Posted on 13 April 2016 by Andrew

Edit: one more thing. If you're curious about whether there will be anything resembling an epilogue to this ending, yes, I've been thinking about that for some time. It'll take a while to produce though, whatever specific form it ends up taking. Working on Collide took months, and came right down to the wire. I've got more time now though obviously. But that said, I'm not in a huge hurry at this point. Keep an eye out here for developments. There should be plenty of other news in coming months too.



Posted on 28 Mar 2016 by Andrew

EOA6 - 99%



Here is the plan. Starting today, there will be 6 days of updates (about 125 total pages). Then a brief pause. Then on 4/6, I'll post the END OF ACT 6 animation.



That should immediately be followed by 7 days of updates (about 40 total pages), ending with an update on 4/13, the 7th anniversary of Homestuck. That update will contain ACT 7 in its entirety.



Posted on 12 August 2015 by Andrew

Whoops, I said I was going to make an update about the pause soon, but then I accidentally forgot this website existed for several weeks. Sorry about that! But then again, pause announcements aren't very exciting, and I already told you there would be a pause, so it PROBABLY doesn't matter much? Anyway, here it is. The Omegapause Announcement.



If you go by page count, Homestuck is about 99% done. The remaining 1% will involve another stretch of pages, and some heavy animation work, which I probably won't even start for another month or two, as I catch up with some



As for when that is, I don't have any concrete projections. Maybe it will all drop some time next year? Hmm, seven acts in seven years... sounds pretty good to me! Maybe it will work out that way. I guess we will have to wait and see. I think it will be good though. If it was going to be bad, you'd be watching it tomorrow.



Whoops, I said I was going to make an update about the pause soon, but then I accidentally forgot this website existed for several weeks. Sorry about that! But then again, pause announcements aren't very exciting, and I already told you there would be a pause, so it PROBABLY doesn't matter much? Anyway, here it is. The Omegapause Announcement.If you go by page count, Homestuck is about 99% done. The remaining 1% will involve another stretch of pages, and some heavy animation work, which I probably won't even start for another month or two, as I catch up with some other work . In case it hasn't seemed obvious by now, I'm not in much of a hurry anymore. The manic rates of production this site used to enjoy will not be revisited. I won't be making 13+ minute animations in six weeks anymore. (That is very fast, if you didn't know.) All remaining content will be created at a pace more in keeping with the spirit of sanity. It will be done when it's done.As for when that is, I don't have any concrete projections. Maybe it will all drop some time next year? Hmm, seven acts in seven years... sounds pretty good to me! Maybe it will work out that way. I guess we will have to wait and see. I think it will be good though. If it was going to be bad, you'd be watching it tomorrow. Posted on 17 July 2015 by Andrew

I have not prepared a new horse calendar. This does not mean there will be no horses. Believe me, the horses will flow. These might be fully uncalendared, free range horses though. I estimate there are eight updates left before we initiate what can only be called the Omegapause. I'll start posting them on monday, and probably post a thing every day thereafter, but we'll see how it goes. After that will be a long wait for conclusive content. Probably quite a long wait. But I will be more specific about that once we have finished getting a load of these eight beautiful and majestic horses. I would also like to briefly and somewhat insincerely apologize if you are new to the site, and don't have the faintest fucking clue what I am talking about, with respect to all this horse stuff. I offer neither an excuse, nor an explanation.



Posted on 19 January 2015 by Andrew

So what do we call this pause? I've been batting ideas around all day. We could go with the obvious choice, the MINIGIGAPAUSE. Or maybe, MEGAPAUSE 2: BACK IN THE MEGASADDLE. Or if that makes too much sense, we could always settle on the MICROTERAPAUSE. As you can see, there are so many incredibly intelligent and meaningful things we could call this pause. Deciding how to refer to the pause is an exercise that I will leave to the reader. Feel free to discuss the matter with friends. Or strangers. Anyone who will listen really. If they start to run away, I strongly recommend you chase them.



