First off, as you may have guessed from the Friends of Lulu logo, I have news on that! It was announced yesterday that The Intrepid Girlbot won the award for best kid-friendly work! I can’t thank you guys enough, everyone who nominated and voted for my little webcomic. Girlbot is officially award-winning! I even get a trophy! (I’ll take pictures.)

YEEEEEE!!!

Ahem.

Item number two! Tom Siddell kindly drew a guest comic for me, which I posted for Friday’s update. Much to my surprise, all the attention crashed the site! Hah! After being out of bandwidth for several hours, I upgraded Girlbot’s hosting so that functionality would be restored. Depending on how many people continue to visit from Gunnerkrigg Court, I can’t guarantee that the site will stay up over the weekend. But if it goes down, it should be up again by Monday, so don’t fret.

That’s it for news. Enjoy your Halloween weekend! I know I am!

As you may or may not be aware — depending on how much you read the news updates that go with each comic post — this week and next will be dedicated to guest comics other cartoonists have lovingly drawn for me. They’re all super rad, and I’m sure you’ll like them. But I won’t tell you who I have lined up! You’ll just have to wait.

Regular Girlbot updates will resume November 8th.

(Also, I will re-commence putting out the promised bonus material in November. I haven’t forgotten!)

This has absolutely nothing to do with Girlbot. I just want as many people to see this as possible:

And so resumes the parade of extra material I promised for the fund drive. Here’s the high-resolution PDFs, all conveniently in one post for you…

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Next up: a tale of the mysterious Boybot. Coming…soon!

The NEWW Fund Drive reached $200 earlier this week, and I promised Girlbot development art and thumbnail sketches in return for the support of you lovely people. So here ya go…

One of the very early drawings of Girlbot, doodled before I even started writing the first strips. She’s mutated some since then, but the basic idea remains the same.
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The first set of thumbnails, along with more little brainstormy doodles. Raccoon #1 was originally meant to look more like a real raccoon, as you can see.
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Shortly after launching Girlbot, I decided to make an alternate version of her to make into a big old-fashioned comic strip to enter into a project called the Big Funny. These were some of my brainstorming sketches and notes for that.
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And these are the thumbnails for the Little Miss Mechanical comic.
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This is a big scan of the most recent strip thumbnails in my special Girlbot sketchbook, over a month’s worth. They go from strip #164 to strip #186, which hasn’t even been finished yet. Good luck telling what’s going on in the yet-to-come strips!
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Next goal is $300, when I’ll make a set of hi-res PDFs for everyone to download!

As of this post, the NEWW Fundraiser has earned $134 out of $800. I’m really grateful to those who’ve contributed so far, but $134 just isn’t enough to help me achieve what I want with this thing, my Very First Research Trip. But instead of giving up or having a hissy fit, this is what I’ll do:

The more the fundraiser earns, the more cool bonus stuff I’ll provide for the site.

This doesn’t mean extra incentives just for people who donate, like the wallpaper and sketch cards. These will be available to everyone, even if you don’t give me a dime. Think of it as “Unlocking Achievements” for everyone who likes this little comic I do. The bonus rewards, as I see it, will tick off every $100.

Milestone rewards for…

…$200: scans of development art for Girlbot, including idea doodles and a month’s worth of thumbnail sketches. The thumbnails would go up to the update for August 6th, so it would be a sneak preview of what’s to come, assuming $200 were earned by August 6th.

…$300: a set of hi-res PDFs of all the Girlbot strips so far, for you to read in page form on your computer, iPad, spooky alien device, or whatever. And you can zoom in and see all the little details!

..$400: a bonus comic featuring Boybot, a character completely unimportant to the story of Girlbot, but he’s out there. Somewhere.

…$500: the “Girlbot vs.” series, where Girlbot goes up against robot characters from other webcomics. Will they fight? Fall in love? Completely ignore each other? WHO KNOWS!

…$600: another bonus comic entitled “Girlbot Meets a Pretty Pony,” which is exactly what it sounds like. It would be in page form, between 5-10 pages. Not the sort of story that would fit well in Girlbot proper, but with the same bizarre sense of humor.

…$700: a tour of Girlbot’s home, in illustrations and narrating text. You know you’re curious.

…$800: a solemn pledge to not miss any updates or throw up any last-minute filler i place of actual comics for a full SIX MONTHS, starting at the beginning of September. I do my best to keep the comic going at full speed, of course, but this would be a solid promise of reliable updates, come hell or high water. Other than a couple of scheduled weeks of guest strips and a special comic for the holidays, it’d be all original-flavor Girlbot all the time.

Now, I don’t expect to actually be able to raise $800, but if I could get even halfway there, that would be pretty great. You can’t say I’m not willing to hustle for it!

Right now, we’re only $66 away from the first milestone. *whistles innocently*

As I announced with Wednesday’s update, I’m doing another sketch card fundraising thing-a-ma-thing, but this time I’m going for more money so that I can afford to do an important research trip for a graphic novel I want to start drawing next year, called Saving Halloween. You can still read an early version of the first chapter here, which was originally my senior thesis when I graduated from art school. The final book would be all-new, of course, but research is vital to making it into the best thing it can be. For more of me making a case for why I want to do this thing, check out a post I made about it in my art journal. I would also be attending New England Webcomics Weekend.

So my extra incentive for people to donate to my cause is, obviously, sketch cards! I did some last time for the kind donators, and they came out pretty well. EXAMPLES!

Okay, some things…

1. 100% of donation money and profits from anything people buy from the store will count in the status bar above. I’ll keep it up-to-date so you know what the deal is.

2. There’s a new donation wallpaper! It’s very pretty! It has a raccoon!

3. Anyone who donates at least $5 and gives me a valid mailing address will get a sketch card, customized to their request. The more you donate, the bigger and more elaborate the sketch card will be. I can also do digital sketch cards if you wish, hi-res for good print quality.

4. Buying things from the store — such as some the original comic strip art — will get you extra bonus things thrown in. Whatever I can think of!

5. Even if I fail at this and make a fool of myself, you guys are still awesome. Thanks for reading my comic.

Be on the look-out for rogue robots, especially if you are an old person who needs medicine to live:

Girlbot has been very concerned and wanted me to let you know.

The short version: I had a really good time! If you want a more detailed account of my recent adventures in Portland, I suggest you check out the journal entry on the subject.

Yes, it’s been a long time coming, but there’s finally a new wallpaper incentive for those kind enough to donate to the site. It’s spring-themed, but not in your typical way. You can click the preview image above to make a donation, or go to the donation section of the store. Every little bit helps!