Fan Art Friday! This one is my first from a real fan of the comic, and also my first piece of physical fan art that someone gave me at a convention! I don’t know if Keith still reads or not, but if you do, thanks again Keith! 
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I want to start doing something called Fan Art Friday, where I show off a piece of artwork from a fan depicting the Bardsworth gang. It’s been a long time since I received any fan art, so I’m hoping this will inspire some of you to do so!
The first one is actually the very first bit of fan art I ever received, from the one and only Lar deSouza. I’m pretty sure he’s never actually been a “fan” of the comic, but we were both frequent visitors to the (now defunct) Geek Tragedy webcomic and forum, and he sent this my way. It’s always been one of my favorites.
I’ll be posting these here and on the Bardsworth Facebook page. Also, I don’t have names for all the people who sent me fan art, so if you see something that you sent in, please comment and let me know it was you!
Hey guys, this week’s update will be up a little late. I haven’t mentioned this here, but I recently took a part time job and I’m still adjusting to the schedule in how it fits in with everything else I do, including the comic. So the strip will be up soon, just hang in there! Thanks for your patience!
I’ve wanted to talk about this for a while, but I decided the best time would be when I actually finished what I was working on. For the past several months I’ve been diligently coloring the strips that will be going into the very overdue Bardsworth volume two print edition. I am happy to say that as of last night, after six years of obstacles, set-backs, and delays, I colored the very last strip that will go into the book.
Let me tell you – it felt darn good. Those strips have been haunting me for years and I’m glad to finally have them off my plate. I don’t know how many of you know this, but when I started Bardsworth I knew nothing about preparing strips for print. So a good chunk of my early work is unusable to just plop into a print book. To get it ready for the book, I had to go back to the original scanned files, touch those up, and then color them using the previously finished versions as reference. I wanted the strips to look as close to what I put up on the web as possible, only in color of course.
I still have a lot of work left to finish the book, but that was the bulk of the job. However, I think that I can get this thing finished by early-to-mid spring. Right around the time that the Bardsworth novel should be released. So that’s two new things to look forward to!
I hope you’re as excited as I am. This has been a long time coming, and I’ve had many people ask me about it over the years. And now that I have somewhat of a system down, it shouldn’t take me as long to get the third one out. I hope.
Here’s the uncolored cover (one of my next projects to finish) to get you psyched up…
I know, you’re probably getting tired of the all the Patreon posts, but honestly, I need to keep plugging this. You’ll allow me that, right? Right??
As of the beginning of January, my Patreon subscriptions are at a total of $63 per month. Not too shabby! So thank you to all of you who have become patrons. To all of you who haven’t yet, here’s a little incentive – for every $100 we hit, I will put out an extra strip on the following week. That’ll go until the goal of $1000 per month is met, and then it becomes a permanent thing! That’s right, two strips a week moving forward, even if it means killing myself with no sleep!
That’s a lofty goal to reach, though, so I’m staying humble. Still, I know there are a lot of you out there reading. If most of you just joined for $1 a month (that’s only $12 a year), we’d have a chance of getting seriously close to that goal.
And if you are unwilling to spend the money or if you can’t (and I understand both circumstances), please do me a favor and spread the word around. Webcomics are even bigger and more popular now than they were in 2005 when I started. I know that if you sent the Bardsworth URL around to people you know, somebody would get hooked on the comic, and that’s a potential subscriber right there!
I’ll have more to post about than Patreon in the new year, I promise! Something about a book… or was that two books? If I remember I’ll let you know. 