Shifters Comic History

 

So you'd like to know a little bit about how this comic came about? Well gather around, its a semi-interesting story. Shifters did not start on keenspace. Indeed it existed several years as part of my personal website before I discovered keenspace's services as a comic host.

What attracted me to them was their updating utility and higher profile. Shifters was, in fact, already 3 years old before I ever came to keenspace. So the date of start in the achives is quite wrong.I actually began drawings for shifters as early as 1998, which was the year I graduated from College. It is a hobby, and so it took second place to many other projects and my job, so I didn't update reliably. In fact I would only update maybe one panel a month if that. I realized in 2000 that if I wanted to continue this I would have to find a way to get through it. I was struggling for writing and drawing as I didn't have time to do both, nor a very clear idea of anything beyond the absolute main story of Shifters. Then I met James Strocel.

I found out he was a writer and invited him to try writing some material for Shifters, as I admitted I was at something of an impass. After some lengthy discussions about existing characters and what I ultimately had in mind, he set about to writing his first script " Tears of Blood". It was defiantely a turning point for shifters as, for the first time, I had a real direction to work in without worrying about writing it myself. That freed me up to focus more on the artwork, character design, and other aspects of artistic comic creation.After tackling the first two issues that James had written, I felt that I was getting to a point where I could more support a regular update schedual if I had something to update automatically and I dropped the full color I was doing at the time. When I found keenspace, i saw the potential to not only keep my schedual, but expose my work to a whole new community of comic readers as well as be involved in a dynamic and seemingly friendly ( if somewhat wacky ) web community. I uploaded all the comics I had since the beginning on August 10th, 2001.

Some people have commented that the comic art is very inconsistant in the beginning and improves drastically. This is due in part to the time between the panels in the beginning as well as the state of my life at the time. Shifters is a sketchbook. A plaything to try and improve my abilities. When you look at the entire archives of shifters you are looking at a work spanning nearly 5 years. Indeed the first few issues did suck very badly and suffer from horrible typography and other issues, I will revise them when I have time. Every issue I continue to improve and I will continue this quest, no doubt starting other comic projects to strech my skills in other areas. Shifters has been very challenging for me due to the technology level of the setting and the action of the story. It has been tremendously hard to draw at times for me. After three years of writing for Shifters, James found he did not have time to continue, so I once again find myself alone. However, he did a great service for Shifters and helped tremendously when I most needed it. I thank him for everything he did with a most sincere heart.Currently Shifters updates three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with a periodic update on Sundays. Perhaps one day I will be able to update more, but for now, this is how it will have to be as I have a full time job and try to have something resembling a social life on weekends.

 

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Shifters is hosted on Keenspace, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics.