Okay, all the pages have been reuploaded and should be displaying correctly now, except the odd inbetween pages like our birthday announcements and christmas cards – those I’ll attend to tomorrow (it’s after 3am here).

Because the new display size is a different size format to our other pages, the cropping on some of the pages may look a little strange, but mostly it won’t make much of a difference.

New features on the site, as you will notice, include prettier social media icons, and widgets for our Patreon site, as well as a widget for topwebcomics, where you can vote for Cottonstar to feature among the top 100 webcomics on the interwebs.

We’ve also added an FAQ section. We’re still working on the informative video that will help explain how to pronounce the cast’s names, but the footage we have so far is pretty good. And by good I mean hilarious. To us.

If there’s anything broken on the new site, please let us know! You can mention it here or via our contact details on our About page.

Thanks so much to our coder John Murray who is just amazing <3

Thanks also to YOU for reading our comic! While we were fiddling with the site, we exceeded 1000 daily pageviews, something which has never happened to us before! So, thank you. 🙂

Hey guys! We mentioned sometime ago that we’d be revamping the site a bit. That’s what’s going on right now. If things look a little weird, that’s why – we’re fiddling with the layout and code and stuff. The pages will be slightly fuzzy until we reupload them all (sorry about that), as they’re going to be a bit bigger from now on.

Thanks for your patience!

Danelle & Ben

Yo guys! Recently we’ve started working a bit harder at getting our comic out there. This means that we’ve started placing some ads on webcomics listing sites, as well as engaging with Project Wonderful. Hence, we’re starting to depend more on online donations!

If you could contribute via our Patreon page on a per-content basis, or even just directly through the donate button on the site, we’d be super super grateful! No obligation of course, Cottonstar will always be free to read and it’s not likely that we’d put any ads on the site. We are however feeling the pinch thanks to putting our content on other sites.

Every cent helps, so don’t be afraid that your donations would be insignificant! We’re really grateful for whatever you decide to give!

In the meantime, here is a photo of a dachshund.

Thanks 😀
Ben & Danelle

If you’re reading this, it means you’ve managed to survive the 2013 holiday season successfully. CONGRATULATIONS! Here is your prize… it is… a blog post. (Audience: “Awww boooo!”)

Yes, enough about 2013 though. Let’s talk about 2014.

FIRST UP

A few things about our update schedule, or lack thereof. We love Cottonstar, we love it very very much. It is our child. We love working on it and we love seeing it come to life, and we love to present it to you fine folks to read and enjoy. We never miss an update just because we went “eh, too much effort.” When we miss updates, it is because of one of the following reasons:

1. Ben and/or I had to work overtime, and needed sleep more than we needed to update on time. This happens far too often and we do what we can to prevent it as far as possible, but sometimes we just can’t help it. Sleep is vital to your health in a plethora of aspects, so it’s important that you get enough of it. It took us several years of being stubborn idiots to figure out that lack of sleep = more hours to work, but less productive use of time, while enough sleep = less hours to work but having WAY more constructive energy. So, while we do burn the midnight oil on occasion, we have our limits. All-nighters kill you physically and emotionally.*

2. Paying freelance projects eat up our comic-drawing time. This one is a sad necessity also. We’re really struggling financially and we take whatever freelance projects we can get our hands on just to stay afloat. Which brings us back to point 1. Hopefully soon things will get better, but until then, paying work just has to come first.

3. Technical problems…as is the case currently while I write this journal. Yep, among everything else in our house breaking and my car being broken into, my PC’s motherboard went belly-up. We were actually properly on schedule and then my machine started switching itself off without warning. I knew it meant trouble.  I took it over to a friend’s place, with the aim to clean it out and format… and then once we’d cleaned it out, it didn’t even stay on for longer than 3 seconds. RIP motherboard (2011-2014). So. Off to the repair centre it went. We’re still waiting to hear back from them. Other technical difficulties include computer crashes, corrupt file data, broken internet, and any of the other things the universe thought prudent to expose us to that day.

4. Familial obligations. They are unavoidable, like taxes. We love our families and sometimes we have to do what we gotta do for them.

