Fallen Kitten

Check out the Walking the Lethe Volume One Proof

Amanda — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:56:23 +0000

Just a quick video to show you our printer proof for Volume One of Walking the Lethe. If you didn’t preorder, keep your hair on. The book will also be available on our website and at the London MCM Expo at our Comics Village table.

Dan Potter Talks Creative Work at Pecha Kucha

Amanda — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:11:38 +0000

Here in Maastricht, we have a regular short lecture series that is part of the Pecha Kucha family. Given all over the world at similar events, Pecha Kucha refers to a type of 6-minute lecture in which the speaker has 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide. Any and all topics can, and are, discussed. The only guide is that your idea be new or interesting.

At the most recent event Dan gave a talk about the creative process that brought him to Walking the Lethe and webcomics. Please take a look.

Printing Walking the Lethe: Obtaining an ISBN & Barcode

Amanda — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:00:10 +0000

Next up, getting an ISBN and barcode for your website. An ISBN is a unique identifier primarily used for books. It’s an international standard, but you do need to obtain it via the country you are publishing and and residing in. Here’s our process in the Netherlands.

Plus a short discussion of obtaining a barcode, even if you don’t really need one.

Links:
– http://ISBN.nl
– http://scanology.eu/nl
– http://www.tux.org/~milgram/bookland/

The Walking the Lethe Volume 1 is still available for preorder until Sept. 19th. Please visit http://walkingthelethe.com for more information.

News! iPads & London Expo 2010

DanPotter — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:30:06 +0000

How are you guys? Good I hope. I’ve been busy, work has been kicking my butt as I madly attempt to prep for a conference in Paris next week.

I’ve got News!

First: The preorder ends on Sunday! Order your books now!

Second: Walking the Lethe is now available on the iPhone/iTouch and iPad! Right now chapter 1 and chapter 2 are free while chapter 3 is just $1.99. New chapters will appear when the first page of the chapter hits the website. So in October chapter 4 will be released. All chapters besides the first two will cost $1.99. Thanks to Morten over at Oxicomics.com for making the process so easy.

Third: We’re going to be at the MCM Expo in London at the end of October! A lot of our time has been going into prepping for this event. We’re bringing 50 copies of the book, prints, buttons and all sorts of other stuff too. We’ll be in artist alley (or Comic Village as they call it at the Expo) and right next to Yamino of Sister Claire! Its our first BIIIG con and we’re hoping to have a blast. If you can make it, let us know and drop by our table. Wait till you see Amanda’s costume on Saturday, she’s cosplaying a character we’ll see in chapter four, Cat-girl, Walking the Lethe style. And that thought should keep you up at night.

Thanks for reading!

Printing Walking the Lethe Volume 1: A Look at the Cover

Amanda — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:51:55 +0000

Our cover illustration for Walking the Lethe Volume 1 is complete and the files off to the printer for the creation of the proof copy prior to our final print run. This is exciting, so today I share with you the cover illustration and the elements we added to make it into a proper cover. The illustration was completed by Chris Dozier of http://radcore.us and I used Photoshop to create the rest of the cover elements.

Preorders for Volume 1 are still open until September 15th. If you’d like to order a copy of the book, please visit us at http://walkingthelethe.com.

The Effective Use of the Text Widget

Amanda — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:00:00 +0000

The Text Widget box is a built-in, reusable widget for WordPress in which you can use HTML and Javascript, as well as plain text. Highly versatile, I use them frequently to place links, create customized announcement boxes, and easily place code for feeding ads from all sorts of services. Like all other widgets, they are easy to use as well; just a simple drag-and-drop on the Widget page of your admin section. Here are three ways you can use can make the most of the Text Widget:

1. Placing Ads

The text widget can be a convenient way to place ads in your sidebars. Simply cut & paste the provided code into a text widgets that you’ve placed into a sidebar. You can add a header or title if desired, but it is not necessary. Just hit “save” and refresh to see the results.

I like to use widgetized spaces for an ad in the header. The space can be sized and positioned via CSS and then the website owner can change their ads code without entering the PHP files.