Why don't we say that A665 begins on 4/13. That's a fun number that we all can get excited about. I have a lot of catch-up work to do between now and then. Not the least of which is drawing the actual content to be posted. But also a lot of gamedev work. Game production is rolling pretty hot right now. Stuff is being churned out almost faster than I can keep track of. Did I mention? I accidentally started running a game studio a little while ago. Whoops, sorry about that. There are all these people being paid to make things happen, and I have to be like "Yeah, keep doing that stuff, everybody." It's getting pretty easy to lose track of how many people work for What Pumpkin. My last estimate was somewhere between 30 and 1000. The true figure is a very frisky moving target.



A6A6A5, a.k.a. Caliborn's Masterpiece, is actually done. It's probably better to hold off posting it until 4/13, when more content will soon follow aftewards. I am sure pausing on that note for months would mess with your head a lot more than the note we're already pausing on. I sometimes feel I have at least a modest responsibility to manage your sanity. It'll be tough sitting on this content though. Tougher than sitting on all of A664 for the better part of a year. I don't think it is out of line to describe it as the best material this website will ever exhibit. It will be all down hill from there, in every direction. Even up.



Posted on 27 September 2014 by Andrew

Giga-Almost-Unpause, Probably.



Let's see if I can "tldr" a few things up top, since this news item might begin to nose dive dramatically through the vertical space of this web layout. Am I finished HS yet? Um, nope. But I think enough is probably enough on the site's indefinite period of hibernation, so it's likely I will just start posting some stuff I have anyway, starting next month. Either mid or late October, let's say.



I said it would be a long pause, didn't I? Let's face it, a gigapause is just one big ass pause. It contains the smaller word "giga", which, in addition to literally meaning "one billion", you will find to be the root of the word "gigantic", which as we all know, means super huge. This intriguing fact reminds us that in our culture of words, we hold the number one billion as the indivisible quantum of general bigness, as a matter of principal. Food for thought!



We're coming up on almost a year since I paused. So that means I got like, SO much done on the story, right? Wow, no. Innumerable unspecified problems happened which badly prevented this from being true. I'd estimate out of those 12 months, I maybe squeezed in a grand total of 3 months worth of work on HS in there. Kinda dribbled across the year in the most frustrating way possible. So, I'm just gonna cry uncle on this dogshit pause and start posting stuff, but probably in a regimented way so I don't blow through everything I have too fast, thus giving me some time to work on the rest.



Back at the onset of the pause, I said I'd just post everything at once. (I was oversimplifying. I had always intended to stagger the final content to whatever extent, so as not to destroy the server.) But also that "post everything at once" idea was predicated on actually sorta... having it all done. Which as I have already culpa'd, is not the case. So I'm improvising at this point. I'll (probably) relaunch the story next month, come up with some kind of update schedule, and we'll see how it goes.



What have I been doing all year? Let's chalk it up to, in this order of relevance, a swirling multitude of Daunting Life Challenges, a flurry of accidental weird adventures causing me to thrash wildly across the nation, and the escalating complexities of running a business while tending to peripheral creative projects, not the least of which has been overseeing the development of an expensive video game. Actually, all things considered, I'm surprised at how much I actually HAVE gotten done this year. It just happens that "making a ton of HS pages" isn't one of those things.



What were the problems? What were the adventures? Sorry, nothing to see here. Me and the General Public just aren't that tight, and wild sob stories ain't my bag (unless they pertain to visits to the Olive Garden). Well, maybe I'll mention some things some day. But definitely nowhere in the proximity of a virtual stage adjacent to the sphere of rhetoric which could conceivably be construed as a series of excuses for why a mammoth load of free entertainment hasn't been finished yet. Did you follow that? Look over there. (When you look back at me, I am slowly rolling into a pile of trash.)



The good news is, I'm still all about horses. Did you know that about me? It's true as shit. Horses; wow. Pretty good weird big animals? Or pretty GREAT weird big animals??



What else should I say here. Oh.



