ST - 150 & 151

- 150 & 151 -

Very sorry for the lack of updates in the past weeks. Holidays, commissions, and internet problems ...

Anyway, thanks as always for reading! Stay tuned, I might have an interesting piece of news to go with my next update. :)

ST - 149

Sorry, no pic for this one! Btw, Sherri is just .3 seconds away from turning huge and green and ripping off Emma's arms. No, seriously.

ST - 148

- 148 -

Again, not much to say, really. Thanks for reading!

ST - 147

- 147 -

Too tired to say much, I need to go sleep. Thanks for reading. :)

ST - 146

- 146 -

Sorry if it's boring - this page is just sort of overflow from 145. I feel like I should apologize for depressing everyone. o.O

Also, if you're voting for me on TWC, thank you so much! There's a new incentive up!

ST - 145

- 145 -

Not much to say for this one, thanks for voting on TWC (Top Web Comics) if you did - I appreciate it! I'll try to get a new vote incentive up soon!

ST - 144

- 144 -

Aww, family pictures. :P

As per request, the comic now opens in a new window - no more fighting with the nav image.

Skipping Tomorrows - 143

- 143 -

Well, both sites have been redesigned slightly, I hope this makes navigation better until I get a better handle on website stuff. The only really new content is the "about me" page on the main site and I added more links. I've also applied to Tomgeeks, *nervous butterflies* and if that works out, I might even try one of the "big comic" lists. Really wish I didn't get so nerved up about this sort of thing. -_-

As for Skipping Tomorrows, sorry it took so long between updates again.

Things are winding down as far as the story goes. If you think you know where this is all going, chances are that you're right. ;) I think I blew more than one fuse trying to get this page done. I chose the layout poorly and instead of just starting over, I fought it for way longer than I should have. Lesson learned: sometimes it's better to start over from scratch than spend hours on a page you're going to end up hating.

- 141 & 142

- 141 & 142 -

Sorry for the space between updates. My work schedule changed and I couldn't get online for a bit. Hope the double update makes up for it a little. :)

- 140 -

- 140 -

New art at last. I'm going to try to update *at least* once a week from now on. Thanks for reading!

- 139 -

- 139 -

It's new art ... but you can't hardly see it. -_-;;

- 138 -

- 138 -

The cover image for chapter 11 (last chapter). Don't you hate it when you see there's an "update" and it's only a chapter cover? Those mean webcomic artists.

- 137-

- 137 -

Well, I'm back from camping and even found a hole in the time/space continuum where my internet was up and working. I'm trying to get some more fan art uploaded before the connection completely dies. If the internet goes down again hopefully I'll buckle down and sketch out a new page ... although chances are that I'll just play Odin Sphere until I have to go to work. Heck, I may even get crazy and post a couple camping pics.

Anyway, there's an art preview on the "about" page of the Skipping Tomorrows site.

*Disclaimer: the following is going to be just me rambling about boring digital art stuff, you may just want to click away while you can, don't feel obligated to skim-read if you don't want to - it has nothing to do with the Skipping Tomorrows story.

LINE ART:
So I'm stepping away from thick line-art for at least the remainder of Skipping Tomorrows. This is for a couple different reasons, 1 (and the biggest reason) I have no way to clean up my line art and put it into vector format. I was using an ancient PC version of Adobe Streamline on my elderly PC, but during one of my moves this past year "ye olde PC" was mistaken for a dead computer. To a geek, dead computer means one thing - donor machine! Yeah ... when I finally found my senile Hewlit Packard, he was nothing but an empty husk - just a case and a cracked motherboard. Upon some inquiries, I discoverd that my RAM, disc drives, and hard drives all went to deserving, young machines with their whole lives ahead of them. -_-

I've been playing with alternative options - testing out various other programs that have tight raster converters. Illustrator was so incredibly fun to work with, but my time trial ran out and I wanted to try other programs before throwing money at my problem. I'm currently (and by currently, I mean running in the background) messing with Inkscape. There are other free options (even one browser based converter) but I'm limited to mac programs and I'm picky. So (at least vectorized) thick, bold line art for me is not an option for me right now. As much as I enjoy digital painting, I would rather chew on a handful of thumbtacks than utilize digital inking.

Reason #2 for no bold line art is simply that I kind of like the soft, sketchy look. I think it feels more like "mine" if my scanned page looks like it will still smudge if I drag my thumb across it. Maybe this is my inner organic artist fighting my digital side. It's much, much harder and tedious to paint with wispy lines, but I prefer the overall look of it.

PAINTING STYLE:
No more cell shading! This is actually kind of a bummer to me because I prefer cell shading in a colored manga. I guess it helps keep the "anime" feel to it. Monochrome needs to be screentoned and color needs to be cell shaded. So why am I breaking my own preference based rule? Because cell shading is bold and strong with defined edges - my line art is not. For those of you with slower connections, you will notice a considerable loading time difference when the new pages start going up - they're almost triple the file size. Because I will be doing more shading, blending and shadowing, there's so many more color varations. While they don't show up on web-crunched images, I'm also using some textures for fabric and what-not. Heck, I've even begun to care about light source continuity. o.O

DETAIL:
I've always been a very detail oriented person. If I ever had to rush-finish something, it was probably because I was obsessing over miniscule details that no one but me would ever care about. Because my line art is so much thinner now, I've been able to go nuts on details. Things like double seams, button holes, earrings, and wood grains will now be visible. While this might take a little bit of extra time, it seems to even out with the amount of time I would take to ink over a sketch.

