Bardsworth

This past week has proven to me that my goal of catching up to my backlog of updates is probably not achievable under my current circumstances.  I had every intention of putting out two pages, and instead I put out one very late one, due to a blizzard that lasted two days which kept me in a constant state of shoveling and looking after a kid who would have otherwise been in school (among a handful of other wonderful reasons).

So here’s the deal – I still owe one more bonus update that I missed, and I will try to get that out to you.  But moving forward, I’m just going to jump back on doing my normal updates and chalk the ones I missed up to a loss.  That way I don’t stress about it, and you get your regular updates back.

For my patrons, I am desperately going to get back on track with your rewards.  I got the wallpaper done and I’ll be moving on to other stuff for the other levels this week… provided the universe doesn’t throw me any more curve balls.

You guys are the most patient and understanding readers a webcomic artist could ask for, so thank you for your loyalty through all of this.  If I could bake cookies for you all, I would.

At this point I’m two updates behind, plus two bonus updates for Patreon goals, so I’m scrambling to get them done as quickly as I can.  Which means that there may not be the normal Thursday updates once a week for a while, but they’ll go up as I get them done.  If you don’t want to keep checking back, please make sure you’re following me on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr (I’ll probably be signing up for Instagram soon as well) for frequent status updates.

In the meantime, I will be posting uncolored “preview” pages on my Patreon page for EVERYONE to read, patron or not.  It’s just easier to upload them there than it is to do it here, then delete it and upload the finished version so my archives aren’t all screwy.

If you have any questions, please ask.  Otherwise, bear with me as I race to keep this machine going.

Here’s the preview for this week (I’m hoping to have the page fully finished by tonight):

This past weekend I attended No Such Con for my third year. NSCon is a little student-run convention on the campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, and it’s always a fun time. While attendance seemed to be way down this year, the energy was still present and everyone seemed to be having a pretty good weekend. And I must say that the talent of the artists and guests that they brought in this year was nigh-overwhelming.

I did several panels – two of them will be made available to listen to online (I’ll post about them when they are), and the third was my annual webcomics panel. The first two were an artist and a writer Q&A, each moderated by author extraordinaire Thomm Quackenbush.  My own panel was quite special this year because of the assistance of Kez of What it Takes, who was also kind enough to provide me with transportation to the con this year, as well as our newfound friends Kaiser and Richard of Eagle Ordinary.  The combined experiences and enthusiasm of all of us webcomic folks made for a deeper well to pull from and I hope the people present in the panel got something out of it.

There were a few other artists that had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with over the weekend.  There’s J.M. DeSantis, an amazingly talented artist who does the comic Chadhiyana as well as Gentleman Cthulhu.  Sitting next to him was Matt Farley, a very prolific and funny musician, and sometimes actor.  On the other side of the room was Emily of the webcomic Anarchy Dreamers, and her friend whose name is escaping me at the moment Danielle (but with whom I bonded over our enjoyment of Blue Oyster Cult after I noticed her BOC/Godzilla t-shirt), both lovely and talented young women.  There was also Dezi Sienty, who I unfortunately didn’t talk to much in the artist alley, but with whom we had some good discussions in the artist panel.

My two favorite highlights came from the folks sitting to my left, though, at Adam Tilford’s table (Adam was at the writers panel with me the year previously, but I didn’t get to talk much with him this year because he was so busy with panels).  One was meeting Natalie Van Sistine, a voice actress and podcastress who approached my table with a surprised look on her face, and she proceeded to tell me that she used to read Bardsworth when she was in high school.  Hearing that and seeing the nostalgic look in her eyes would have been enough to make my weekend.  And then I met the other voice actress at the table, Amber Lee Conners, who has done a number of voices I don’t know, but then mentioned being the voice of Android 18 in Dragon Ball Z Abridged, which I just recently finished rewatching all the way through.  After also learning that we shared a love for fairies and the underappreciated Final Fantasy 8, I had to get a picture with her.

So while the weekend was not great for me financially, I did have some amazing moments meeting some great people. I hope I can head back there again next year and see what adventures await me.

Other NSCon Write-ups:
J.M.’s – http://jmdesantis.com/2017/02/no-such-con-2017-write-up/
Kez’s – http://acityinaplace.com/
Natalie’s – http://nvansistine.weebly.com/updates/no-such-con-2017