Coffee Time

From May 30th to June 10th the site will be inactive. It'll still be here, just with not much going on. I'm going to be flying out early Wednesday morning to Connecticut to see my younger sister get married. Then I will be the lone unwed Kratky sibling. I'm okay with that.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to let the site chill out for a bit. We probably would have taken the full two weeks, but the current episode of Across the Way only had one page left. It wouldn't make sense for that 16 page episode to have to wait two weeks for the last page to arrive. So you get a half week of Coffee Time Comics.

I'm pretty excited about some of the upcoming pages and episodes. I'm sure you've noticed that Across the Way has all been within the same day so far. Not any more. It's getting well into the story now, and the world is going to start getting a little bigger. Coffee Time Is also moving along to a point where we'll know what all the main characters motives are. I really hope that everybody is enjoying what we're putting out there. We don't get a ton of feedback so we don't totally know. I guess what really matters is that we're enjoying it. The process of making a webcomic continues to be a challenge.

When I get back there are a lot of areas of the site that need updating. I'm going to get on that and let you know what has been updated. One of my main goals is to have a downloadable flyer, and possibly a contest for people who post our fliers in different places. We'll see.

This is like the third time in the last two months or so I've been late with the news, but I have a good excuse. I didn't get home until around 9:30 pm on Sunday and i was returning from Reno which is an 8 hour drive for me. About 15 minutes after i arrived I had to get to work on yesterdays Coffee Time page, putting it through photoshop and putting in the dialogue. By the time I was done with that I was beat.

What was I doing in Reno? Well my girlfriend lives there and she was graduating from the Orvis School of Nursing at the University of Nevada-Reno. I was there for the pinning ceremony and main graduation and I have to say that it was all pretty damn exciting as well as nerve-racking. I thought being on stage was hard when I had to pin her, but for some reason watching her get her diploma from far away in the crowd was really intense. It was great. I was really proud of all the hard work she had done to get to that moment. Not only academically, but financially as well. She put herself through college on her own dime and with scholarships. Paid in full. I think that she's the only college graduate I know that can say that. And lucky me, I got to bring her back to Glendale with me. Sweet!

Next week brings another milestone, my little sister is getting married. That's when Coffee Time Comics goes on hiatus for a week and a half. I'll remind you about that when it happens. For now, enjoy the pages. This week starts a new episode of Coffee Time with some familiar faces that haven't been around in a while, and it also has some really nicely drawn Across the Way pages. Episode 4 is a long one, huh? It will end just in time for the hiatus.

Okay, so a few weeks ago I posted in the news that there would be some pages in Across the Way coming up that would resemble a certain tragedy that had just happened. I was kind of cryptic in my wording only because I didn't want to give out story that was coming up, and because I don't like talking about the things I write all that much. I don't want to taint your personal views and how you experience the story. But now that we did change the pages, I feel I have to talk about it a little. Mainly because this is not a case of us censoring ourselves.

What is it? A case of bad writing if you ask me. What was going to happen in the bar was in Erik's head there would be a complete massacre of all the bar patrons. Now this wasn't from Erik's hands, but from an invisible force. His emotions colliding in an uncontrollable violent fantasy. Now I still don't feel I can talk about themes here and what it all really means, because a lot of that is all still there. Just represented differently. If the tragedy at Virginia Tech didn't happen I have to wonder if the pages would have been done as originally written. Hopefully I would have seen the error in the script. As the days got closer to Tobias doing them I think we both thought a lot about them, and it just didn't feel right any longer. It just isn't Erik's character. At all. On top of that, I really didn't want to place an American soldier on the same level as the creep who caused the slaughter at VT. Anyway, Tobias and I discussed it and found a better way within minutes. The pages look fantastic. That's the end of that.

My little sister Rachel is getting married to her high school sweetheart Adam, which will leave me the only heir to the Kratky fortune who is still unhitched. I'll be flying to my old stomping ground Connecticut on the 30th of May and returning June 6th. Tobias is pretty capable of updating the site, but we decided to just shut it down for a week and a half. Why not? It'll give us some catch up time and a small break. We've been going 4 months straight now. We're due. Right?