We've also been chipping away at upgrading the server over the last year. It's been surprisingly complicated and slow-going. Actually, prior to the pause, it was one of the most difficult things about updating, having an insufficient server that was GUARANTEED to crash every time I posted something. This was even after many, many upgrades over the years. It gets a little demoralizing trying to make tons of cartoons every day for a small nation of lunatics when the server constantly struggles to keep up with the ever-burgeoning readership, no matter how much I upgraded it. This was one of the (lots of) factors which contributed to me finally just saying, fuck it, time to pause.



Hopefully it can handle it now, but guess we'll see. It all runs on fancy clouds and such now. Which has been tricky to configure for such a complicated site utterly dependent on all the garbage ass-backwards code I've written over the years. Maybe... maybe once I start updating again, nobody will notice?? Man, wouldn't that be sweet. It will just be me and like a cozy little clique of 50 randos and 10 web bots, just like the old days. We'll bring this sucker home together, then hit up the local bargain Italian restaurant to celebrate. (Then a horse nuzzles me out of my sleepy dream fantasy, and the hammock flips over and dumps my screaming body on to the lawn.)



Feels a little odd even TALKING about revving up this monstrosity again. It's been pretty serene on the web these days. I've been reluctant to even drop a pebble into the pristine glass-like state of the fandom, before being good and damn well ready to. Why wake the beast prematurely? We'll enjoy more than our share of blistering pandemonium when all is said and done. We are slowly building to a particular moment I foresee on the horizon. It's not just characterized by the end of the story, though that should be a factor. It's more than that. Things I have planned, and some other things we'll say may be fortuitously aligned. Invisible pieces of a heinous machine all snapping together, mechanically congealing with a grim sense of purpose. I'm tentatively branding to this moment as The Rapture, and it will be more than you can bear. More than anyone can. And everyone won't.



How has your year been?



Posted on 17 Oct 2013 by Andrew

Gigapause: Commence.



I've been thinking this over for the last few weeks, and I've decided now is the best time to suspend all regular updates until I've finished the story, rather than pausing just before I start on the final animation. When I'm done, I'll post it all at once. There are a lot of reasons why I think this is the best strategy.



Primarily, it's about efficiency, and being able to work on the remaining (and likely the most difficult parts) of the story without distractions, or the added challenge of having to crank out the next serial update as fast as possible, which means I always have to stay totally linear with the work. This way I can produce the rest of it more comprehensively, prepare animation assets in advance, do more stuff in parallel, etc. It will go faster. And ultimately, I think it'll read better as one thing, rather than as a sequence tortuously spread out over time, as has been the norm for years. I think it's close enough to the end now to safely retire Homestuck as a serial reading experience. There's nothing to be gained from that presentation anymore, in my view. It's just time to bear down and get it done.



I guess we're breaking for a long time on a big cliffhanger, but there's no way around that. Actually, pausing at any point later would probably be even worse, as it keeps pushing into endgame territory. That's why I'm stopping now instead of later. With such a big readership, the reactions will only get crazier, and the demand for new updates will get more intense. Over time, knowing so many people are slamming refresh many times per day starts to be more of an omnipresent distraction than anything. I think there is sort of a perception that I am creatively feeding off the hysteria surrounding the comic, but on a very practical level this is not true. Creating entertainment is not really a lifestyle of madcap shenanigans. It is a very sober, often dull process that requires a huge amount of time and concentration. It will be better to disarm the hype machine while I get the hard stuff done.



So what is the itinerary? Need to finish A663 through A666, and then A7. Keep in mind that these sub acts can be literally any length, even



I don't really have a time estimate here, and am not sure there's any real advantage in coming up with one. It'll just be a while. I also have to allocate some time to work on the Kickstarter game. That didn't stop being a thing I have to do. It's coming along. I'll probably have a more substantive update on that before the end of the year. There hasn't been much to report yet since it's mostly been in a high level planning and writing phase. And firming up tons of legal minutiae. Stuff like that.



But I will say there is something new to watch out for next month. Kind of a secret project I'm involved with, unrelated to MSPA or the KS game. Well, it's technically not that secret. It's only secret if you don't know about it yet. Meditate on those profound words, and keep an eye out for news on this in coming weeks.