2. Using a Table

Tables are not a good way to layout an entire website, but they are still effective ways to organize a small section. Since the text widget take HTML you can wet up a simple table like the one below to display small buttons side-by-side.

You can include some inline CSS if desired, but if an element has already been declared in your main CSS file, it will be overwritten.

3. Customize the CSS for a Single Widget

In the previous suggestion, we built a table inside our text widget. Now you may want to customize the CSS further (to remove the borders for example). To do this, you’ll need to create some rules in your CSS file for just this text widget.

First you need to figure out the unique Id of your widget. “View Source” in your browser and find your widget. I like to write something unlikely in the widget like “elephant monkeys” to make it easier to find. Then find the beginning of the widget where the Div is. There will be a Id titled “text-xx” where xx is a number. That’s the unique Id of your widget.

Once you know the Id name, pop open your CSS file and create a new section. The # symbol stands for Id. You can now edit the appearance of just this widget.

When you’re finished making changes, save your file and refresh your website to view your handiwork. Now so long as you don’t delete this widget you can change the contents in the WordPress admin section and still use your specialized code.

If you need help with writing HTML and CSS, check out W3Schools for more information.

Printing Walking the Lethe: Setting Up InDesign

Amanda — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Video two of Printing Walking the Lethe is all about how I set up our manuscript in InDesign. I talk about opening a new document, how to use Master pages, placing text and images, and saving the file as a PDF. The result will, we hope, be a handsome looking book. InDesign was a little tricky to get started in, but as soon as I got the feel for it, it was a pretty comfortable program. I’d recommend it to anyone who needs to layout a book.

Walking the Lethe Volume 1 is still available for preorder for 15 euros +S/H. Check out the full deal at Walking the Lethe.

This video needs a transcript. Want to help? Drop me a line.

Launch of Flying Sparks

Amanda — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:00:00 +0000

I’m please to announce the launch of Flying Sparks, a brand-spanking new superhero webcomic and love story rolled into one. It’s creator, Otomo, contacted me to design and implement his website and thanks to some strong art from his artist, we came up with something I’m very pleased with.

Homepage for Flying Spark featuring the artist's cityscape. (click to enlarge)

Comics page features both side & bottom navigation. (click to enlarge

This website is a moderately modified child theme for Inkblot 3.0 and uses the Webcomic 3.0 plugin for WordPress. The design is built around the cityscape background with the addition of ribbon like features the color of our heroes cape. The site has been designed to present the comic on a secondary page because Otomo has a bonanza of multimedia ideas planned. You’ll want to stay tuned.

Otomo is also the author of True Believer Reviews, a comic review blog, and Comics Related, a site about all things comic-y. Be sure to go give his new webcomic some love and check out his other online work.

Printing Walking the Lethe: Picking Pages

Amanda — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

We are currently going through the exciting process of compiling our first volume of Walking the Lethe, consisting of the first 4 chapters of our story. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of work, so I thought I’d share some of those steps with you. Today, a brief discussion of the types of pages common to graphic novels, both professional and independently printed.

Naturally I also wish to encourage you to preorder our book so I get to have fun putting together volume 2 as well in a year.

This video needs a transcript. Want to help? Drop me a line.

Copyleft Comics: Mimi and Eunice

Amanda — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:14:09 +0000

One of my other hats is as a copyright researcher, so when I ran across this little crossover gem in my RSS feed, I thought I’d share. Mimi & Eunice is a copyleft comic, both in licensing and content. Essentially, rather than completely reserving her copyright, the author has decided to license the content to allow as wide as use as possible while still maintaining credit for her work. The content of the strip pokes fun as the problems with current copyright, trademark, and IP law (as well as religion and the human condition).

Mimi & Eunice is a bit heavy handed at times (and would look nicer with some Previous/Next buttons), but the characters are cute, so I’m willing to forgive them. Plus I can embed the comics here for your entertainment, which is always fun. I found this little sequence an amusing take on a webcomic humor mainstay: the poop joke.

Mimi & Eunice is copyleft(ed) via CC-BY-SA and is drawn by Nina Paley.