So mark your calendars, Coffee Time Comics will stop updating on May 30th, and return on June 11th. Blame my sister.

Don't forget to check out the Project Wonderful ads. Some good comics advertise around these parts and they are putting their hard earned cash into these ads. Also, along with Tobias' banners for his art, you'll notice a new banner at the top of our main pages. It's for the previous mention little sister and future husband Adam's fantasy stuff making business. I don't really know what to call it, but if you like dragon skulls and wizard staffs, check it out. I suggested the tag line"Magic wands aren't just for fairies anymore" to them, but I'm not sure they'll bite.

This past weekend was Cinco de Mayo, and just like last year we had a Coffee Time Comics party to celebrate year 1. It was awesome. It took Tobias and I quite a few hours to clean up. A sure sign a good time was had. Plus somebody puked. That's an even better sign. This is why the news is late. Sunday was spent cleaning, watching movies, and working on some Coffee Time pages. The last thing I wanted to do was go through all the pictures from the previous night and resize them and whatnot. So that's what I did today. And it's all here for your viewing pleasure, with cheesy commentary on every single picture by yours truly.

They said we couldn't do it. That we'd cave in to the pressure. They said our projects would blow up in our face and we'd end up on skid row. Before a year ever came, we'd be in the gutter begging for a second chance...

Actually nobody said that. Mostly people said good luck, and I don't know if we had it, but we've had something and here we are 1 year later still doing what we love to do. Though I knew in my heart that we would get here, mentally is a different story. There's a fear that comes with creativity (well in most things, but I can only speak of what I know), and that fear is waiting for you every step of the way. Maybe one day it is the fear of failure, or the next day it's not making a deadline and losing readers, or worst of all that your story is going nowhere. In webcomics the odds are completely against you. Especially if you are looking to make money from what you love. Webcomics is not a career, hardly even a career move, but what they can be is a stepping stone. If you go back and read some of our first episodes, you get a very different comic from what we have now. I mean, the basics are all the same. Our Coffee Time worldview hasn't changed much, but I really feel we've taken a huge leap forward in terms of art, story, and character. I'm pretty proud of our acheivements and really believe we've gone pretty far in our comics, especially with the addition of Across the Way. I really do feel that in a year from now when we are celebrating 2 years, it's going to be different still. How different? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I do know of one sure thing about Coffee Time Comics future. It's going to be badass...

It's finally open, but don't go in there expecting to get cool Coffee Time T-shirts or Across the Way buttons. For now it's kind of a donation thing. I told myself we would never do that. I never felt right about asking for money so that's not totally what we are doing. What we are offering is wallpapers for your desktop. When you click on the store in the menu, you will be taken to a page where samples are layed out, and if you dig them just click the donation link. After you donate through Paypal you will be re-directed back to the page that contains all of the wallpapers and the various desktop sizes. You click on the ones you want and save them to your computer. Pretty easy stuff.

I know I don't need to make any promises, but I will anyway. Tobias and I both work our asses off at full-time jobs to pay our bills. The donation money is all for the benefit of the website. Mainly for advertising and if we ever rack up enough dough, maybe we can get some physical merchandise. Maybe even put Coffee Time Volume 1 in print. We won't be going off buying CDs & DVDs or anything. That's our promise.

Coffee Time Comics has given me many things in the last year: carpal tunnel syndrome, hemorrhoids, lost hours of sleep, a little stress here and there, but most of all it has given me happiness. All I really want from life is to be able to create. Right now that's what Tobi and I are doing. And if something were to happen in the future and we weren't doing this together, I know it as fact we would be doing it separately every spare second we could. You can't stop what is already there. And if you do stop what needs to come out from coming out of you, you're an asshole. So Tobias, here's to us dude. To us, Across the Way, Coffee Time, and our girl Esperanza.

05/28/07

Impending Doom? Nope, just a hiatus.

05/22/07

I'm Late!

05/14/07

When Art Doesn't Quite Imitate...

12 Day Hiatus

Sponsors

05/08/07

El Party

05/01/07

1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

The Store

In Closing

Coffee Time Comics News

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