Hi!  There's me.  There used to be more... but I don't think many people post to the forums so much anymore.  If you're looking to join the chatter, there's always decent comments threads in the comic strips.

Nevermind -- it's fixed! No idea why, but ok! 

Quick question -- something peculiar is happening with my password.  I'll try to log in to the forums from the board index.  It will *always* tell me that my password is wrong.  Then, on the second window, I'll type in the exact same password... and it will work!

What's also odd about this is that I can type my password into notepad so I can see that it's right... then copy and paste it for the first time, receive the error message, paste the exact same thing a second time... and then have it work.  It's... weird!

It's not a bother or anything... it's just curious.

I have seen a real dragon, and it was probably less than 10 feet long. Of course, it was a Komodo Dragon.

Well... I stopped maturing at age 12. Does that count? 

More options, please. Something like "It's pretty good."

*sneak sneak sneak*

Oh, hi!  And yes... I do plan to post more often.

(By the way... is it just me, or is anyone else having trouble with the 'Remember Me' option not keeping you logged in?)

Too many lurkers, not enough posters.

Ultrainventor, there are definitely good CMS setups you can use to get started. I'm pretty sure a good number of webcomics I follow have started down that path this way. If you're really interested in setting up a webcomic, don't let this be the thing that gets in your way. Of course, I don't run my own webcomic, so my advice is pretty limited here.

Ben, might i make a suggestion?  Is there anyway you could get the strip to scale to the page size?  Having to scroll side to side to see the entire strip is an easy way to turn off readers.  Just a suggestion!  Good luck on your comic!

Just to add to this, it would probably help to get some of those erased markings completely off, so it's a bit easier to read.

Chip in for the flight, and we'll consider it

Don't tempt me - that might be a possibility, if it weren't for my student loans.

Well, the poll is fixed, really. It's way at the end of a long block of text taht only peopel who are loyal fans are going to bother reading - ergo the results of the vote are positive.

Oh... I hired a guy named Bruno to watch over everyone's votes.  That should explain the positive results

2) Conventions (at least the bigger ones) are designed to favour already successful strips. It's very hard for smaller fry like us to even get in.

Which conventions are you aiming for?  I remember seeing quite a few smaller webcomics at SakuraCon in Seattle, including much smaller ones than CtS.  I'm actually surprised by one - Tea Club.  It's a great comic, sure, but I haven't seen an update on their site since I started reading it in 2007.  I'm not sure if the comic will continue.  In comparison, I secretly hope to see a CtS booth at that convention.  I'm not so sure how well it fits with the anime genre, but it would certainly fit in with similar webcomics that set up booths there.

(Oh, and if you visit SakuraCon, I will want to buy books from you)

It's very kind of you to post, and to say such nice things.  Can make a person go all gooey inside, it can.  Both Mith and I very much appreciate you taking the time to post this, and the vote results also seem to point towards much the same as you've said.
Hopefully once we've proved we can stick to an update schedule again, things will look up.  Got to wonder a bit though, takes time to get noticed as you say, but we've been at it for 5,5 years, and have had some people ask how we manage to stay below the radar.  It certainly isn't on purpose.
In short, thank you.  We appreciate every reader we have, and hope the desire to get more doesn't make you think you're worth any less to us.

It seems like the keeping to schedule bit would be the most helpful.  Of course, I've never minded the delays - it's *always* worth the wait. 

In one of my circles, CtS is essentially required reading.  I don't think any of us knew it in advance, but when I tried to get people to start reading this strip, they all told me that they already were.  So, I'm not sure where the rest of the world is, but in my world, you're pretty hot stuff.

Yup, it's on the main sight, and Mith suggested that we talk about ideas here on the forum, soooo... here goes!

The recap!

