Always the Jester (DD4, Chapter One, Pages 38-40a)

… in which the truest type of familial affection is demonstrated.

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Good news everybody!

Finally, FINALLY! I get to start work on Chapter Two. I am excited (there are so many fun/dumb things I want to do) and terrified (I'm certain it will be the most difficult chapter to bring together in a smooth, easy-reading, satisfying way).

Look forward to next week's update, when I probably will have discovered exactly what kind of trouble I've got myself into with this bonkers chapter.

Webtoon / Tapas

I've finished reformatting Chapter One for the Webtoon/Tapas vertical scroll. I'm excited to see how you all enjoy it.

Did I explain my rationale for reformatting for those services? It's not super-complicated.

First, it turns out I really like the vertical scroll. This surprised me. And I want every reader to have the best reading experience possible. For the last decade, I figured that meant reading the pages as they would be presented in a book, as two pages open before you. That's why I built the delilahdirk.com site to display pages like that. I still like that reading option, and I'm still going to use it for DD4, but I'm also making the vertical scroll available, because it's also a good way to read.

Second, look, I'll be honest, I think it will be a good way to grow the audience for this work and Delilah in general. More importantly, it will be a good way to grow the audience by also providing a good reading experience. When I look at the ways to present this work to readers, this seems like a good delivery method. Would I rather everyone sign up for a platform-agnostic RSS feed? Sure. But until the current generation of web users rediscovers the purity of RSS, it's time to try these webcomic intermediaries.

Patron Acknowledgement Pages

Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on the previous post about these acknowledgement pages. I did some typography explorations, but kept on coming back to the original typeface. Here's the first page:

I added rough grid lines, coloured some of the "ink" to tie it in with the paper better, and I manually nudged and messed-up some of the text entries. I'm a lot happier with how it looks now. It's still a bit of a legibility… challenge… but (and thank you to everyone who's on board with this aspect) that makes it feel more "authentic," which I like.

Next week: the final pages of Chapter One (happyface/sadface)! Also: what to look forward to from Chapter Two (happyface/nervoussweats)!