Hello readers.

The current page of Dressed for Success is going to be the last new one for the foreseeable future. Like the majority of webcomic creators I juggle doing the comic alongside a full-time day job. Recently the stability of that job has come into question and I have had to start looking around for other potential job opportunities. Along with that process I’ve also needed to spend time updating my job skills. After attempting to juggle all of these things for the past few weeks I have come to the conclusion that it wasn’t working very effectively and that something needed to be dropped. Seeing as the comic work has been something I’ve been doing for free in my spare time, it fell to the bottom of my list of priorities.

At this time I am not sure how long of a break there will be. I imagine it will probably extend out to months rather than weeks. In the meantime Chris has offered to step up and do something to fill the gap. For details on that I pass things over to him.

– Jeff

So, as much as no one wants these kinds of interruptions, more and more I’m realising they are a part of the reality of being a part-time artist of any sort. That being said, we’ve tried to keep the comic river flowing in the past during these breaks and I’d like to see that continue.

This time however, I can’t just whip out a Colt Renfrew story. So I started to think about something new. Something that I could do, on my own, to bridge the gap. It’s been a long time since I’ve done comics all by my onesy. I’ve always loved the partnership Jeff and I have and really enjoyed being able to colour these new DFS stories. But there was a time when I did produce some comic work without Jeff.

Now, before I go any further, I will NOT be going back to that old work. I no longer feel the autobio bug. (Sorry to the three people in the world who want more Chrispy Bacon). I have had a story idea floating around in the back off my mind for a long time, but it is still little more than rough concepts, themes and snapshots. Not something I want to just dive into in a rush.

So I started thinking about what else I might do. Funny strip? Longer story? Ordinary people? Funny animals? And then something occurred to me. During the dark times between the original DFS and the relaunch on the web, I spent nine summers performing at the Ontario Renaissance Festival, one element of which was doing storytelling. Since that, I’ve continued on occasion to share these old fairy tales with one audience or another and I still really enjoy telling them. So I thought, what if I took my act off the stage and on to the page.

So I’m going to do just that. Transform these old fairy tales that I’ve told for years into comics stories. I’m going to be sort of flying without a net, writing, drawing and maybe colouring on the fly. I’d love to spend a few weeks doing sketches, samples and experiments, but instead, I’ve put pen straight to panel and with any luck, the first page of my first tale will be up next Wednesday. If that works out, then I will likely be able to continue on a weekly basis.

As I go, I’ll be sharing process info on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter for anyone who is curious to see. I might even try sharing a work session via a Google Hangout. But maybe not until I’m a little more comfortable! 😉

We hope you will stay with us, Alex and Walter will return, but in the meantime, gather around the fire, I’ve got some stories to tell.

– Chris

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 at 6:00 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.