Recently in the comments there's been a bit of discussion about releasing CtS in book form. People suggested we use a Print on Demand (PoD) service to release the strip in a number of books.
Print on Demand means that we'd submit an electronic version of the book to a service (for instance lulu.com) and when people ordered, that service would print it out, bind it and ship it. The advantage of this is that there's no financial risk for Alien and Me: no setup fees, no minimum number of books to be bought, etc.

There are a number of problems, however. The first has to do with price. Production costs for PoD are obviously higher than bulk printing. To make matters worse, a comic such as Chasing the Sunset is a full colour affair, which adds to the price considerably.
Because of the landscape format of CtS we're best off putting two strips on a page in a vertical layout. Let's look at some pricing examples, using lulu.com's prices (other services are similar in price):

Example 1:
90 strips = 45 pages, +5 pages bonus material = 50 pages, full colour.
Production cost: $12.50

Example 1:
180 strips = 90 pages, +10 pages bonus material = 100 pages, full colour.
Production cost: $20

Both examples are for softcover books and are not including shipping or any profits for Alien and me.

Obviously, this is a bit expensive. Still, some people have commented they would be willing to pay this.

Which brings us to the second problem.

While the more recent strips have high quality masters (We have files at about 2.8 times the resolution that you see) which we could use for publishing, the same can definitely not be said about the earlier strips. If you browse through the archives you'll see that strips 4 till 23 are still in line-art. Furthermore for the first 65 strips we only have the masters in the "release" resolution of 706 pixels by 452. Strips 66 to 101 are at twice this resolution (1412x904) which is still only half the resolution of everything after.
On top of this, nothing before strip 324 or so is shaded.

This means that if we were to print any of the earlier work (and that's what we would naturally start with) we'd have to remaster it all. In the first 65 strips this includes taking the original scans (or in some cases rescanning) and pretty much completely remaking the strip, adding in backgrounds where necessary.

I conservatively estimate this to take about 3 hours per strip for the strips before 66, about 2 hours for anything after that. So that's 62*3+258*2=702 hours of work, minimum, to get everything to printed quality. IOW: if I were to spend two hours a day on this every single day, it would take nearly two years.

Anyway, that's the main problems.

I've had a quick scroll through the archives to figure out what we'd put in books if we made them. The following two options seem the best ones I can think up:

Scheme 1:
ca. 110 strips per book
ca. $15 per book
First book could be released by: January 2008 at the earliest

Book 1:
- Everything up till Leaf getting possessed by the furies (110 strips)
- about 5 pages of bonus material
Book 2:
- One page summary of book 1
- Every strip between leaf getting possessed and them saying goodbye from the amazons (about 128 strips)
- About 3-5 pages of bonus material
Book 3:
- 1-2 page summary of the books before
- Every strip between leaving no man's land and the end of the king's party in gamun (about 102 strips)
- 5+ pages of bonus material
Book 4:
We're still in that part.

Scheme 2:
ca. 220 strips per book
ca. $25 per book
First book could be released by: April 2008 at the earliest

Book 1 = Book 1+2 from Scheme 1
Book 2 = Book 3+4 from Scheme 1

So what do you think?

If you've gotten this far, you're probably interested (or terminally bored). We'd like to hear from you since we're not going to put in all that work for just a handful of readers that might buy the book (sorry).

Well... I'd love to see the comic turn into a book, but we've gotta remember what kind of work gets put into preparing a comic book like this.  And if it's a print-on-demand (PoS) system, we'll need to remember that even without the financial risk involved, there's still the countless number of hours involved in bringing it to book form.

I can promise that I would buy the books as they come out.  I've seldom seen a comic not only of such high quality, but with artists that engage with the community as much as Mithandir and Alien do, and it's something I appreciate.

Maybe we can see what kind of information we can help dig up, as readers, that will make decision-making alot easier, e.g. does anyone know of print on demand suppliers that could produce the books for cheaper?  I know that Spring Arbor distributors does that, but it's possible that you'd need to have a publisher already... but that's something I'm not sure about yet, being that I know very little about what goes into making a book.

That doesn't mean I knew you were an admin, now does it?