Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The Accidental Cartoonist - Welcome to the New Brain Teaser Comics

In November I suffered a hard drive loss that made a bunch of finished strips inaccessible for posting and I decided to put Brain Teaser on a brief hiatus through the holidays and New Year. Thanks to an awesome coworker at my Real World Job with mad skills I was able to get those strips (and all my other data) back. Thanks Jim!

 Since I didn't end up having to re-do all those comics, I had some time to think about brainteasercomics.com and what I want to do with it in the near future. I'd been frustrated with how the site looked and worked, and made the decision to do a complete overhaul on it and build it with some additional goals in mind.

 I considered several solutions, but ultimately settled on a Blogger powered site because of my long term familiarity with the available tools, the knowledge that it is highly customizeable, and that customization is easy even for those not experts at HTML, CSS and Java Scripting. Plus there is TONS of support and user knowledge out there.

First and Foremost I wanted the site to LOOK better, and I think that is mission accomplished. The overall look is much more modern. I've added tags to every single strip, categorizing them into some of the themes I revisit over and over again. For blog posts I've added a tag called 'Accidental Cartoonist'. I'm hoping to do more blog posts about what I'm up to this year and I want to hear from YOU! Blogger has a much better commenting system than my old host, and I'm hoping to build community, and have dialog with you readers about my work as well as what you are up to.

In 2015 I'm also hoping to launch a Patreon campaign, try to pull in some advertising dollars and hopefully get Brain Teaser to pay for itself in terms of time, materials, and other associated costs. I've added links to my Cafe Press Shop, and that page is next on the list for a makeover with some new designs in line with what Brain Teaser, Media Montage and Blank Tape Comics are all about. Blank Tape Comics will also get a makeover when time permits as I'm doing more non-Brain Teaser stuff that will go up on that site including mini-comics and side projects. In fact some of the older Brain Teaser Comics that don't really fit the current mold will be moved to that site.

I've added my Twitter Feed, link to my Facebook Fan Page, and embedded the Media Montage Podcast player, to integrate all my creative projects into (hopefully) a greater whole, make myself more reachable and do a better job of reaching you.

Take a look around and let me know what you think in the comments.  Look for new strips on Mondays and Wednesdays starting on January 5th with 'Mixed Message'.

See you then!