8 1/2 by Eleven, a comic about you: by Lucas TdS

NEW READER'S GUIDE:	THE READER SURVEY!
This is a story-based comic. It is best to read the strips in order, by chapter. At the moment, I'm recommending that new readers start right here. The reason I chose the second start location is because it is the beginning of a really simple-to-understand storyline AND it introduces you to most of the major characters in the comic. Please do give the story a few pages to pick up though... it starts off with a bit of a gag-a-day feel, and that's not really the feel the comic gives as a whole. If you enjoy the story told by that chapter, feel free to start again at the beginning or peruse the archives at your whim. Some other notes for new readers: - 8 1/2 by Eleven revolves around an ensemble cast of twentysomethings living in Vancouver, Canada. For more information about the cast, please see the cast page. - Most of the cast members attend the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and so they see each other regularly on-campus. - It is important to note that the relationships between the characters are forever changing. What you see in the storylines are mere glimpses of their lives. This is because while the timeline of the world of the strip itself moves in real-time (meaning that the seasons change from winter to spring along with the seasons in the real world), the stories themselves may take place only over the course of a few days or hours. So a lot gets skipped. I try to fill in the backstories and in-between stories as I go, so hopefully you get a sense of what happens in-between. - Chapter synopses are available at our Comixpedia article.	SURVEY: I always like hearing from new and old readers... if you haven't done so yet, feel free to take the survey.
	BROADCAST THIS COMIC!
	The internets is a wonderful thing indeed. It is now possible to BROADCAST my comic on your website. Maybe you're too lazy to come here each day and you just feel like putting a link up or maybe you've got tonnes of visitors and you really just want to broadcast my comic. There are two ways to broadcast the comic... WITH or WITHOUT the comic comments. If you broadcast the comic with comments, it will look like this. If you broadcast the comic without the comments, it will look like this. Remember, if you choose to include the comments, leave room in your website design for my comic. The comic itself 's always 500 pixels wide, but sometimes the blogs below the comic are longer than others, so you need to accomodate your website so that the blog below the comic can fit properly and extend or shrink if necessary (ie. the comic will not always take up the exact same amount of space). If you choose to post the comic only, then you should leave a space about 500 pixel (wide) by 750 pixels (tall -- although, this number changes by a few pixels everytime). NEXT, you simply cut and paste your chosen CODE into the body section of your site. The code is right here: BROADCAST COMIC & COMMENTS BROADCAST COMIC & NO COMMENTS Then, you email me to let me know what you've done so I can check it out! PS: I strongly object to my material being posted on adult or pornographic-type sites, so don't bother.
ABOUT THIS SITE:	MAKING THIS COMIC:
When do you update? This site is updated with new comics every weekday, unless otherwise posted. You can see the current update schedule by looking at the title bar above. Now that the site is running php, I set it to update at 9pm Pacific Standard Time the night before... I almost always have the comic posted on-time. Where does the comic take place? Vancouver, BC, Canada. Nillan and his friends are now attending the University of BC, and somehow over the years, I have gained four years on them, because they're entering their second years of University. This is not really a "college" comic though, in my eyes. It's more of a reflective comic, not meant necessarily to be funny, but meant instead to keep my drawing hand busy. How is the comic made? Before I begin drawing a strip, the script is created. The script is sketched out on a piece of recycled (read: used) paper, and I usually am 20 strips or more ahead of what you see posted on the site, in terms of the script. In terms of the drawings, I am usually about 6-10 strips ahead of what you see on the site. The strips are all drawn by hand using a regular black pen (just a ballpoint pen) and a normal sheet of white printer paper. I have used fancier art pens in the past, but I wanted to free myself of the pressure of drawing with one, so I kept it simple for this strip. Also, I just don't have the time right now to be bothered with anything fancier. Touch-ups are done in Photoshop, along with colouring etc. Sometimes I get carried away colouring, but whatever. I do all my lettering by hand because I like the feel it gives the strip. I don't use rulers to draw the lines because I often draw the comics at night or in my (limited) spare time, so I don't usually have them around. *Is Nillan McMillan you?* No. Most of the characters in this comic have been around longer than almost anyone I currently know, so it would be unfair to say that they are based on anyone I know. Nillan is certainly not me, although bits of me appear in all the characters once in a while. That said, like any cartoonist, I sometimes base the situations in the strip on things that I have seen in real life... but everything you see in the comic is extremely exaggerated and fictionalized to the extreme. Is the comic supposed to be funny? Not really. I think any attempts at humour are only slightly intentional. How can I link to your site? Link to http://www.lucastds.com/webcomic or use the little banners below!
LINK TO THIS SITE (www.lucastds.com/webcomic)	SOME HISTORY :
^ 88x31 pixel banner. ^ 117x30 pixel banner.S ^ 100x80 pixel banner. ^ 100x80 pixel banner. ^ 468x60 pixel banner. ^ old 468x60 pixel banner 2! ^ old 468x60 pixel banner 3!	Back in 1995, I started a comic called "Life, as seen by Nillan McMillan." I was young, still in grade 9, and Nillan was just about my age in the cartoon, figuring out high school life. I drew the comic in a 4-tile format, just like in the newspaper, dreaming about one day being syndicated. The original comic cast consisted of the following characters: Nillan McMillan: the lead. Sam Jefferson: the sidekick. Wosa: Nillan's dog. Leyla: A shopping freak. Alison: Nillan's first girlfriend. Amber: Nillan's second girlfriend. Bruno: the bully. Herbert: the geek. Scott Farson: the cool guy. Marco-Carlo: the latin hotstuff new to the school. Several characters did not survive to the new incarnation of the strip: -Leyla (the "Leyla" in the new strip is a different girl entirely), Wosa, Marco-Carlo, Alison and Amber were all slashed. -Herbert developed a new frat-boy personality, although hints at his geek past have been mentioned. Bruno is now more of a frat-boy than a bully. Someday in the future, I may post drawings of the original cast. I originally drew one comic for every weekday of the year, and one for each weekend. At the time, it was a gag comic. Why did you start drawing a new strip after several years of not drawing Nillan? This reincarnation came about as a result of my desire to draw again. I was doing graphic arts and doodling, but my love for writing characters never really went away.