… stunt at the bank… Is it just me or does Arianna look a little… dead shark-eyes in panel 4? I thought it was perfect for her though so I didn’t try and fix it.

Safety really does seem to be a bit of an afterthought here, though to be fair, it would have been harder for Sydney to shoot the tank while shielding everyone. So bonus points to people who surmised that the 3 rings on page 161 were from Max and Sydney testing her shield at different sizes. Obviously whatever Max is planning on doing to the tank, she expects shrapnel.

I have an announcement, but go comment first then come back up here and to read this so there’s at least some chat about the page. Ok, done that? Good.

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So currently I am finding myself sans-job. It’s not a huge deal – I’ve been at the same place for as long as I’ve been working on the comic and people change jobs all the time. So what does this mean for the comic? At worst, nothing will change. I’ll keep putting up a page a week like always while I go on the hunt. I have a little in the bank and can eke by for a month or two.

Of course it’s crossed my mind that this might be the crisatunity needed to make me take a stab at doing the comic full time, the problem being the amount I made at my job vs. the amount I make on the comic from ads is… really significant.

Randy Milholland who does Something*Positive once famously told his readers that if they could match his salary in donations he’d quit and do his comic full time. As it happens, they did it – of course he also has 10x my audience so lets not get our hopes up. But in the spirit of things, I have actually finally created a donation page here which some people have been asking about for some time.

So what’s the best case a more realistic outcome? I get a few bucks in donations, maybe enough so that I don’t have to scramble quite so fast to look for something new. If it extends by financial buffer out by a few months, then I might even be able to post two comics a week for a while. That would be awesome for everyone, but I don’t want to promise anything as I am going to be training myself to learn some new tools. It seems that trying to get a job as a 2D artist doesn’t cut it. These days you have to know 3DSMax or Maya or ZBrush to go along with it. It’s like trying to get a job creating web pages while only knowing HTML and CSS, but not PHP, ASP, and/or Javascript/AJAX. Sure those jobs exist but they’re mostly entry and intern level positions. So if you’ve enjoyed the comic and are so inclined, drop a buck or 5 in the tip jar, or buy something through the Amazon referral link and we’ll see where this goes. Who knows, maybe I will be able to do this full time, even if it’s just for a few months.

So with all that out of the way, I hope everyone stays tuned, there’s some really fun stuff coming up in the comic!