Portable City

VanCAF BEGINS! Kris and I FILLED OUR TABLE. Come on over and say...

Sat, 25 May 2013 13:41:13 -0400

VanCAF BEGINS! Kris and I FILLED OUR TABLE. Come on over and say hi!

Books! Puppets! All of the colours! Come find me at VanCAF this...

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:58:54 -0400

Books! Puppets! All of the colours! Come find me at VanCAF this weekend and these, too, shall be yours!

Here’s the neon knight puppet papercraft I made for...

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:57:21 -0400

Here’s the neon knight puppet papercraft I made for VanCAF! I’ll be selling him as a kit. The colours are a little off in this photo, but I’ll get a nice shot of him at the table this weekend! HOLY COW SO EXCITED.

bycrom: The limited edition VanCAF books arrived! It’s all...

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:59:06 -0400

bycrom:

The limited edition VanCAF books arrived! It’s all becoming real! Whoah!

VANCAAAAAAAAAF! OH MAN. Vancouver I am coming for your comics...

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:56:40 -0400

VANCAAAAAAAAAF! OH MAN. Vancouver I am coming for your comics this weekend!! I will be tabling beside the excellent Kris Sayer, who is bringing her spooky Viking ghost story, Corpse Door, which I am PUMPED to get my hands on, and I have helpfully labelled our table on that map up there!

I will be bringing the limited run Convention Edition of the collected By Crom, (only 25 are being made! I’m gonna number them!) and pens and pencils to draw all over your copy, should you grab one. I will also have Conan paper dolls sold separately in little plastic bags, ready to colour and cut out and conquer! I also have 8 Volume 1 zines, so claim yours now if you want it! And one more illustration-puppet-build-your-own kit as well, so keep your eyes peeled! It’ll be practically neon so you would probably have trouble missing it…

And I will ALSO be bringing some of the beautiful zines put together by the Friendship Edition Collective! That includes the Puffed Shoggoths zine, the Moon Power zine (which can only be bought at conventions) and some minis from other members, including this gorgeous sci-fi zine by Jenn Woodall.

So, yeah, a pile of limited edition and con-exclusive content is about to drop on you, Vancouver, and I need to move as much as I can so I can take all of your comics back home with me! Especially Rebecca Dart’s work. Just sayin’.

See you in, uh, holy crap, TWO DAYS?! SEE YOU IN TWO DAYS, VANCOUVER.

Society 6 is offering free shipping again, so I added a few new...

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:18:29 -0400

Society 6 is offering free shipping again, so I added a few new pieces to the selection! That Lovecraftian Picture in the House tshirt is just white ink with the shirt colour standing in for the black, so it should look seriously ghostly in person :) And I can’t help but remind people that the hexabunny remains glorious and dainty no matter the radiation levels.

The one last fancy thing I am working on for VanCAF is a 21”...

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:46:35 -0400

The one last fancy thing I am working on for VanCAF is a 21” jointed paper figurine/puppet. You may recognize this guy from the awesome TOJam game I got to make two weeks ago!

This is the printed-at-home from-photoshop-roughs prototype and i am SUPER pumped to get working on a glossy, detailed, neon version of this dude!

bycrom: NEWS POST ALERT: Thanks to your feedback regarding the...

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:26:41 -0400

bycrom:

NEWS POST ALERT:

Thanks to your feedback regarding the shipping costs, and to my printer for making me multiple prototypes, I have squeezed The Collected By Crom out of the package shipping category and back down into the lettermail shipping category! This means it is literally just over a third of the original price to ship them, and I am so immensely grateful because I know the shipping cost was a big hurdle for some people.

This also means it’s not absurd to ship internationally! Non-north american people can still get this book!

Guys I am so glad this was doable, oh man.

So, if you were frustrated by the shipping price, go take a look now, as it is considerably improved!

And for those excellent people who preordered anyway, I have issued you a refund for the difference in shipping. It should reach you via your paypal email this afternoon! If you don’t hear from paypal or receive your refund please contact me immediately at rachel at portablecity dot net. Please also contact me if you have any questions about this!

So, thanks to my printer, and thanks also to the Canada Post counter woman who weighed and measured things with me for a while this afternoon.

And in other news, all of the current orders for volume 1 have been shipped!

Man, what a day.

We returned to our Trail of Cthulhu campaign last night so...

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:01:24 -0400

We returned to our Trail of Cthulhu campaign last night so George is back in the fight! For better or worse.

bycrom: So, that update I was promising! Firstly, over the next...

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:01:39 -0400

bycrom:

So, that update I was promising!

Firstly, over the next 6 or so weeks while I prep the big book and collect and prepare all of its extra content and do prepress and copy editing and promotion and all of the awesome things one gets to do when one self-publishes, I do have to put By Crom’s comics on hiatus.

