WHAT IS DANIELLE DOING?? (website, studio tour, 48-Hour Comic Day, Halloween, etc etc)

As I mentioned, I'll be taking the next few weeks off Elephant Town updates! It might be a whole month, but I doubt that. 

At this point you probably know me well enough to know that the LAST thing I want is for anyone to feel taken advantage of, so if you treat Patreon more like a monthly subscription service for my comics, and you want to lower your pledge to just "follow" (so you won't be charged for October, and you can easily go back to pledging in November when Elephant Town updates have resumed), by all means do that! 

In the meantime, during my so-called "time off," I'll be doing a whole list of things and sharing it here. Do you love lists? I love lists. LIST!

• blocking out the rest of the story for Elephant Town (!!)
• drawing chapter break illustrations
• preparing the Elephant Town website FINALLY
• updating my Patreon & other social media accordingly
• promoting Elephant Town after being kinda quiet about it for 16 months
• working on Over The Mountain Studio Tour stuff
• promoting 48 Hour Comics Weekend 
• making a 24-page comic, in 48 hours, next weekend
• weird secretive private thing in New York with strangers?!?!
• making a Halloween costume out of trash HAAAAYYY

That's an abbreviated list, for all you TL;DR fans (<3 my people <3). For all you NLE;MR (Not Long Enough; Must Read) fans, here's an exhaustive version, to serve the combined purpose of a to-do list for me + accountabilibuddy contract with you. Prepare to be exhausted!

Elephant Town
I've been working on Elephant Town for 16 months now! Did you know I've finished 183 pages so far? I didn't! That's a page every 2 days, from script to colors, since I started last year. (<-- Only counting weekdays, like a normal working human, which I'm trying to get better about being.)

Last week I slid all the original ET art into these portfolios so I could determine which side of the book - left or right - each page will be printed on when it's in book form in like 4+ years. 

Tomorrow I'll be re-reading all the pages and making notes for continuity so that I can start to map out the rest of the book, and plotting out the chapter break illustrations (MY FAVORITE PART). I'll be sharing those with paying patrons over the coming weeks, obviously. :)

Elephant Town Website
I had grand plans to finish the ET website last year, but anyone who's worked on a website knows it always takes more time than you plan for. Which is why I'm taking time off from the comic - so I can finish the cast pages, about page, and tweaking a ton of the already-made pages so they're just right.

Once the website is ready to go (www.elephant.town, thanks to Rich Stevens' clever suggestion), I'll be posting the first 8 chapters immediately. After that, I'll post each new chapter a week after they're complete. Patrons will continue to see updates hot off the press every Monday as usual, plus behind-the-scenes stuff & figure drawing at higher tiers. And I'll send out an email to my mailing list (<-- sign up here!) whenever a new chapter is up, in case you'd rather read it that way! We'll also have RSS, oooOOOooo.

Patreon
The only big Patreon change that'll happen by November is that the early Monday Elephant Town updates will be shared only with paying patrons - Monday updates have been public posts for all 8 chapters so far! Once the website is finished, those Monday updates will be changed to patron-only updates. 

So if you're a "Follower," that means you've been seeing the Elephant Town posts I've been making every Monday for free. There are currently 1,354 of you Followers here (dang!! HELLO) who will just see occasional public posts from me from here on out, but  the Monday ET updates will be behind a paywall. I'll make sure you know when those Monday updates resume, in case you'd like to join at the $2 level and continue reading on Mondays! (in early November at the latest).

If you're a follower and you're perfectly content reading Elephant Town every month or so when a chapter wraps up, you can just stay where you are; I'll let you know when those chapters are posted on the new website. You'll be reading it later than patrons, but you can still read it for free. :)

Over The Mountain Studio Tour
Speaking of website stuff, last week was spent mostly preparing for the Over The Mountain Studio Tour I was part of last November (virtually in 2020 - we're planning for a masked and in-person 2021, CDC willing). My friend Bridget and I finally finished the website for it if you'd like to give it a look!

OTMST is a free, self-guided tour of ten local artists' studios in the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia. My house is one of the stops, so if you're local and you'd like to come see where I work (and Shepherdstown, where Elephant Town takes place!), you're welcome to come out November 13th-14th! I'll be selling original art, GWS compendiums, and figure drawings, and I'll have those portfolios full of ET original art you can flip through. My guest artist Diane will be selling hand-woven goods. You can check out the other artists here. (Thank you, Andy, for the photo of me holding a GWS book! I hope you don't mind us using it!)

48 Hour Comic Weekend
I already told you about this, but in case you need the reminder: 48 Hour Comic Weekend is this weekend October 2-3! Ideally I'll be making a 24-page comic over those two days that I'll be sharing with you here. Ideally I will also sleep, and maybe even shower.

Weird Secretive Private Thing in New York with Strangers
I don't know how else to describe this without giving it away?! Hopefully I'm allowed to tell you about it afterwards. Either way, I'll be in New York for one night to have dinner with people I don't know and I'm not allowed to know who they are beforehand. If you don't hear from me after October 20th, well, my guess is it was the professor in the bathroom with the candlestick. (I've played Clue once.)

Halloweeeeeen!
I pledged to make my Halloween costume entirely out of trash this year! I picked up the first element last week: a set of sheer curtains that was ripped up by someone's cat. I'll show you photos my progress, and we'll see if any of you can guess what I'm going as. I'll give you one clue: central east coast people might be quicker to guess it than others. ;)

Alright, you'll hear from me whenever I have things to show you! And just to reiterate: if you don't want to pay for the next month, cancel your pledge and just hit "follow!" You'll know soon enough when Elephant Town is back. :)