Follow moi… tra-la-laa!

by Grace on July 31, 2016 at 5:11 am
Posted In: Drawing Away

Follow me, tra-la-laa!I haven’t really been making as much use of social media platforms to promote Magellan and grow readership as I could be. I largely know why and I won’t bore you with excuses and details; the main point is that I’m working on improving that. I figure that TwitFace is probably anathema to many of you but for those who do have an account please consider following Magellan on Facebook or little ol’ me on Twitter. At this stage the Facebook page will only be used to post notification of updates but it will give you the opportunity to comment or ask questions, etc; Twitter will likewise notify of Magellan updates but will also be about random stuff that I might see or be doing… since I’m in Australia most of it will be seemingly nonsensical to those outside the land down under. What a treat!! 😀

1 Comment

Vlax gets evil in this fan art!

by Grace on July 1, 2016 at 12:25 am
Posted In: Sequential Daze

As those of you who peruse the comments section might know, VileTerror has been a long time reader of Magellan. This is a wonderful fan art contribution from them of one of Magellan’s baddest big bads – the telepath Vlax, who is currently flexing her villainess muscles in Chapter 6. Many thanks for the great pics, VileTerror!

VileTerror says: “I realized that Vlax has a costume that’s just right for City of Heroes / City of Villains. So, since I recently discovered a fan project to ressurrect the dead MMO, I decided to put together a Vlax costume.”

I’ve also updated the Fan Art page… don’t forget, I looooove getting fan art!! 🙂 🙂

Vlax by VileTerror

Vlax by VileTerror

5 Comments

A cast page of thousands…!!

by Grace on June 26, 2016 at 1:11 am
Posted In: Sequential Daze

Cast page of 64...OK, slight exaggeration… but there are a lot of faces on the Magellan cast page; about 140, give or take a couple of faces.

And that doesn’t even really collect all the characters who’ve at least had a decent speaking role in this current chapter – several first year cadets (JJ, Isina, Jaxine, Ravi/Shakti), some of the older cadets (Punchin’ Judy, Paradoximan), villains (Brainspike, Anti-President) and so on. Nor have characters who have significantly changed their appearance been updated (Lord Psiot, George Lonsdale/Prof Spongeface, Billy, Maya and a few others). It includes characters who’ve never had a word of dialogue, or had cameos and excludes others with significant roles.

Ugh. All up I’d say I’m dealing with 160-175 characters.

It is time for me to seriously think about updating the cast page but what I want to ask of you, dear Magellan reader, is how well does the current page work? Could it be better, and if so how? Keeping in mind that there are so many characters, what is the best way to help familiarise readers – both new and regular, long time – with the many faces who pop in and out of stories, often hundreds of pages (and, from a weekly serialised perspective, over a year) apart??

I was wondering if I should have larger descriptions for the main characters (say 10 or so),  then use what I’m currently doing for the secondary characters, and just faces with names for the third tier and cameo characters. Or what? Any suggestions and/or examples of webcomics with large casts that have conquered their cast pages would be greatly appreciated.

9 Comments

Update…!

by Grace on June 6, 2016 at 8:52 am
Posted In: Sequential Daze

Time is relative!Here’s a bit of an update on progress with the current story… and beyond!

It’s been going for ages (“dragging on” some might say) but the current story – Lock(e)down – is slowly reaching its end point. I would like to say I’ll have it wrapped at 300 pages but that might be optimistic. 310-320 pages more likely, especially if I want to give it a well paced and resolved climax and epilogue. If I could get myself back to twice a week updates (or even thrice, remember those days?!?) then it would all be over in a mere ten weeks or so; but given my other distractions and commitments and employment at the moment one update a week is about the best I can realistically do. So I’ll keep plugging away, a week at a time and that will get us over the finish line… eventually.

The good news, I hope, is that I still have Magellan stories I want to tell. Lots of them! My mind is busily constructing elements of the next major chapter and I have lots of shorter stories (20-30 pages) I’d love to tell… either by way or the main site or as weekly updates.

I know it might look like I’m phoning the updates in sometimes but I just wanted you all to know there’s still considerable enthusiasm for Magellan in my foreseeable creative future.

8 Comments

Archive woes…

by Grace on January 4, 2016 at 6:08 am
Posted In: Sequential Daze

Archive woes

As many of you may have noticed if you recently tried to reread any significant number of back pages the archive is a bit stuffed at the moment. Having initially tried to ignore the problem and then realising it wasn’t going away I think I may now have found a solution. It appears to be an issue with the permalink naming feature and may have happened when I recently updated the WP software.

Ugh.

Anyway, I believe I can sort it out over the next few hours. Thanks so much to readers who brought this problem to my attention and especially those who told me the specific pages where the breaks happened.

In other reasonably good news, my mini-hiatus has helped to get me refocused on the creative process and I now have a number of thumbnails and draft pages in the bag… a significant buffer for me. I fully expect to be back in business by January 17.

Update: OK, I think I’ve got them all sorted, please let me know if any pages don’t load or if you end up with a page that’s out of order or shouldn’t be the one that is served. Many thanks for your help and your patience! 🙂

2 Comments