Directions of Destiny

I feel like I have all these Internet outlets at my disposal, yet I've failed to make effective use of any of them. D: I guess I rarely feel like I have things worth saying, but with Facebook and Twitter and this whole brave new world beyond LiveJournal these days, I feel like it's such a waste to not use them!! SO, now I'm trying to update my presence on the Internet more?

Anyway, a long long time ago I did this picture, and so finally this past summer I gave it a partner illustration :D This was already posted in some other outlets, including as part of the main art gallery on this site, but I thought I'd make a blog entry about it anyway Dx

Truth be told, I had actually put a piece of tracing paper over the original Queen Azalea illustration to do a lot of the detail work in this one, but I tried to give this one a more earthy feel, and where places in the Queen Azalea one were more clean, I tried to mess it up just a bit in this Zephan version.Their color schemes, red and green, are complements too.

I plan on using this image as the cover of chapter 2.7 when I finally get around to doing the actual comic again, but who knows, maybe I'll change my mind about what to put there when that time comes, ha ha Dx

I'm saying it here, I'm going to try to update at least once a week from now on!!

It's been a little longer since the last entry than I had hoped for, but I'm back for some more site updates! A lot of things have been going on in the backend lately, including a server change that should speed things up a bit, and a slightly updated layout! I had quickly grown tired of the duller colors of the original new layout, so I adjusted the color scheme to have more contrast, and I decreased the size of the header a little too so that it's less overpowering.

Also, the three weeks before the new semester started I'd been working on figuring out a new shopping cart script for this site, because previously I had used this other program (Zen Cart) that was kind of ghetto!! It did its job but it was a major pain in the butt to use, and it was lacking a certain level of customization.

Namely how I wanted two stores to share the same product IDs and database and cart, but have different layouts with only certain products appearing in each store. If you ever tried to use the Shop link here, you may have been a little jarred by the fact that it takes you to a separate website with a separate layout and everything--I didn't want that! :O I want Directions of Destiny to be its own site and I wanted visitors have a more streamlined experience when they browse this site.

Long story short, I managed to find Magento, the perfect open-source shopping cart script that does everything I want, and after weeks of burrowing myself deep in code and support forums, I've finally finished the New Alatus Gift Shop!

Annnd the feature item right now is the new Section 2.1 book for only $4! :O! This was something I printed back in the summer to try to promote my comic at the summer conventions, and I've finally gotten around to making it available online. For those of you who were around back then, it is similar to the first mini-book I released back in 2005 for Sections 1.1 and 1.2, but this time it's just one chapter, but with lots of extra content! Notably, I've included a full breakdown of my comic-making process in the book, and there are a few new minicomic strips as well as some sketches and other stuff!

For the time being my store on my personal website is closed, but the cool thing is that when I get around to putting it back up I'll be able to have both that and the Alatus Gift Shop share the same shopping cart and everything ahhh I'm so excited Dx! Anyway, I think that pretty much fully wraps up all the site-maintenance stuff for Directions of Destiny, so from here on out I should be putting up much more comic-related content :D Check back soon!

As you may have noticed, I've managed to put up a new layout for this site like I said I would in the last entry! I hope that it makes it much easier to get around and more visually appealing for you. :D Also like I said, with this big ol' blog space on the front page, I plan to update more often throughout this year with various sketches and art and stuff related to the comic as I flesh out the script for the rest of the story. Please check back every now and then if you're interested!

As a bonus, here's the line-art for the two header character art I've done so far. Instead of using a pen to ink the line-art, I drew the sketch in blue pencil and "inked" it with pencil, and so I like the nice softer effect it leaves? I plan to add header art for the rest of the characcters too in my spare time.

A lot of things were going a little haywire in the background over the last few days as I was putting this up, but I think most things should be working properly now? If you find anything that doesn't work, please comment in this entry to let me know about it, or if you have any suggestions you should leave a note as well :>