Whenever we know we’re going to miss an update, we make a post about it on our facebook page, which you can find here. We also tweet about it on occasion (we’re @TheCottonStar on twitter) but we find most of our readers actively use facebook, so it’s easiest to announce things on there. If you are not a facebook user, please leave us a comment below to let us know what we can do to make things more accessible to you!

Right, now that the depressing stuff is out of the way, we’d like to announce that we have created a Patreon page for Cottonstar! Patreon is like kickstarter, but there are no funding goals or time limits.

Taken from the Patreon FAQ:

“Patreon lets fans become patrons of their favorite artists and creators. Unlike other fundraising services that raise for a single big event, Patreon is for creators who create a stream of smaller works, like YouTube musicians, bloggers, web comics, etc.”

We figured, why not? So if you’re feeling really generous, you can find our Patreon page here. And I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: Cottonstar will always be free to read online! This is in no way us turning the page into a paid service. It’s literally just in case people feel like donating. You can donate any amount you like, even $1, and you can also set a budget in case you’re worried about spending too much. For more info and better explanations, visit the Patreon site.

To everyone who has donated or will donate: THANK YOU. You’re awesome.

Also, May is coming up… and you know what that means, right? FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. We are so excited but also so stressed! It means we have to somehow complete and print Chapter 3 before then. We’re trying to speed up production and we have NO IDEA how we’re going to fund the printing as yet, but by golly we’re going to try. In the meantime, familiarise yourself with our most excellent hosts, Readers Den. The best part for you non-Capetonians? They have an extensive online shop and really good prices!

Okay, this turned into a really long journal. Sorry! The tl;dr version is we don’t miss updates if we can help it at all and that Free Comic Book Day is getting us super excited.

Have a great 2014, and as always, thanks for reading! 😀

-Danelle

————————————-

*Yes, it can literally kill you, especially if you pair it with energy drinks. Your endocrine system burns itself out and you can suffer heart failure, among a whole plethora of other awful things.

Hey everyone!

With Open Book Comics Fest winding down, and our major part in it over, we feel the need to gush a bit about how awesome it was.

The venue this year was the District 6 Homecoming Centre, a lovely space connected to the popular Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. This was already a vast improvement from last year, where the venue was small and quite hidden away. It also meant that we had a lot of incidental traffic thanks to the theatre’s patrons. The venue also had an upstairs area where talks and panels could be held without having to compete with the noisy marketplace to be heard. There were some big names in the mix, including Lauren Beukes (Moxyland, Zoo City, Shining Girls, Fairest), Rico Schacherl (Madam & Eve), art writer Sean O’Toole,  and acclaimed political cartoonist Zapiro.

There is also an exhibition on the process of making comics, curated by the CCIBA. Our work is on there too, along with Mr. Vuis Visagie by Heineche Smith, and it even got a little feature in a local newspaper! See photos below:

 Moray snapped this pic of the sales area while I was away from our booth and Gibbo had stolen Danelle’s seat…

We had an absolute blast. We had awesome neighbours at our booth too – the lovely Shân Fischer from Shân Fisher Illustration, Gavin Thomson from Trek Net/Mama Taxi, Ben Winfield from Lobe Kid (who presented the webcomics workshop with us), and Su Opperman who was manning the CCIBA Graflit booth, an anthology well worth picking up. It’s only R100 and contains some really good art by local illustrators.

Some (of the very many) things we were really excited about:

The launch of Daniël Hugo‘s Oneironaut & Other Tales – this man is a veteran of South African comics, and has been producing high quality work for many years. Oneironaut & Other Tales is his long-overdue first anthology. The art and stories are excellent.

Joe Daly was there doing signings. We managed to get our 10 year old copy of Red Monkey signed, and Joe even drew a cool picture for us! 🙂

Lauren Beukes was also there and signed Danelle’s copy of The Shining Girls. Yay!

We presented a workshop on webcomics with Ben Winfield and Moray Rhoda. The venue was small (a conference room at the Central Library) but we filled all the seats, plus two or three extra! That was pretty awesome. The workshop was 2 hours long, and somehow we managed to fill it all up, including some Q & A time. Unfortunately we didn’t take photos while the session was in full swing. The light was really awful and all we had were cellphone cameras. Ben Winfield did snap two pics while we were waiting to start though. In the panoramic shot you can see the entire venue.

Financially, we broke even (sorta, as far as we can count, our buying ALL the things made keeping track of the cashbox difficult) – which is a pleasant surprise as we had considered the event to be more of a networking and promotional event than one which would make us some money. And network, we did! Wow, we cannot even tell you how cool all the people there were. We finally met some people that we’ve only ever spoken to online, and reconnected with some others that we’ve met but rarely ever see, and were honoured enough to meet and chat to people whose work we admire. The crowd was great, we hardly had any rude people, and the vibe among all the artists was pretty awesome. Above and beyond all that great stuff, we were so pleased to see the quality and quantity of work being produced by our peers. A few new comics were launched and they were all pretty awesome! So well done to everyone involved, you did really good work.

Another fun part of the event was that we got to do some work for charity. There were lots of blank tote bags that were given to artists to draw on. We were provided with some markers and things, and we could draw whatever we liked. In Danelle’s case, it was butts and dachshunds. In Ben’s, it was Noah. These bags were then put on display and sold for R80, with all the proceeds going towards a fund to build a library in an underprivileged area (I think it’s Kayalitsha, unless I heard incorrectly?). All of Danelle’s bags sold on the day, but Ben still has a Noah bag which is on display at the Book Lounge. Last we heard it was still available for purchase, so go and grab it if you’re keen. 🙂

 Lastly, we have very limited stock of Chapter 2 available. I think around 10 or so, at last count. We still have plenty of Chapter 1, and almost all our posters. A lot of our peers also still have lots of stock left over. Many of them stock online at Readers Den, but if there are any particular works you know about and wish to purchase, send us an email and we’ll direct you to the right places.

A HUGE THANK YOU To Moray Rhoda, Frankie Murrey, Jess Smith and Andy Mason (if I’m forgetting anyone here, sorry, please nudge me in the comments!) for everything you’ve done for us, and keep doing for us. <3

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

!!BONUS CONTENT!!

Remember that wedding we were so stressed about? Well, it was really pretty. Everything leading up to it was a bit of a disaster for several parties involved, with long strings of wardrobe malfunctions (including Danelle and one of the other bridesmaids getting their dresses swapped by accident, the groom forgetting his shirt at home and giving himself a black eye on the car door shortly before the ceremony), and power outs, and a lot of other things… but the wedding itself was very sweet and we had a blast. As proof that we can actually look nice in pictures, here is a photo for your enjoyment:

It was FREEZING. It had actually snowed on the nearby mountains, which made for extremely pretty photos, but in a strapless dress, it was really, really cold. Plus, it was raining most of the time so we all got wet and were a bit miserable while the photos were being taken. And we all had colds the next day. BUT! It was all worth it. (And my brother looks so adorable with his wedding band! -Danelle) Here’s what the venue looked like the next morning:

Lovely Tulbagh. Thank you for the memories!

Okay. Now the blog post is REALLY done.

Hey guys.

So as we’ve mentioned before, this weekend is Danelle’s brother’s wedding. It’s kind of a big deal and we’re both involved heavily in terms of admin, physical and emotional support. So basically every free moment we have until Sunday will be dedicated to getting things ready on time, and of course attending the event itself and making sure it all goes smoothly.

Furthermore, we are preparing to take part in the Open Book Comics Fest from the 7th to the 10th of September – the week after the wedding. We’re participating in the exhibition that will accompany the comics fest, as well as manning our stall for many hours on end. We are also presenting a panel with Ben Winfield and Moray Rhoda on webcomics (as we’ve mentioned before) and it’s going to be pretty awesome.

As you can surmise, all of this will take a great deal of work  and energy investment from our side. The next two pages of Cottonstar are going to be fairly complex in terms of composition and so on, and we’ll have to have clear heads and lots of energy to do a good job. Hence, we will be postponing working on them until all this other stuff has been done and dusted. We thought we might be able to do them in between all of this other stuff, but it’s become clear that that is not an option.

