T w e n t y S i d e d

So, Chainmail Bikini is on hiatus. I know how it often is with webcomics: Some go on hiatus and never return. I know this because it seems to happen to the ones I read on a regular basis.

Making a webcomic (or more specifically, drawing a webcomic) is a time-consuming deal, and unless you hit it really big you’re not likely to make money in any meaningful way. Under ideal conditions, you’ll bring in enough cash to pay for the cost of distributing the thing, which is like working at a job which pays you by reimbursing you for your commute. Sooner or later you’ll wake up on a Monday morning and realize that if you stay home you’ll be no worse off than if you go. So if you’re going to go to all the trouble of getting out of bed you’d better love the crap out of that job. I did, but my task was easier than most and I only had to do it for a year.

If you’re lucky enough to have something left over after rendering your debt to the keepers of bandwidth, then the likelihood you’ll be happy with this surplus is directly proportional to how bad you are at math. If you take your surplus and divide it by the number of hours you spend not playing World of Warcraft because of your comic, you’ll probably notice the resulting number is less than what Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. will pay you to stand beside shopping carts and tell people to have a nice day – a job not easily distinguished from loitering. Again, you had better derive some sort of euphoric delight from drawing the thing because there is stuff out there that is easier and pays better.

I don’t know if this is how Shawn sees things. He’s got some basic real-life issues intruding on the comic and so we’re going to take a break. Some people have asked – with varying levels of politeness – what would happen to the comic without Shawn, should he be obliged to withdraw entirely. I thought I would answer these questions in one post rather than enduring weeks of questions and speculation during the hiatus.

1. I’ve always said that the comic is a joint thing between Shawn and I, and I don’t have any desire to continue without him. Shawn has a distinct visual style. It’s one of the strong points of the strip, but it also means that Shawn is about the only person who can draw it.
2. If the comic were to end prematurely for some reason, I would most likely post the rest of the story as text, in the hopes that this would give readers some sort of closure. I’ve had the story of CB written from the start. While ideas have been added, the initial story arc has remained unchanged since the very first strip.

So that’s where things stand. If all goes well we’ll see you April 7^th.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

It’s Saturday night. We’ve finished our weekly D&D game, and have decided not to squander the evening rhythmically tapping the “Stumble” button as we did last weekend. That is, we decide to find some productive way to waste time.

I’ve been meaning to play Final Fantasy VI, and I even have vocational justifications for doing so. The (still unannounced on this site) project I’m involved with is a Nintendo DS title that is descended from the FFVI visual aesthetic. Imagine if, instead of moving to polygons, the makers of jRPGs had simply continued to refine the established gameplay and presentation. We’re talking about something that looks like some sort of “high res” Super NES level graphics here, as if it came from some alternate dimension where technology advanced along a different vector. In any case, the game I’m going to be working on draws from the same chibi-style fixed-angle orthographic presentation concept, and so to avoid making an ass of myself I really should familiarize myself with the medium.

The other three guys with me have all been through the game multiple times and are excited about the prospect of me experiencing the game for the first time. So much so that they’re actually anxious to sit and watch me play the game. I have the Final Fantasy Anthology (which includes FFVI) for the Playstation(null), which I plan to play on my Playstation 2. Except, my memory card doesn’t seem to be working.

We try the usual folk remedies: Blowing on the contacts, moving it to the other slot, and muttering various childish expletives at the thing. Surprisingly, none of this works. Not even the cussing. Eventually one of the guys gets around to noticing that I’m using a PS2 memory card on a PS(null) game, which, not that anyone ever told me, doesn’t work. How was I supposed to know? I’m new to all this old technology! I usually just plug the thing into the other thing and it it does whatever its supposed to do! Why can’t it just use the PS2 memory card? This last question has apparently been an imponderable among PS2 owners since the arrival of the platform eight years ago.

So it’s eight in the evening and we need an old-school PS memory card. Oh yeah. We’re in the midst of a snowstorm. Still, this is important and clearly an endeavor worth risking our lives over. We pile into the car and head for EB Games at the mall.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Memory Card”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.