UA:Comic Blog

Blog #68

Thursday 10 October 2013

10 October 2013:
     The third Anniversary of UA: the Comic and the thirty-third Anniversaty of the day I drew T*chorel for the first time, starting myself on the path that led to this comic. While actually creating the comic has revealed aspects and scenes from the story that I'd never imagined in the way-too-many years I spent planning it, I do enjoy the fact that this day's update is a scene I'd laid out over thirty years ago.

Hmm... Five months between blog posts. And it really doesn't take long. I am seriously not good at remembering to do this.

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Blog #66

Wednesday 10 October 2012

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of United Allegiance: the Comic and the 32nd anniversary of the day I first drew T'Chorel and began creating the UA universe.

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Blog #65

Tuesday 18 September 2012

time keeping in the UA universe

Theko (thee-koh) - 1/100th of a Mona. Approximnately 1/2 second Earth time.

Mona (moh-nah) - 1/100th of an Ora. Approximately 50 seconds Earth time.

Ora (oh-rah) - 1/25th of a day. Approximately 83 minutes & 20 seconds Earth time.

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Blog #63

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Turns out that lunches and rest breaks make for really constructive drawing time. Paonia Pawns has a full month buffer in the queue for the first time since the fall of 2010, including two upcoming bonus updates. UA:Comic is also slowly gaining a buffer.

In addition to tomorrow's regular Wednesday update, there will also be a bonus update this Saturday (15 September). Why? Well, I wanted Paonia Pawns to be able to celebrate its 8th anniversary with strip # 1700, and it was 4 strips shy based on its update schedule. Since I was getting some good drawing time in, I decided to do bonus Saturday updates (PP's original update day) in September. There are five September Saturdays this year, so I decided to give UA:Comic the extra bonus.

On top of all that, I've re-read the entire archive and I'm working on some major updates: 8 strips with typos will be corrected, 20+ new cast images will be added, and a massive update to the Chublei (encyclopedia) is already underway.

I really thought that blog posts would outnumber strips here at UA:Comic, especially given the slow update schedule. Now that I'm building a buffer, perhaps I'll be more inclided to drop more thought bombs on you.

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Blog #62

Tuesday 10 July 2012

Easier, but still not easy when one has zero support and active blocking of any home-time to draw. Grr, argh.

Desite that, there are two rays of light for me. One, tomorrow's update is already in the queue. And, two, had I stuck to the one-update-a-week (like I should have), I would be six strips behind where I actually am.

Now if I can just find that elusive eighth day of the week, I might be able to catch back up.

To those of you reading this, I can only apologize. As I've mentioned in the past Paonia Pawns takes priority if my schedule is screwed. And it's been screwed a lot lately.

I do have the next couple of scripts written and an outline of the major upcoming action, so maybe I'll be able to keep the wheels form falling off (again) for a couple of months.

P.S. Personally, I hate posts like this, and I'm not trying to make excuses. I put this online and I have no real excuse for not sticking to the update schedule. But without this post, you'd have no idea what was going on. So, there you go. Sorry.

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Blog #61

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Moving to Wednesday starting tomorrow. Last minute updates seem easier during the week than on weekends.

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Blog #60

Friday 10 February 2012

2:35am

Bunch of small site updates. Fixed a few Copyright statements that still said 2011. Made an overdue change to the mobile version of the index page. Added Marik to random-icon list, joining T'Chorel and Nup.

Why am I doing this in the middle of the night? Acid reflux. Laying back down right now is pretty much out. And it's less than an hour before the alarm's going off to "start" my day. Writing or drawing either comic right now wouldn't work, but site updates are do-able while only half-awake.

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Blog #59

Friday 10 February 2012

2:25am

OK. It's beginning to feel like I'm back on track. I'm having to use lunch hours, breaks, morning commutes on the bus, and late-night "What the hell was I trying to draw" sessions, and still no buffer to speak of, but Paonia Pawns is still updating on-time and UA is back on a once a week schedule. Small steps. But at least we're moving.

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Blog #58

Wednesday 04 January 2012

UA:Comic will return with a new strip on Saturday. And the Saturday after that. And so on. I'm hoping that I won't have to fight any major battles to get this strip back to a consistant update schedule, but I'll do it if it comes to that.

Question: Why did many of the old blog posts disappear?
Answer: I probably shouldn't have re-read them. Having concluded that certain ones really sucked, I deleted them.

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Blog #54

Wednesday 29 June 2011

A note about today's strip: Marik is nearly 17 and Alesan is 16 and a couple of month, however, the calendar on Teroko does not match the calendar on Earth. While Marik and Alesan are treated like minor on their world, their earth-equivilant ages (and physical/emotional maturity) is that of people in their early 20s.

Marik: 17 * 500 / 365.25 roughly equals 23 years, 3 months.

Alesan: 16.3 * 500 / 365.25 roughly equals 22 years, 4 moths.

So while their society (and they themselves) sees them as children who haven't even reached college-age yet, they do have the maturity to make the kinds of decisions that they're making.

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Blog #50

Wednesday 25 May 2011

It seems appropriate that my 50th blog post be about the 50th strip. It's not that I have anything in particular to say about the 50th strip.

Of course the 50th strip is number 49 because I started with strip zero. Starting with zeroseemed right for a science fiction strip. And it also discouraged me from taking the milestones too seriously. (In fact, if the 50th blog and 50th strip had come into such perfect alignment, I probably wouldn't have commented on it at all. At least not to anyone besides myself.) Milestone will not effect the plot, nor the pacing thereof. They will not be commented on within the continuity of the strip. I intend to let the story unfold organically.

As an aside, I'm still upset and pissed about the abrupt cancellation of SGU and the resulting never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger. I'm seriously considering continuing the story in comic form, if only for my own satifaction. I think two more 20-episode seasons would be enough to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Now all I need is an extra six hours in each day.

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Blog #1

Sunday 10 October 2010

     10 October 1980: Sitting, increasingly distracted, in Algebra I (my last class of the day), I started doodling faces. One of them (a scan of which can be seen at the bottom of all of the "Extras" pages, including this one) caught my imagination and "Charlie" was born. Charlie (now T*Chorel) soon became the central figure in what I saw as a "Future History" in the vein of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and H. Beam Piper. Disparate stories flowed together to form a cohesive universe.

     For thirty years I have (almost completely) failed to live up to the grand plans I had for Charlie and the others he crosses paths with.

     10 October 2010: The thirtieth anniversary of that first sketch (and entertaining date 10/10/10) seemed like a good time to start rectifying the situation. I've proven, to myself at least, that I can set and stick to a consistant update schedule with my other webcomic, Paonia Pawns. And so now I will finally, belatedly, embark on telling T*Chorel's story.

     Welcome to "United Allegiance: the Web Comic"

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