BACKGROUNDS:
They will be there. Gone are the days of me using a gradient fill behind EVERYTHING. While I know what Shawn's apartment looks like, I have failed in a huge way to communicate the location to you guys. I'm also done using the five-year-old-coloring-on-a-resteraunt-menu approach to outdoor scenes. If this sounds like me beating myself up, I'm not - I'm apologizing. If I so badly wanted people to read my story, then I should have taken the time to at least tell it completely. Backgrounds aren't part of the script, but they give important information. You may not even conciously look at them but they're used a foundation piece to most panels. So I'm sorry that I was lazy with the character enviornments and I'm making a big effort to not let that happen again.

Wow ... I think that was an official rant. Bravo to you if you read it all - you're probably an artist too if you made it to the end. Hopefully it all made sense. I'd also love input if you feel so inclined. Maybe when I post the first new page I could ask those of you who care for your opinion of the new style. Thanks so much for reading this and the comic!

- 136 -

I updated, sorry I have no time to link it or anything, almost literally running out the door and I'll be gone until next week. Sorry, see you all next week!

134 & 135

134 & 135

I had to hijack another connection so I did another double update. Sorry for the inconsistency! Chapter 11 is creeping right up and that means brand new art!

132 & 133

My connection keeps cutting out every couple seconds and I'm getting too tired to fight with it (it's 2 am). The new pages are up, and I'll try to fix this post some time tomorrow. Thanks for checking in and sorry for the delay (see the news section of main site).

- 130 & 131 -

- 130 & 131 -

Sorry for the late update, see the previous post for details.

Trying very hard to update

My internet has been crazy slow since Sunday, and I'm sorry I missed an update. I'm going to try updating late tonight when the network isn't so busy. I'll be nice and post 2 pages to make up for the late-ness.

Oh, and while you're waiting for an update, watch this video.

- 129 -

- 129 -

For those of you who have been waiting for the "small amount of violence" at the end, it starts here. Sickos. :P

- 128 -

- 128 -

Confession: drawing an angry, evil Shawn was fun.

- 127 -

- 127 -

A friend of mine likened this exchange to a certain event that happened in Metal Gear Solid. Now both Shawns are going to take off their shirts, climb on top of a large mechanical weapon and duke it out with their fists. :P

The REAL 124

- 124 -

Wow, I can't believe I forgot to put this page in. I'm sorry if the page flow going into chapter 10 confused anyone and I hope this helps it make more sense. I think I fixed all the navigation issues too. /-_-

- 125 -

- 125 -

The next chapter backgrounds are supposed to be surreal - I'm not just being lazy. :P

- 124 -

- 124 -

Nothing crazy special, just a chapter cover.

- 123 -

- 123 -

Well ... it was bound to happen sometime. :P I'll be totally honest, back when I was actually doing the line art for this page I was pretty excited. Kissing scenes are totally fun to draw!!!

Since this is kind of a land mark of sorts in the story of Skipping Tomorrows, I'd like to thank everyone again for reading.

And ... uh, not to be all weird and self conscious, but no one has posted forever. Is anyone actually still reading the comic?

- 122 -

- 122 -

Hmm. Anyone guess what's next?

-121-

-121-

This chapter is winding down, only a few more pages to go.

- 120 -

- 120 -

They're under the waterfall. Other than the fact that the location isn't clear, I remember having fun coloring this page.

- 119 -

- 119 -

Not a lot to say about this page either.

117 & 118

-117 & 118-

I promise you that I updated the 21st, but the second I uploaded the next comic and linked it to the last page and then *bloop!* no more internet!
So they're both up.

Please squint really hard or lick your glasses lenses before viewing these pages. I'm not a lazy person but you'd think I was because of my backgrounds. I'm so sorry! (The next chapter won't be much better). It's wicked hard to tell, but they're climbing into the lit fountain in the middle of the park they walked through earlier in the story. There's also a waterfall/cliff thing in the middle. Sorry sorry sorry. -_-

-116-

116

Not much to say about this page.

114 & 115

114 & 115

I missed the last update because of my wonky connection issues, so there's 2 new pages today.

As for these pages, sorry that I rushed the background. Initially I meant to draw all the backgrounds by hand and scan them in, but that would have taken forever, so I just did very fast digital paintings of them. Sorry they're so sloppy, but I had a fun time doing the lighting and rain effects for these upcoming pages.

- 112 -

K, the ball is officially rolling and this is the first new page of ST that's shown up for a while. Once again, I'm sorry the art (and even coloring at this point) is so old. As much as I enjoy ST, I want very much to start a new project and use all the things I've learned from this one. Part of me hates to see these old images posted as "new" but I don't think it's fair to the readers for me to not finish up ST.

As for an update schedule, let's go with every other day for now, starting today. I've worked ahead on the pages, but I'm not ready to promise a definite page schedule quite yet.

As for the upcoming chapter 9, I see now that I was a tad too ambitious as far as setting and mood goes. Some things you cannot easily convey to paper, and I've fallen terribly short of my original vision of these next few scenes. Please keep that in mind as you (as I'm sure you will :P) continue to check back for new ST pages.

Lend a hand?

If you come across a dead or broken link, could you please let me know? I'd appreciate it. :)

almost there

I have most of the work done for the site and I'm just trying to get all the pages linked back up in a webcomic viewing format. Thank you, soul-alive for what you've done. It is really encouraging to me that people are still thinking of Skipping Tomorrows from time to time. I'll be back soon (with my site). I promise. :)

Still Working ...

Holidays are officially over and everyone is getting back to the "norm." That includes me. :) Hopefully by the end of this month hoodiegypsy will be back up and functional and skipping tomorrows will be underway. Because of my funny internet situation, I've had more chance to work on the art of the upcoming pages - even going so far as making steps towards my next project.

Anyway, I wish you all a happy new year - have fun turning over those new leaves and keeping up the resolutions. :)