We apologise for putting things on hold again so soon after our previous hiatus! We really appreciate your support and patience.

<3

Ben & Danelle

A lovely surprise gift from our friend Kevin Gibson – He’s made a song inspired by our webcomic, Cottonstar! It really makes you think of adventure and travel, and the glorious wide open spaces you encounter when sailing. It incorporates a blend of African and Western sounds. After all, the Cottonstar universe is a bit of a hybrid world.

Follow the link to listen to the song!

Aim For The Stars – Kevin Gibson

Thank you Kevin, it’s awesome!

An unofficial one, but here you go!

SO LET US TELL YOU ABOUT THINGS

First of all, we just got back from the most beautiful wedding of the most beautiful people. Lemme tell you.

THESE GUYS

Have a damn special place in our hearts.

Talana and Martin moved heaven and earth so that we could be at their wedding in Johannesburg (a two hour flight from Cape Town, where we live) this weekend. And we could not WAIT to get there and spend time with them. And it was every bit as awesome as we knew it would be! I don’t think I’ve ever bawled at any wedding as much as I did at theirs [note: this is Danelle typing! Ben was pretty beardly and shed a few beardly tears while I was sobbing like a moron]. The church and venue were beautiful, as was the ceremony, AND THE COUPLE’S DACHSHUNDS WEARING TUTUS AND A TUXEDO(!!!), but the most beautiful thing of all was seeing my friend Talana, who had lost her leg a few years ago to a neural disease, WALK down the aisle with her dad, on her new artificial leg. She and Martin also had their first dance together. I was totally overwhelmed, it was the most beautiful thing to see them, being happy and strong and so very in love.

They are such an inspiration to me and Ben and we just want all the best things in life for them. We know they’ll be very happy because they fit together like peas in a pod. ;D We feel blessed, we feel happy, and we feel loved by good people, and that is worth all the gold in the world to us. <3

There was a photo booth where people could have their photos taken and have them printed out directly. Ben and I had some done… here they are for your viewing pleasure:

We don’t really have photos of the couple at the wedding itself, because we wanted to focus on being there instead of trying to take photos of everything. The photographer they had there is really good and we had a pic taken with them as well, and if you guys want, we’ll put it up here when we get it. (That is not a real fur, by the way, it’s just a really nice-looking faux one.)

NOW, gushing aside… on to other news:

Grahamstown was awesome, and we got a lot done in terms of script, etcetera. We made ourselves into locals at a coffee shop there, and spent every free moment we had working on Cottonstar. Here is a pic of Danelle with our programmer, John, who was also at the festival for a day or two. Now you can all see what he looks like. 😀 Thanks for all your hard work, John!

And a pic of Ben swabbing the poop decks, because that way it balances out:

So this other big project, the one that actually ate up our Cottonstar time, is finally complete (minus the final edits after the comic has been shown to target groups) – and we are super chuffed with how it turned out. It was a huge amount of work, but we learnt A LOT, and we are pretty pleased with the level of work we produced. And the client was really nice too, which always helps motivate you to big projects such as this. Seeing as the client had already shared some of the pages here, We thought it would be cool for us to show you a bigger version of one of those pages they have on the site. Here is page 4 of Kweku Tsin and the Black Dragon, a comic book adaptation of a Ghanaian folk tale about how the sun, moon and stars were created. The target audience is pre-teens to young teens, and possibly some reluctant older teens as well.

The full comic is 28 pages long – all in this semi-painterly style, so you can understand why it took us so long.

NOW, for the really good news. We’ll be updating again as of next Wednesday. We’ll try and do multiple updates to make up for lost time. The new chapter will be longer than the first two, at 32 pages, plus epilogue. Want to see some of the script?? HERE IT IS:

PROOF! PROOF THAT WE HAVE BEEN WORKING! Ahem

Right, so, thank you for bearing with this meandering blog post. The tl;dr version is that we are back on track for producing Cottonstar pages. And that we have wonderful people in our lives. 🙂