is Yorkshire slang for a harbour. So that leaves two.

Any thoughts?



Speaking of Woods for the Trees (shut up, we totally were) I'd like to announce that we are approaching the half-way point of the current storyline "Twisted Sisters". I'm sure you're as happy as I am to have that first half almost behind us...but trust me, the second half gets worse. Shut up, it does.

I'm gonna start - in my efforts to avoid Woods for the Trees becoming a venting post for my thoughts - a kind of blog here.

With that, let me talk about names...

I've been thinking for a while the power of certain names to stir deep feelings - and forgive me for sounding ever-so wanky - but I thought I'd share my thoughts. Like how you just know a bus route with a name like "X39" will be proper shit and late, or how "Illustrious" sounds like a good name for a battleship, or how someone who has the name "Tarquin" will in all inevitability be a tosspot.

Some names have connotations.

"Auschwitz" and "Chernobyl" to even the furthest outsider sound like names where bad shit happened. Or is that feeling merely because I know what those names signify?

More UK centric names, names stuck in the national conciousness for now until perpetuity, like "Churchill", or more "two islands" centric with words like "Harlech" "Bogside" "Bannockburn" "Hastings" and "Trafalgar". These are names that will live from now until the current civilisation on those two islands ceases to exist, until there is no Wales, no England, nor Scotland or either Irelands. Those names just "sound" north-west european islands-y, or is it me?

Names like "Lexington" just sound American...they just to my mind don't sound like they could come from anywhere else - not even Australia and that place is fucken mad as a box of frogs!

I'm a bit down right now. I just checked Webcomiclist (as I do every now and then) and found out that Keenfox's webcomic "Transmission" - one that's only been going for a couple of months and only has 22 strips - is already higher up the list than mine which I've slaved away on for over five fucking years.

Don't get me wrong, Transmission is a great comic and I don't hold anything against Keeny for it....it's just bummed me out a bit.

It's kind of like...I dunno, I guess I just thought that after 5 years I'd at least have SOME recognition from my peers or something.

Maybe the humour is wrong, maybe my irratic update schedule puts people off continued reading, maybe the characters aren't likable enough, maybe Woods for the Trees just isn't as good as I've convinced myself it is.

Ok, ok...I'm not having a whinge - well I suppose I am - but I'm not throwing a tantrum...but I feel like Dr Hook; Everyone's making it big but me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Pd_YbU_Uo

/moan.

(cross posted between DA and FA)

So I did some adding up today about the numbers of comics I've done in each of the years since I started and it kind of scared me a little...not because of the number but because of the inconsistancy.

The numbers of strips-per-year are as follows, and don't include the one off pics, the filler, or the three guest strips I got.

2006 - 100
2007 - 76
2008 - 45
2009 - 37
2010 - 66
2011 - 36 (as of 14/7)

Some of these numbers I can explain as outside life getting in the way. The first half of 2008 for example was was spent doing dissertations and the like, and the second half was spent working in a shitty little computer repair shop that exhausted the bejesus out of me. 2009 was spent moving from city to city like a tramp and not having an internet connection for almost half of it until I abandoned my pride and moved back in with my parents.

I'm 25 by the way...waaaaay too old to still be living with old people I'm not actually looking after as part of a care-in-the-community scheme.

I know I've always had a sort of "I'll upload them when they're drawn" kind of spirit about the strip - and my three fans for their part have never complained about that (something I'm eternally greatful for) but if I'm ever going to embarress myself by getting drunk at a webcomic awards presentation for my strip then I'm gonna have to pull my finger out and start drawing.

I'm becoming better of late at actually getting at least one strip done a week, though the fact I seem to flit between intense enthusiasm for drawing and imense feelings of "I can't be arsed" have lead me to think I might have some sort of bi-polar disorder.

Oh, and for the benefit of those of us who have dyscalculia (or for anyone not arsed to add them up) I took the liberty of adding all the numbers of strips I've done so far.

This Friday's will make it 360 strips. Chin chin.

Why am I still awake?