Oh yeah. Almost forgot, I'll have to take some time to port the site to a new server. Obviously it hasn't been cutting it the last couple months. So we'll work on that soon. Hopefully the new service will be able to handle the massive heart attack the next batch up updates will represent.



During the gigapause, there should still be plenty to see here in the news section. Whether it's about the aforementioned projects, or new product releases, there'll be a lot going on. Trust me, the coolest stuff at What Pumpkin this season has yet to be released.





I've been thinking this over for the last few weeks, and I've decided now is the best time to suspend all regular updates until I've finished the story, rather than pausing just before I start on the final animation. When I'm done, I'll post it all at once. There are a lot of reasons why I think this is the best strategy.Primarily, it's about efficiency, and being able to work on the remaining (and likely the most difficult parts) of the story without distractions, or the added challenge of having to crank out the next serial update as fast as possible, which means I always have to stay totally linear with the work. This way I can produce the rest of it more comprehensively, prepare animation assets in advance, do more stuff in parallel, etc. It will go faster. And ultimately, I think it'll read better as one thing, rather than as a sequence tortuously spread out over time, as has been the norm for years. I think it's close enough to the end now to safely retire Homestuck as a serial reading experience. There's nothing to be gained from that presentation anymore, in my view. It's just time to bear down and get it done.I guess we're breaking for a long time on a big cliffhanger, but there's no way around that. Actually, pausing at any point later would probably be even worse, as it keeps pushing into endgame territory. That's why I'm stopping now instead of later. With such a big readership, the reactions will only get crazier, and the demand for new updates will get more intense. Over time, knowing so many people are slamming refresh many times per day starts to be more of an omnipresent distraction than anything. I think there is sort of a perception that I am creatively feeding off the hysteria surrounding the comic, but on a very practical level this is not true. Creating entertainment is not really a lifestyle of madcap shenanigans. It is a very sober, often dull process that requires a huge amount of time and concentration. It will be better to disarm the hype machine while I get the hard stuff done.So what is the itinerary? Need to finish A663 through A666, and then A7. Keep in mind that these sub acts can be literally any length, even one page . There's a good bit of ground to cover, but most of the effort will be tied up in animation chores.I don't really have a time estimate here, and am not sure there's any real advantage in coming up with one. It'll just be a while. I also have to allocate some time to work on the Kickstarter game. That didn't stop being a thing I have to do. It's coming along. I'll probably have a more substantive update on that before the end of the year. There hasn't been much to report yet since it's mostly been in a high level planning and writing phase. And firming up tons of legal minutiae. Stuff like that.But I will say there is something new to watch out for next month. Kind of a secret project I'm involved with, unrelated to MSPA or the KS game. Well, it's technically not that secret. It's only secret if you don't know about it yet. Meditate on those profound words, and keep an eye out for news on this in coming weeks.Oh yeah. Almost forgot, I'll have to take some time to port the site to a new server. Obviously it hasn't been cutting it the last couple months. So we'll work on that soon. Hopefully the new service will be able to handle the massive heart attack the next batch up updates will represent.During the gigapause, there should still be plenty to see here in the news section. Whether it's about the aforementioned projects, or new product releases, there'll be a lot going on. Trust me, the coolest stuff at What Pumpkin this season has yet to be released. Posted on 16 July 2013 by Andrew

Time to hit the road for SDCC. See



This means another pause for some number of weeks. When I get back I have to do a ton of boring stuff that has nothing to do with Homestuck, which will delay the pause beyond the convention. All the travel this year I am sure has resulted in hundreds of pages of lost progress. Yet this is how it must be. I must go see the people. I must draw thousands of



I expect to get back on a roll with updates some time in August. So mark that month on your calendar somehow. Maybe you can write "August" in big letters across the July page. Yes, wow, that's a good suggestion.





