A few days ago as I was getting Moon Town ready for the new two-page spread format, I upgraded ComicPress and WordPress, and the site got all farked up.

Thankfully, Andrew “Wiggee” Wignall stepped into the breach and fixed everything. Check out the footer, and you’ll see that awesome monkey icon. That means Wiggee was here and saved the Moon Town bacon. Thank goodness, and thank you, Wiggee! I loves me some bacon.

Well, it was bound to happen, I guess. I’ve been working in Photoshop for 20 years, so I guess I was due for it, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I spent 12 hours on Saturday coloring Moon Town pages 2 and 3. I’m very excited about it, it was starting too look good. I figured I had another 5 or 6 hours left on it and I was going to be able to upload it and share it with you for Tuesday. Alas, it was not to be. I went to open the file on Sunday, and found the PSD was corrupted.

The error:

“Could not complete your request because of a problem parsing the path data.”  

Ah, come on, Photoshop. You can do better than that! Say it like it is: “Your PSD is corrupted. Whatever time you put into this file is gone.”

And so it was. I spent a lot of time on Sunday looking online, Googling, checking out different forums. In the end, I did find a utility: Photoshop File Extract/Recover Tool from Telegraphics (hey ho my Aussie brethren!) but unfortunately even that utility, their DOS command line version and their online version were unable to save the file. It’s like Saturday never happened. My time on Sunday would have been better spent re-painting the file.

The lesson here, for those of you who don’t know it: backup often. I do, but even that didn’t save me because the backup was the corrupted file. Reverting took me back a day to the inked version. That’s how it is. But here’s the bigger lesson, something new for me even after twenty years: Don’t SAVE. Instead, SAVE AS. If you SAVE, and the file corrupts, you’re screwed. If you SAVE AS, you’ll have different versions to choose from. If one corrupts, maybe the others will be OK. You can always delete the extras later.

Luckily, I had saved a version of the PSD before I started coloring, so I still have the cleaned up, blackspotted inks (see detail, above, and the thumbnail to the left). So, that’s something. But unfortunately, Tuesday’s update will not happen. It will take me another 12 to 15 hours to get that file colored up to the point I had it. That’s a week of evenings and I’m sick over it, but I’m trying to be philosophical about it and just move on. I’ll get that page spread up here as soon as I can.

See you then.

Well, this is a pretty good representation of how the characters will look in Moon Town going forward. I think they are striking a nice balance between stylized and representational, without becoming Photorealistic or Cartoony. If you’ve been watching this process closely, you may also have noticed that I’e changed Cassie’s spacesuit a bit, made it a little more believable, which was one of the goals. I also made her a little less of a sex-pot, as that had not been my intent in the beginning.

For those interested, a before and after comparison, below:

I put up a little PROCESS PAGE for those who are interested in a little behind-the-scenes info. Enjoy!

Here’s my redesign on Jimmy Dillard, Luna Seven’s resident mechanic

Hello! For those interested in such things, here’s some more progress on Moon Town 2.0 from the past couple of days. Above, the layouts for pages 2 and 3. Yes, I’ll be doing 2 page spreads, and designing them in most cases to be seen together. So, that’s fun. Also, completed designs for Simon Tripline and Moon Town’s Veejay Triple Bee:

Until next time, enjoy!

As many of you are aware, for a variety of reasons, I am re-booting Moon Town.

The Moon Town project we all knew and loved has changed and moved on. I’m redesigning and overhauling everything. Rather than changing things in mid-story, I just cut off the attempt I didn’t want to continue, and I’m starting over. I’ll be creating a graphic novel like Jason Brubaker did with his graphic novel reMIND. I’ll be telling the same story as before, but from a different direction and in a different way.

At this point, I think I can do two comic book pages a week, and that’s my plan. But if things get busy at work or home, I’ll have to adjust things. This is still unfunded, and I’m still doing it in my spare time around a very busy life. But I think this incarnation of Moon Town is important enough to get rid of some other things in my life. You have to make sacrifices for important things, so I’m spending less time on Facebook and Twitter (not such a sacrifice), I won’t be doing any fan art or guest spots at other artist’s websites or books (a bigger sacrifice) and I won’t be able to write novels or short stories or play music for a while. Maybe a long time. (HUGE sacrifices, but what the hey. Ya can’t have everything; where would you put it?)

My plan is to complete a 100 page book in February or March 2013, and release it in print and digitally as soon after that as I can. It all depends on how the next year goes, but I’m committed, and hopeful.

If you’re a fan of the old Moon Town, I hope you will stick around to see this new incarnation, and I’ll be making a PDF of the old comic pages soon. If you’re new to Moon Town, I think you’ll be in for a treat.

With all the talk lately about redesigning Moon Town and my efforts on Cassandra Quinn 2.0, there’s been some interest in what Simon 2.0 would look like. So… here ya go.

More designs on the way.

More exploration for Cassandra Quinn 2.0

The Webcomic Alliance has seen fit to make Moon Town their Pick of the Week! I don’t know what to say except thank you, and I’m honored!

If you’re not familiar with the Webcomic Alliance, I need to tell you that they are a great resource for webcomics, and you are really missing something. Go check it out!