February 13, 1998

Note to paper -> pixel regulars: Um. I misplaced my sketchbook. Regular updates will resume when I find it. Oops. Sorry.

November 7, 1997

paper -> pixel is here because I am lazy.

Ever since I began my home page in 1994, I've always known that the only thing that keeps visitors coming back is new stuff. For a while, that meant putting up new comics, adding links to my (now defunct) comics hotlist, or fluffing up the site with a complete makeover.

That's a lot of work to do to get return visitors. Commercial sites can do it easily now, with their staffs of two, four, twenty, whatever. I'm only one guy. And it's just a personal home page, fer cryin' out loud.

The way others -- like David Siegel and Lance Arthur -- have decided to approach this is by writing weekly columns. Fair enough. I've always had some far-off pipe dream that someday I'd write a regular column, just to bitch about anything.

Only thing is, I'm not disciplined enough as a writer to hash out 400-500 words a week about my life or what's on my mind. And I've seen too many newspaper friends burn out after writing four good columns and then struggle with writer's block for the rest of the semester.

On October 23, 1997, I bought myself a brand-new sketchbook. I've always been very good about drawing in my sketchbook daily, but this one was different. This was the first hardbound sketchbook I'd ever bought, and the first one that was smaller than 8.5"x11". Somehow -- maybe it's just an illusion I use to fool myself, but it works -- even before I first put pencil to paper, this sketchbook had personality. It's become more of a sketchbook/journal than just a sketchbook.

This is my attempt to put something up weekly on the web. I already know I'm going to be drawing or writing in it every day, so I'll never be short on material. There will probably be a two- to four-week delay between the time I draw the material and the time I scan it in; this is so I can have some kind of buffer on a page-by-page, week-by-week basis. I'll try to scan in at least two pages each week.

Just some specs: All the images are sampled down to 72 ppi (as close to the original size as possible) -- and I'm most likely not to put up any hi-rez versions up. I only draw on the front (right-facing) pages, mostly because drawing on the backs of the pages usually smears the images on the opposite side, and drawing on the right-facing pages is easier as a right-hander.