Time to hit the road for SDCC. See Shifty Look 's site for event info.This means another pause for some number of weeks. When I get back I have to do a ton of boring stuff that has nothing to do with Homestuck, which will delay the pause beyond the convention. All the travel this year I am sure has resulted in hundreds of pages of lost progress. Yet this is how it must be. I must go see the people. I must draw thousands of 5 second John doodles for them. It is inescapable.I expect to get back on a roll with updates some time in August. So mark that month on your calendar somehow. Maybe you can write "August" in big letters across the July page. Yes, wow, that's a good suggestion. Posted on 30 June 2013 by Andrew

I may have been jumping the gun to say the megapause was totally over. It is mostly over, but there are going to be scattered minipauses here and there. I still have a lot going on. Some more cons to go to in July. Expect a couple more blackout weeks. After that the pace will probably start to pick up again.





Posted on 14 April 2013 by Andrew

THE YEAR 4 MEGAPAUSE



TLDR; Act 6 Act 6 is next. This is Homestuck's final push. But before I start on it, I'll be taking a very significant hiatus to work on the



4/13/13 marked the 4th year of Homestuck, and a little more than the 5th year of MSPA's regular updates overall. Thanks to all those who've hung in there the whole time, as well as the very large number of you who piled on to this silly wagon at some point along the way.



The idea last year was to finish Homestuck and then begin working on the game. But as I've started to get into the early game dev process a bit, it's become obvious I have to start working on it much sooner. As in, right now. It takes many months of drawing and programming to make a game. But nobody can start on any of that until I've done a lot of writing and planning. So what it comes down to is, either I delay finishing Homestuck by a few months, or delay the release of the game by what would probably be a lot longer than that. Considering people threw 2.5 million bucks at me to make a game, I think that choice is obvious.



If I could do both at the same time, I would. But that's not realistic. Working on HS is an all consuming thing. Designing a whole game I believe will be too. It may sound obvious, but it can't be emphasized enough - entertainment takes a lot of time to create. More time than most people think. MSPA somewhat obscures that reality because I work on it as maniacally and efficiently as I can to keep the rate of output as high as possible. But the ease of production is an illusion. It is in fact a nonstop grind to generate this much material at a consistent rate. So I have to put all that on hold if I want to get anything else done.



I have noticed that some people believed HS would end on 4/13/13, though I never said that it would. Even if the story appeared to be on the precipice of resolution (which it wasn't), these rumors could be debunked for one simple reason. Animation takes A LOT of time. You've got to expect a story like this would end with some sort of big animation, right? I can't make those without suspending all updates completely for a good while. Trust me, the end to this won't sneak up on anyone. It will be really obvious when it's on the way.



To alleviate some of the suspense and wild speculation, I will give you a very loose estimate of my schedule, from now until the end of HS. Please observe these facts, as organized by this really awesome "html table" I have designed for this purpose.



The thing I am going to be doing How long that thing is going to take me Work on the game, and probably some other stuff, like make more HS books. Oh, also go to a few conventions. No updates. Months Work on a whole bunch of regular updates for A6A6, leading up to the end of HS. Months Work on the final animation, plus zero or more other animations, just before or somewhat near the end of HS. Months



So that's it for now. See you in a while. Unless you decide to reread Homestuck or something. In which case I guess I'll keep seeing you here. Well not me, but my website will see you. My website is always watching.