What does that mean for you guys, here, watching this space?

Well, I promise to keep Tuesdays a day when you get a sneak peek into the book! A lot of the content I’m working on now will never be published online in its entirety, but a joke here, a Conan there, and this blog will stay active while I get this book to the presses. So, here’s the first of many tiny vignette Conans you’ll be able to find in the book!

In addition, news, updates, places you can find me with a stack of By Croms, and all related activity will still be centred here. And I’d love it if you guys also kept in touch! You can bug me via tumblr, right here.

Secondly, the next place you can find me and a big pile of books is at VanCAF! I’ll have some convention-edition Collected By Croms (only a little bonus content, but ALL of the web comics ever published) on sale for a convention price, as well as prints, originals, postcards and a stack of paper to do requests on. I’d love to see you West Coast folks there!

So, here we go, into an age undreamed of!

With offices in London and writers from the US, UK, Canada,...

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:34:54 -0400

With offices in London and writers from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and arguably France, Stone Skin Press is a decidedly post-national operation. Yet since Creative Director Robin D. Laws calls Hogtown home, a nice swath of The Lion and the Aardvark’s 70 contributors happen to reside in the Greater Toronto Area. Thanks to the good offices of the Rowers Pub Reading Series, we’ll be celebrating that fact on Tuesday May 14th at 8pm, in the cozy, craft beer loving confines of the Victory Café in Mirvish Village (Bloor / Bathurst.) (via Stone Skin Press » Blog Archive » Lion and the Aardvark Toronto Launch Event)

bycrom: OH MY GOD IT’S A PREORDER. The Collected By Crom is...

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:02:15 -0400

bycrom:

OH MY GOD IT’S A PREORDER.

The Collected By Crom is coming! For reals! I’m so excited, guys! So, how can you get it?

Well, if you are attending VanCAF (May 25-26, Vancouver BC), I will have a limited run of saddle-stapled convention copies with all of the comics and the paper doll! And I’ll be on hand to sketch and sign and make Conan references with you all! OH man I can’t wait!

But for the sweet, sweet perfect-bound copy with all the unpublished bonus content and all the silly pinups, you’ll want to preorder here (it comes in dead tree OR in pdf!) All preorders placed in May will get sketches, either in the physical books or in a .jpg in your inbox if you’re a digital distribution kinda person!

This book will be launching on July 5th so until then watch this space for bonus content, sneak peeks and updates! And thanks so much for all the encouragement and support and enthusiasm and fellow nerdiness along the way - it’s been amazing.

GUYS I AM SO EXCITED.

bycrom: I’ve been working hard on the collected book, and some...

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:12:40 -0400

bycrom:

I’ve been working hard on the collected book, and some of the most fun stuff is the cover design! Here’s the inset painting - the whole cover I’ll save for some big news coming VERY SOON.

VERY VERY SOON. Watch this space for more info!

Feast your eyes upon our hellishly multiplayer #TOJam game and...

Sun, 05 May 2013 20:03:38 -0400

Feast your eyes upon our hellishly multiplayer #TOJam game and weep! HELLJOUST LIVES!

HELL JOUST TITLE SCREEN. Woo! Probably lots of snazzying up to...

Sun, 05 May 2013 15:47:20 -0400

HELL JOUST TITLE SCREEN. Woo! Probably lots of snazzying up to be done here still though.

Toe jam?

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:55:21 -0400

http://www.tojam.ca/home/default.asp ! It’s a three day game jam. It is an excuse to CRAZY SILLY STUFF. So I am doing rainbow jousting in hell.

Here are our two players, their mounts, their lances, and the...

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:50:11 -0400

Here are our two players, their mounts, their lances, and the audience of demons!

TOJam has turned into an excuse for me to draw tons of knights...

Fri, 03 May 2013 17:47:12 -0400

TOJam has turned into an excuse for me to draw tons of knights in silly armor.

This is an illustration I did for a zine Evan Dahm’s...

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:29:33 -0400

This is an illustration I did for a zine Evan Dahm’s putting together called Hail Stan. It was fun! I can’t wait to see the rest.

Spirits and Sparks Combat UI has been thoroughly skinned! This...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:42:00 -0400

Spirits and Sparks Combat UI has been thoroughly skinned! This is all still first pass, because the whole game has changed feel and focus a little since I started doing art and style and ui and such and it’s not unified, but hopefully the language is all making sense!

This is our most strategic combat yet! And that is a placeholder monster. Do not judge the monsters by this monster. There are even prettier monsters coming.

Also, “glowing” is how I tell the player things are happening. And in this game, things are happening constantly.