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Archive for January, 2010
January 30th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
I was busy on Wednesday, so my weekly update is Saturday this time. This past week was pretty exciting, as I had an interview in Boston for an artist position (cross your fingers for me). I also took my first three day break from the comic since I started at the New Year, but I quickly got back on a roll and have produced two pages in the past two days.
 The most recent installment (currently available at the website, click image above to go there, or will be posted tomorrow at Drunk Duck) closes the “first day at school” scene in which Maggie meets her new classmates.
Notes:
The usage of “queer” means strange in this age and context, nothing like the typical modern usage. Don’t get offended by it! Also, open racism was the norm and will appear more than once in the story. While the graphic novel will overall be fairly tame, I intend to be as true to the setting as possible, which might not be exactly PC all the time. I would say it is meant for no younger than the teenage age group.
January 24th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
With the posting of page 13, I am officially halfway through Chapter I of Under the Apple Tree. Since Drunk Duck’s page uploader is down until tomorrow I figured I’d mention it here, as well as some historical tidbits about the comic so far. I’ll post the page up there once everything’s available again.
The current scene features Kennebunk High School, where Maggie is the newest student. The building was built in 1938 so it would still be pretty shiny and new when she came to town in 1943. Back then there were only a few hundred kids so the main brick building was enough, but by the time I attended in 2001 there were two larger additions added on that make it look quite different than it should in the comic.
The main building is what you see in the comic, and that extension in the back was added much later. There is also a large wing behind the original that extends far out to the opposite side. As I have no references of what the school grounds looked like before those were added, I kind of had to make up what it looked like. I assumed there was much more green and trees.
January 22nd, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
Recently my installation of Wordpress suffered a bit and while most everything was recovered, the most recent images I uploaded for posts disappeared. This means the last several entries are now picture-less, so I apologize for how boring this place looks now.
I will remedy that soon!
January 20th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
I did four pages of the comic this week and updated some of the materials on the website. On top of that, I registered it with Comic Rank so I can keep track of the number of readers I have, as well as Comic Space for further networking. I am still seeking votes on Top Web Comics, my goal is to be in the top 100 someday!
I found it rather difficult to get new readers to the official website, so I created a mirror at Drunk Duck where I will also be posting the new pages. By being a part of a site like that I have the support of a comics community as well as the handiness of the option to comment on each of the pages and other nifty features. I still redirect anyone looking for character descriptions, etc to those pages on my personal website.
At this point I’m in the networking/gaining readers stage, and I’d say I’ve been pretty productive. That amount of work with four pages at probably three hours a piece puts me at a pretty high production level this past week. Let’s see if I can keep this up!
January 18th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
I was the new kid in that classroom, once upon a time… just about 50 years after Maggie would have been. Read page 10 here!
January 15th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
I forgot to update when it first went live, the Comic Creator’s Alliance went live this past Monday! If you missed my first entry about it, it’s a collaboration of something like 87 different cartoonists, their female characters appearing on a downloadable wallpaper that you can access if you donate toward organizations working to end human trafficking.
“There are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide- more than double the number of enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. The US Department of Justice estimates 16,000 victims of human trafficking are brought into the United States every year.”
Definitely a worthy cause! I didn’t contribute because my comic wasn’t live at that point, but I donated and now proudly sport my shiny new desktop! Even if all you have is a couple bucks, every little bit counts.
Also, I put another page up at Under the Apple Tree and anticipate another soon. The update schedule will probably consist of pages being posted as they’re finished, but I’ll do an “official” update on Wednesdays and maybe another day of the week so no one misses any pages.
January 13th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
I’ve decided to make Wednesday my scheduled update for my new webcomic, Under the Apple Tree. It seems to make the most sense as I have most of the day off so I can catch up before I post, and not many of the other comics I follow update on Wednesdays (lots of Thursdays and Fridays), so hopefully that will get me some more traffic later on.
Today I was only able to put one page up, but if I finish some more this afternoon I will post a second. Scene 2 opens with Maggie waking up and hearing music playing from down the hall. Now you get to meet Mrs. Ripple, her mother.
Constructive criticism is always appreciated. I have mixed feelings about that last page, so I’m curious what you all think. The style is more simplistic than before with a sort of retro home-y color scheme to invoke a certain feeling for the scene… we’ll see if it works.
I have also worked quite a bit on the website and now there are wallpapers available, as well as character descriptions (which I’ll update as more appear) and a fleshed out links section. If anyone would like to exchange links I’d be happy to oblige!
January 10th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
The first scene is posted! I meant to wait on it, but I’m really happy with what I have so far. Updates should occur on Wednesdays, consisting of a couple pages each, but this week’s might be smaller considering I posted the entire first scene.
Constructive criticism on the comic and the website I designed for it are encouraged!
January 4th, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
My final semester at SMCC is about to begin, as well as my senior capstone project. In an effort to force myself to actually finish something I have made the graphic novel I’ve been working on my official project, and now if I don’t finish and do it well I will get a very bad grade! I figured with the pressure I’ll finally get it done.
Now, don’t think that I haven’t been working on it at all… as a matter of fact, I’ve done SEVEN versions of the first page alone (see above, click image for larger version). It’s ridiculous, really. From its earliest incarnation in the summer of 2007 to the current (and better), I have gotten stuck in the first few pages.
And it is time to end that trend! Wish me luck!
January 3rd, 2010 by Sarah Winifred Searle
 
Doing some sketching in Photoshop! The top was a practice with environments, the bottom was trying out a more realistic style than I usually use. Neither took more than 20 or so minutes each.
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