TLDR; Act 6 Act 6 is next. This is Homestuck's final push. But before I start on it, I'll be taking a very significant hiatus to work on the game 4/13/13 marked the 4th year of Homestuck, and a little more than the 5th year of MSPA's regular updates overall. Thanks to all those who've hung in there the whole time, as well as the very large number of you who piled on to this silly wagon at some point along the way.The idea last year was to finish Homestuck and then begin working on the game. But as I've started to get into the early game dev process a bit, it's become obvious I have to start working on it much sooner. As in, right now. It takes many months of drawing and programming to make a game. But nobody can start on any of that until I've done a lot of writing and planning. So what it comes down to is, either I delay finishing Homestuck by a few months, or delay the release of the game by what would probably be a lot longer than that. Considering people threw 2.5 million bucks at me to make a game, I think that choice is obvious.If I could do both at the same time, I would. But that's not realistic. Working on HS is an all consuming thing. Designing a whole game I believe will be too. It may sound obvious, but it can't be emphasized enough - entertainment takes a lot of time to create. More time than most people think. MSPA somewhat obscures that reality because I work on it as maniacally and efficiently as I can to keep the rate of output as high as possible. But the ease of production is an illusion. It is in fact a nonstop grind to generate this much material at a consistent rate. So I have to put all that on hold if I want to get anything else done.I have noticed that some people believed HS would end on 4/13/13, though I never said that it would. Even if the story appeared to be on the precipice of resolution (which it wasn't), these rumors could be debunked for one simple reason. Animation takes A LOT of time. You've got to expect a story like this would end with some sort of big animation, right? I can't make those without suspending all updates completely for a good while. Trust me, the end to this won't sneak up on anyone. It will be really obvious when it's on the way.To alleviate some of the suspense and wild speculation, I will give you a very loose estimate of my schedule, from now until the end of HS. Please observe these facts, as organized by this really awesome "html table" I have designed for this purpose.So that's it for now. See you in a while. Unless you decide to reread Homestuck or something. In which case I guess I'll keep seeing you here. Well not me, but my website will see you. My website is always watching. Weekstuck Posted on 20 Aug 2012 by Andrew

Three weeks ago I took a guess at how many weeks it would take to update again, and to quote myself, this is exactly what I guessed: "I'll guess about 3 weeks." It turns out I guessed wrong. I guessed slightly less weeks than the right amount of weeks. I'm now going to guess it will take one more week.



I would like to update right now instead of additional weeks from now, but the only way that could possibly happen is if magic wasn't fake. And I think we all fully understand what





Three weeks ago I took a guess at how many weeks it would take to update again, and to quote myself, this is exactly what I guessed: "I'll guess about 3 weeks." It turns out I guessed wrong. I guessed slightly less weeks than the right amount of weeks. I'm now going to guess it will take one more week.I would like to update right now instead of additional weeks from now, but the only way that could possibly happen is if magic wasn't fake. And I think we all fully understand what the deal is with magic at this point. END OF PAUSE 2 Posted on 28 July 2012 by Andrew

With EOP2 comes



Only one more pause to get through before we start cruising again. Unfortunately this will be the longest one. PAUSE ONE was 8 days. PAUSE TWO, including the trip to SDCC, was 19 days. I'm thinking PAUSE THREE will be slightly longer than that. I'll guess about 3 weeks. I have a lot to catch up on that does not involve working on Homestuck. Stuff I have neglected due to a solid month of non stop animation and travel. Some book work to do. Some secret projects. And, yes, some of this pause will involve working on HS a bit as well, as I get the next Thing ready for you to see.



Thank you for your patience. Hang in there for EOP3:A6I3.





With EOP2 comes EOA6A3 Only one more pause to get through before we start cruising again. Unfortunately this will be the longest one. PAUSE ONE was 8 days. PAUSE TWO, including the trip to SDCC, was 19 days. I'm thinking PAUSE THREE will be slightly longer than that. I'll guess about 3 weeks. I have a lot to catch up on that does not involve working on Homestuck. Stuff I have neglected due to a. Some book work to do. Some secret projects. And, yes, some of this pause will involve working on HS a bit as well, as I get the next Thing ready for you to see.Thank you for your patience. Hang in there for EOP3:A6I3. PAUSE 2: UNPAUSE AND THEN REPAUSE IMMEDIATELY. Posted on 17 July 2012 by Andrew

Briefly unpausing PAUSE 2 to bring you



As of right now, I have not spent a single second working on that animation. I just got back from SDCC, produced the above updates today, and now the REAL PAUSE TWO begins. The part of it that involves me actually working on it. It is just layers upon layers with these pauses. They are like onions, especially insofar as they result in your tears.



I wish the last week could have been dedicated to animation labors to shorten this wait, but I was in California fraternizing with radical fans of my popular web cartoon. It was pretty cool. But now it'll be loads more days before you see anything here. That's how it goes sometimes.





