I left the webcomics world a year ago today. I still don’t quite know how I feel about it.

The TMABB site is still there, still showing the goodbye entry, still advertising the book that people finally stopped buying a few months after the end. I don’t load the site very often, but it’s never easy when I do. I miss it, even despite how much I hated working on it half of the time. It’s sort of the way you miss an ex.

The whole thing is still incredibly disappointing for me. Webcomics has always been a pretty tight community, and I guess I just really wanted to be a part of it, to be known. Part of me still does. Tee-mab was simply not succeeding, though, despite my best efforts.

I was trying! Really! But two years of giving it a solid go without seeing any significant growth in audience? If it was going to succeed, it would have after the first year. I stuck it out longer than I should have, though, because I wanted to be really sure that things weren’t going to turn around. And they didn’t. I mean, okay, at least I broke even on the book, but I only printed 15 copies. So I quit.

The good news is, my life has gotten a lot better in the last year. My weekly routine is now basically free of stress. I’m making real progress on my current big project, after having stalled on Ultimate Epic Conflict Advance!. My fiancee and I have managed to build a homebrewing blog that pays for more than its share of my Dreamhost account. I have a fiancee. So things are totally better now. Quitting proved to be the right decision.

There’s just still a lot of guilt. I still have the story in my head, but it looks like it’s never going to get finished. I hate that. It’s a really good story, I swear. I’ve told it to a select few people and they seemed to like it. We were about six months away from the most awesome-sauce plot twist ever when I quit. You’d've loved it. You would’ve crapped your pants and it would have smelled like feces.

Maybe I should have quit sooner. If I had realized the strip was failing before I used up all of my energy on it, I would have had it in me to at least close out the story.

I hope I can revisit TMABB some day, give it a full blown do-over from square one. For now, though, I have more potentially lucrative projects that I want to give my attention to.

Art, Humor, News 1 Comment »

They just came out with a Wordpress app for the iPhone, and I’m just trying it out right now. I guess I’ll have to go over to my computer if I want to link to it. I kinda feel like the mobile admin plugin is better. Plus, this app keeps triggering my Twitter plugin. That’s annoying.

Aww man, mobile admin isn’t compatible with the most recent version of Wordpress anyway. Weak.

Anyway, link: http://iphone.wordpress.org/

News, Opinion Add Comment »

Bathtub Brewery is live! Tell your friends!

Mel and I have been wanting to start a beer and brewing blog for a while now. I spent the last few weeks off from working on my Flash game to concentrate on putting a site together for us. By last Friday, it was all done, and we spent several hours on Sunday (after we got done bottling our first homebrew!) writing articles for it. Look for articles about homebrewing, craft beer, festivals, brewing how-tos, and even regular ol’ food recipes!

This does mean that I won’t be posting cooking articles on Hindrances anymore, which honestly makes me a little sad, but I haven’t done a cooking post in well over a year now, anyway. I do still cook, mind you. I just keep failing to get around to posting about it. But now that Mel and I are living together, I’ve got another foodie in arms reach to cook for and to have cook for me, so we both have a lot more energy for cooking now.

Anyway: happy face. Bathtub Brewery is fun and exciting!

Brewing, Cooking, News Add Comment »

Welcome to the new Hindrances to Progress again!

Yeah, I was never completely satisfied with the previous design. Too dark, too low contrast. It was almost depressing to look at. Okay, maybe that’s taking it too far. Anyway, I was getting tired of the bubble motif. Too much trouble to maintain.

Y’know what’s funny? I started writing this expecting to have a lot to say, but I don’t. Bye now!

News Add Comment »

Welcome to the new Hindrances to Progress!

There isn’t a whole heck of a lot here yet. All we’ve got here right now is my blog, which, really, what more do I need?

I think things will grow, though. My vision for Hindrances is for it to become my “company,” such as it is; a hub for all of my creative endeavors. Any project I do will be “Published by Hindrances to Progress.” The Tee-mab book, for example, lists Hindrances as the publisher. That kind of thing.

I decided that the bubble motif should be a signature of anything flying under the Hindrances to Progress banner. If I ever take on another project, say a new comic or a fiction blog or whatever, the site will have the ol’ bubbles that you’re used to, just in a different color scheme. Homogeny!

Also, the full name of Hindrances is “The Hindrances to Progress Co.,” because that sounds silly. I’ve actually been using that for taxes for a while now. Just never got around to telling you guys.

Oh, check out the top of the site! I made a logo for Hindrances! It’s, um, a wave thingie… that’s being hindered. Eh? Whadya think? I wanted something abstract that I can easily stamp on stuff that I make. I figure that fits the bill. I’m a genius! A real live genius!

News 2 Comments »