Allan Haverholm

I’m assuming that, if you’re new to this site, you have come here on advice from David B. Metcalfe, Eric Orchard, or Derik Badman. These three gentlemen have been more than generous in their recent statements about my work, and I am grateful to them.

Since you have been thusly misled into believing I produce any work of artistic merit, I urge you to take a peek through the categories “Comics” and “Sketch of the day” (the menu to the right of this post. That should set the record straight.

If you’re still not convinced of my hackery after that, surf on to the workblog of my current project, Astoria and judge for yourself.

I am very sorry about the inconvenience!

Tags: david metcalfe, derik badman, eric orchard, twitter

Right, so everything’s as ugly as usual around here (apart from the new header)

A big round of applause to Ulf Reese Næsborg who fixed the stray code that messed things up!

Tags: fixed, ulf reese næsborg

Just my rotten luck. No sooner do I brag about the design changes before the sidebar goes AWOL, down below the footer.
My php and css is rustier than the Titanic, so suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Tags: miserable failure

I went and turned off the daily posting of my Tweeting, and deleted the auto-generated posts. Although it serves as a sort of update, it felt like cheating.

Also, it’s sort of demoralizing to have it spelled out on the frontpage how little I actually blog

If anybody was actually following the Rants Daily series, why don’t you go follow me on Twitter instead ya lazy bums?

Tags: fail, twitter, updates

Some time this year I’ll be done with the Astoria artwork, and rather than going Ho-Hum and sit on my hands, I’d like to hit the ground running. I have a couple of mainstream-ish ideas that may work in a serialized online form, and I’m contemplating hosting the things myself, going through the arduous schedule of posting weekly installments of three different comics.
Well, those plans are all blowing in the wind right now, waiting for funding to fall from the sky, but individual concepts are under development.
What I *am* looking into is new ways of promoting a site like that. I am totally oblivious to webcomics in general, and by extension what marketing channels they may use, having more often been struck by “Neh” than “Wow!” reading webbed cartoons.
That’s right, I actually think I can do one better than most, but not immediately reaching the heights of my favorites, American Elf or Anders loves Maria, of course.
So why the “discuss” in the post title? Because I’m asking for advice here. Post a comment if you have a brilliant idea for pushing comics online. What I’m not looking for:
1. Badly spelled “visit my site” comments
2. Encouragements to join this portal or that, unless you’re top dog at Webcomicsnation and can present a viable financial plan. So, allhotnudiecomics.to, don’t bother.
3. Software recommendations. I have that figured out, TYVM.
4. Agency offers: I have my own package, so unless you’ll front me at no profit – don’t post.
Are we good on that subject? Good, I think I just killed all discussion Here’s hoping for some input in spite of preemptive rejection!

Tags: alternatives, promotion, webcomics

So we’re trying the iPhone blog thing. Att the moment I’m taking my baby steps on that device, and just typing is a pain in the neck (not searching for letters, text-message stylee, is more of a challenge than it ought to be)
Expect more typo-ridden, “what am I doing”-type bloggings from me in the future

Tags: blogging, general clumsiness, iPhone

Throughout 2008 I have been trying to get my head around the site you’re looking at now. Being a newcomer to blogging, I have spent a lot of time fine-tuning the page design, but the end result is evidently cluttered and a bit carried away with all the plug-in possibilities available. In the very near future I will change to a simpler, leaner design and try to focus on the content instead.

Oh, the content you say? Apart from the autoblogging devices (“Daily” Sketchbook pages and Twitter updates) I haven’t been blogging much at all. I’d say it all comes down to two things: Time and routine, or rather, the lack of both. And the less I’ve updated the blog, the bigger the ambition to write substantial posts, meaning that by mid-summer, I was breaking my mind to come up with ingenious subjects instead of posting daily asides about the Swedish summer weather.

That’s somehting to work on, but really, if I’m not blogging it’s because work is eating at my spare time. Astoria has gotten off to a slow start, and I haven’t touched pencil or pen at all over the holidays – but now that I’m back at the studio, things are beginnning to move at a breakneck pace. There will be a b/w demo of Resistansen out this spring, and I have started looking for venues to exhibit the original drawings. I’m thinking one show per song, but then, who’s to say what might show up?

Astoria is getting its own production blog, and I’m basically dealing with the same issue as on this one: Getting the content out in a steady flow. Thankfully, the subject criteria for the Astoria blog is pretty clear (write about the project, its progress, and all things related, as opposed to the quite self-important Change the World-attitude that I’d developed for this here blog) so that should go down pretty well.

I’m getting ready for MoCCA ArtFest this year, but am a bit sad to hear that the festival has outgrown the Puck building, which added a great deal of atmosphere and charm to the event. I’ll be going with a bunch of Astoria samplers for publishers, agents, and everybody who cares to leaf through them, and basically just spreading the Good News … that you don’t need to play an instrument to get down and RAWK!

Tags: Astoria, constructing site, update

I’ve been an ass at blogging of late. Meaning ‘since I set up the new site,’ really. Apparently, I had more fun writing on an improvised news module than on this dedicated blog system? Oh, and I landed a steady, expenses-paying job that ate all my blog writing time.

Whichever way, it’s been uphill getting the site to work as I’d like, and to top it off, I just realised that it doesn’t perform well (or at all) on Internet Explorer. Ho-hum, more late night, off-duty labor for me. Fuck you very much, Redmond, VA.

But you know. apart from the fact that the sheepishness of accustomed Windoze users is standing between me and millions of users, I think I’m getting ahead of my game. Lately, I’ve set up a module to automate my sketchbook postings, and if things work out right, this blog will have a little sister within a month or so.

The Astoria project is outgrowing the boundaries of this site, and I wil announce the new place to go for Astoria Goodity shortly (upon verifying IE compatibility, of course :p Did I encourage the Virginia-based browser to sexually interface already?) In fact, I have been withholding new Astoria updates so the new site will explode onto your screen in a caleidoscope of kinetic refinery.

Did you like the sketchbook pages? Did you enjoy the Rabbit King short?
You. Are not. READY! For Astoria.
It is going to be a packed-to-the-brim, sweeter-than-pie, rockin’-yer-ass-off, hunka-hunka-burnin’-love!

That’s about enough hyperbole about one book for today, but suffice to say I am doing my darnedest to make this one a keeper, or at least a singular attempt at sequential narrative ( and I’m using the term in its loosest possible meaning).

More about that later!

Tags: Astoria, update, comic book history!

That’s right, the ‘sketch-a-day’ regimen has gone and died in its pants. It was the summer heat that done it in. Not to worry, though; I stuck it in the freezer, waiting for the mean old sun to go away, and just tonight when the rain came down, I took it out to defrost.

In plain English, I’ve been vacationing, will start blogging regularly again soon!

Tags: Sketch of the Day, update

Yup, you may have noticed that all of a sudden I’m flooding the blog with posts after a, shall we say, meager period in the update department. The reason is that I have started dappling with offline blog editors, meaninng I can blog ahoy while commuting between Malmö and Copenhagen. First application up for trial is the w.bloggar editor, which seems to run smoothly enough – that is, if this sees print (screen?)

If this works out well, I’ll most likely stick with w.b; otherwise ecto, lipidr, and a host of others are lined up to take its place. Consider this a fair warning, little software