A new direction for Girlbot. (plz 2 read)

So this week, Girlbot will be starting up again after a nice break, but things will be different this time around. I think it will be a good thing!

For one, this is the start of volume two of the story, so the character set-up stage is finally done. I’ll be spending more time doing silly comedy, as well as getting on with exploring the ideas I have for Girlbot, story-wise and world-wise. Girlbot started out as more of an odd gag strip and then grew into something with a story and a continuity, which actually bring me to my second point…

Girlbot will no longer be a comic strip, per se. With the new updates, I’ll be switching to a page format. It will still preserve the same sort of sensibility as the original strips, but it will allow me to do what I want to do more naturally. As Girlbot grew more story-focused, I had more and more trouble fitting a complete idea into a single update. Instead, I settled a lot of the time for chopping an idea up into two or three updates, which caused issues with pacing, and I also think it made it harder for people new to the comic to get interested. With the new page format, the comic will have better story pacing, and I’ll feel less constrained. I also hope that it will cause newcomers to pick Girlbot up that much more easily. Oh, AND the new pages will be drawn at a bigger size than the original strips, which will translate to nicer art!

Now, due to the demands of a page versus a strip, Girlbot will no longer be updating Monday-Wednesday-Friday, as it always has. I’ll be scaling the update schedule back to Tuesdays and Fridays. However, despite the comic having fewer updates, you’ll still be getting almost twice as much material each week as you did before because each page is roughly the equivalent of three strips. I hope that will encourage readers to check back every update to see what’s up.

I’ve been doing my best this past year to keep the comic updated reliably with fresh story, putting a new strip up and sticking as closely to the three-a-week schedule as humanly possible, even to the detriment of my other projects. I kept my promise of a 6-month-long, unbroken update streak, and I’m quite proud of that fact. It wasn’t easy, but I think I proved that I can be trusted to stick with this thing through thick and thin. In light of that, I’m giving myself license to put up filler or miss an update if it becomes necessary. Two pages a week is a large order, and when it comes down to it, Girlbot just doesn’t make me a living. I have to do a lot of work on top of it to pay my bills, despite all the kind people who have helped me out through this comic with their donations and support. Spike and I are getting close to finishing Poorcraft, and there are other comics projects on the horizon for later this year, meaning I won’t always be able to devote as much time to Girlbot as it deserves.

I promise that I’ll do my very best to keep Girlbot up and running, but I may drop the ball every now and then due to there just not being enough hours in the day. Unlike Girlbot, I’m human, and I screw up. So please bear with me, y’all.

All-in-all, this will be a good thing for Girlbot. It means that the story will flow better and actually go faster. It means that it’ll be easier and, I think, more fun to read. And it also means I’ll be able to manage my work load without going bonkers.

I know this was a long-winded post, so thanks to you who actually read through to the end. You’re a peach. See you on Tuesday!

Show Girlbot how much you care!

• 
•