Briefly unpausing PAUSE 2 to bring you these updates , and then pausing again. There will be no more updates until the EOA6_3 animation.As of right now, I have not spent a single second working on that animation. I just got back from SDCC, produced the above updates today, and now the REAL PAUSE TWO begins. The part of it that involves me actually working on it. It is just layers upon layers with these pauses. They are like onions, especially insofar as they result in your tears.I wish the last week could have been dedicated to animation labors to shorten this wait, but I was in California fraternizing with radical fans of my popular web cartoon. It was pretty cool. But now it'll be loads more days before you see anything here. That's how it goes sometimes. END OF PAUSE ONE. Posted on 9 July 2012 by Andrew

I was counting "[S] Dirk: Synchronize." and "[S] Dirk: Unite." as one animation, that just happened to be chopped into two parts. Next one is EOA6.3, at the end of Pause 2. Song:



Beginning PAUSE TWO now. I'm off to SDCC. Maybe you are too? Are you wearing a costume?? What am I even talking about. You're probably wearing one RIGHT NOW.





I was counting "[S] Dirk: Synchronize." and "[S] Dirk: Unite." as one animation, that just happened to be chopped into two parts. Next one is EOA6.3, at the end of Pause 2. Song: Unite Synchronization (Sometimes I name animations after songs. Descend, Cascade...) By Malcolm Brown . We have entered the Brown Zone. You have been warned.Beginning PAUSE TWO now. I'm off to SDCC. Maybe you are too? Are you wearing a costume?? What am I even talking about. You're probably wearing one RIGHT NOW. Hiatustuck Posted on 1 July 2012 by Andrew

There will be some major pauses in updates coming up, mostly due to Flash animation chores. There will be exactly three pauses. Two of them will be related to animation. The third will not.



PAUSE ONE: This starts RIGHT NOW! (July 1st) I will use this time to work on the first animation. I have to travel to



PAUSE TWO: I will use this time to work on another animation, to end A6A3. It will definitely be longer than pause 1, because it will include my trip to SDCC. That trip will kill an entire week of animation time. I'll likely have to start work on it when I get back. Cross country travel is preposterously disruptive, and it's going to slow everything down.



PAUSE THREE: This will begin immediately after pause two. It will not involve working on animation. I'm reserving this time to catch up on the huge amount of chores I've been badly neglecting, and will continue to badly neglect during pauses 1 and 2. The irony of animation pauses: you see nothing for many days, but I'm working at least twice as hard, doing nothing else. It's a break for you, but an anti-break for me. So I need to schedule an ACTUAL break to do stuff that needs doing. Book work, plus tons of other things. I don't know how long this pause will be yet. Probably longer than either of the first two. Let's look at it sort of like the end of a "season", where the season was all of act 6 so far.



The bottom line is, this is all going to add up to a whole lot of "me not updating Homestuck" for a while. It's not really what I want, but there's just no way around it.



I guess that's all there is to say for now. See you after pause one!





There will be some major pauses in updates coming up, mostly due to Flash animation chores. There will be exactly three pauses. Two of them will be related to animation. The third will not.PAUSE ONE: This starts RIGHT NOW! (July 1st) I will use this time to work on the first animation. I have to travel to SDCC on July 11th. It's very likely I will finish the animation before that. Once I post it, pause two will begin.PAUSE TWO: I will use this time to work on another animation, to end A6A3. It will definitely be longer than pause 1, because it will include my trip to SDCC. That trip will kill an entire week of animation time. I'll likely have to start work on it when I get back. Cross country travel is preposterously disruptive, and it's going to slow everything down.PAUSE THREE: This will begin immediately after pause two. It will not involve working on animation. I'm reserving this time to catch up on the huge amount of chores I've been badly neglecting, and will continue to badly neglect during pauses 1 and 2. The irony of animation pauses: you see nothing for many days, but I'm working at least twice as hard, doing nothing else. It's a break for you, but an anti-break for me. So I need to schedule an ACTUAL break to do stuff that needs doing. Book work, plus tons of other things. I don't know how long this pause will be yet. Probably longer than either of the first two. Let's look at it sort of like the end of a "season", where the season was all of act 6 so far.The bottom line is, this is all going to add up to a whole lot of "me not updating Homestuck" for a while. It's not really what I want, but there's just no way around it.I guess that's all there is to say for now. See you after pause one! EOA PROGRESS