Oh yeah, finishing Woods For The Trees. And do I get thanked for it?

Do I bollocks.

Love you all, I'm off to sleep until they change my name to Roo Van Winkle :D

I wasn't going to type this as it made me very angry when i realised it.

I wrote a song today. First one in ages. I was proud of it too, spent nearly six hours recording and editing and engineering and mastering and all those other ings that I pretended to study at University.

But then i listened back to it and ONLY THEN realised that the chorus focuses around the phrase;

"something comes over me"

and that this could also be seen as a sexual thing. Normally I wouldn't care and sing it anyway, but this song is kinda a serious song and it'd be as inapropriate and unwelcome as an exposed penis on Mary Whitehouse's* dining room table. So, six hours of recording onto my 4-track pissed down the drain over a fucking inuendo.

Fantastic.


* for those too young or too foreign to know who she is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_W....._and_the_NVALA

Well, I've tried to get my head around Toonboom but I'm on the verge of throwing my hands up and saying "sod it, I've got more fun things to do" as it's really not fun...

Now, I dunno if I'm just crap at computer programs, or if Toon Boom is too complicated...but I can't even do basic shit on it. I can draw on it and all that jazz - but as I suck at drawing from scratch with a tablet I decided to use a scanned ink drawing as a base....big mistake. Firstly it only wants the lines, as it counts it as a solid picture - and not a black ink drawing on a white background. Second, when i did manage to figure out that I could import photoshop files I then had problem two...the lines for some reason are vectored by an idiot. Try colouring in line art on Toon Boom and it leaves a nice 4-5mm gap between line and colour.

See, my original intention for animation was to use certain comic strips I've done and treat them like storyboarding sections, and then animate the inbetween bits. I, as per-usual, assumed this would be easy. After all learnt how to drive a car in less than two months - and that has the added danger of death-if-you-fuck-up (commonly known as the "No-F9-Key" rule) but then again I know about cars....I on the other hand know NOTHING about animation.

Some people have said that this is because photoshop is useless at black lines, and while this might be right it's very annoying as it's the only image editing software I know how to use. I've watched tutorials on youtube, read them on sites and it seems that no-one is trying to do the same thing as me...it's strange.

Am I just trying to animate like a retard trying to insert a triangle into a circular hole? Is it that Toon Boom is for professionals and not people who've never even made a flip book before? Is it because I'm not an artist at all, and never will be and should stick to non-moving cartoons where I can't hurt myself? Should I download Flash MX as it's easier to use?

Answers would be helpful.

Also, on WFTT news front - I have managed to fix my scanner so expect new strips next week - and some artage on here.

That is all.

Ok, so I wanna start getting to grips with an animation program...only problem is that I have absolutely no idea what program to use, how to use it, or what to animate.

Well, that's not completely accurate...I mean, I do have a webcomic - so that's what to animate picked already, and given it's a webcomic it's practically storyboarded anyway. There'll be some problems with voices...but that's jumping the cow over the proverbial moon at the moment given that I don't even know what program to use.

So please, if you animate, or know someone who does, what program would be best for a semi-talented doodler to use for the first time?

A-thank you.

So last weekend I looked at my comic and asked myself; "what does this need?" and the answer I came up with was "swear words".

Well, in an unprecidented response to something in my strip (three emails and a comment on the squarkbox) proclaiming the dislike to the swearword in question (it was "shit" for those who didn't see it) I've decided to retcon it and remove it.

I can see that it was pretty stupid to just start including swears in a strip that's established as not having them - not that Woods for the Trees is devoid of rudeness at the best of times - but I've always avoided the "big three" swears (C, S, and F words respectivly) as they didn't really fit.

And looking at it now, it's better not to have the full on stuff as it makes you lazy. If I had started using swears in the same manner I actually talk then the strip would be ruder than a sailor with his penis trapped in something sharp...but then I wouldn't have to search for funny ways of saying the same thing a swear implys.

So...basically, in reguards to the situation. I fucked up. No more cunting swearing.

Shit.