Ha-ha! I have returned triumphant after being stranded in an internet-free zone forever. I know you were all worried about me because the e-mails have been flooding in — my inbox is just crammed with messages from fans clamouring for the return of Life on the Fourth Floor. Oh, the clamouring.
Seriously, though, we’re not in hiatus here. I’ve just moved house. There has been no internet until today, no scanner until Saturday 19th so no comic until I catch up. I’ve pencilled loads of strips and done another million storyboards for strips-to-come, which is kind of funny because I can see where the strip is going, what it’s going to be and that it’s not there yet. I’m impatient for it to become what I always imagined but, you know, first things first. There’s an evil Solaris-toaster to be destroyed. That storyline is going to wrap up in — let’s see — 4 strips’ time. It’s all drawn up, scanned in along with another 8 strips. I just need to stripify them — digitally ink them, colour them, shade them, add the words, take a million years. I’m not going to lie to you, this is going to take a while and I only wish I could have started sooner than I have but it just hasn’t been possible. Have patience, though — this is going to rock. Take the time to reacquaint yourself with cast on the cast page and flick back through the archives.
And I have a special announcement to make. I was going to save this for the next post but it’s not like I’ve kept any of the others short. I’m going to introduce a sixth character to the cast. Don’t think of the new character as an afterthought (hell, I know it’s been a year but we’re not even 50 strips in) because this character was created at the same time as the other five, I was just never happy with the character’s design back then and I hadn’t really got a good handle on their personality either, or how they’d fit in with the others. And most of the strips up until now have been an introduction to the world of the Fourth Floor and I didn’t want to have to spend the time setting up yet another character when I was already struggling with the others. So, yeah, I’m glad I took the time out to redesign this character and figure out who they are. They’ll turn up in the 48th strip. I know you’ll like them.
Hey, in other news I’ve been violently sick! Yay! I actually spent all of Thursday night and all of Saturday morning, during which no sleep was had, vomiting over and over and over again. Thought I’d save that for last so I don’t sound like one of those cartoonists who stops updating every time he has a sniffle. This was no sniffle. After four or five hours my throat started to bleed. I’m all better now, though.
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