1 0 2 5 Posted on 10 Oct. 2011 by Andrew

While I'm still doggedly updating that progress bar, and will continue to, I'm now shooting for a concrete date to post the animation. I should have it up on 10/25.



It's dragged on longer than I wanted it to for a variety of reasons. I'll talk about the process a little after I'm done. There's a good chance I'll finish before 10/25, but if so, I'll hold off posting it until that date. Considering the significance of the number, and the time already spent waiting, at this point it would be kind of lame if I ended up posting it on 10/22 or something. I've planned to hit key dates before, like 4/13, and fell too far behind with the project and missed the date. But this is the first time I've run so late with a project that it actually LANDED on a key date I wasn't shooting for in the first place.





Posted on 21 Sept. 2011 by Andrew

^^^ There is a crude progress bar indicating the animation's state of completion, which I may or may not forget to update as I continue to trudge across the Flash timeline. Check back routinely to see if I remembered! It may very well have advanced to the right by several pixels.



Only now, a month into this dreadful content drought, have I begun to achieve what vaguely resembles a stride with this thing. This achievement coincides impeccably with a variety of flu-like symptoms. The invading organisms believe they can slow me down, but they're wrong. I am smarter than all of them combined, and literally a trillion times bigger. There is no contest, really.





Next time on Homestuck Posted on 6 Sept. 2011 by Andrew

I said I'd give a forecast on when to expect the next animation to be finished. So here you go.



I can't imagine there'll be anything to see here until at least three weeks from now. I'd like to give a more optimistic outlook. In the past, such optimism has been misleading.



One problem is, I don't have the running start I usually do. The song isn't finished, for one thing. Not quite sure when it will be, but it's a process I'm staying more closely involved with than usual. I also have almost no art assets to work with yet. Can't do much until more pieces fall into place. This is a very different type of project than in the past. By which I mainly mean, there's a lot more preplanning than my typical shotgun approach involves.



Some of this planning took place over the last couple weeks. In that time, I also worked on some books which I hope will be real objects soon. And if all this wasn't enough, I somehow squeezed another moving job into the schedule. Nice!



But please to continue to stop by. More things will definitely appear in the news. Perhaps you'd like to refamiliarize yourself with



I didn't say this was a GREAT bonus. Only that it was SPECIAL.





I said I'd give a forecast on when to expect the next animation to be finished. So here you go.I can't imagine there'll be anything to see here until at least three weeks from now. I'd like to give a more optimistic outlook. In the past, such optimism has been misleading.One problem is, I don't have the running start I usually do. The song isn't finished, for one thing. Not quite sure when it will be, but it's a process I'm staying more closely involved with than usual. I also have almost no art assets to work with yet. Can't do much until more pieces fall into place. This is a very different type of project than in the past. By which I mainly mean, there's a lot more preplanning than my typical shotgun approach involves.Some of this planning took place over the last couple weeks. In that time, I also worked on some books which I hope will be real objects soon. And if all this wasn't enough, I somehow squeezed another moving job into the schedule. Nice!But please to continue to stop by. More things will definitely appear in the news. Perhaps you'd like to refamiliarize yourself with all 6000 pages of MSPA? As a special bonus, for the next 3+ weeks, the 6000th page will loop right back to the very first page ! Like a fearsome ouroboros, greedy for its own tail.I didn't say this was a GREAT bonus. Only that it was SPECIAL. I may have been jumping the gun to say the megapause was totally over. It is mostly over, but there are going to be scattered minipauses here and there. I still have a lot going on. Some more cons to go to in July. Expect a couple more blackout weeks. After that the pace will probably start to pick up again.