Good morning!
It’s a New Year and I’m making some changes. If you have a moment, I’d like your opinion. I’ll be asking for it wwwaaaayyyy down the page after the images.
Out with the old.
In with the new.
The first set of banners (the old) have been on my website since January 1st, 2020. I posted the second set of banners (the new) to Skookworks.com on Sunday, the 1st of this year. Here’s where I’d like your opinion – I’m going to be streamlining and simplifying the website over next few months. I made 12 banners this year because I made 12 banners in 2020. The banners show up randomly when someone looks at the site. Five banners would be more streamlined than twelve banners. Which five banners are your favorites?
1. Flying Turtles
2. Dragons
3. All Better Now
4. Black Cats and Jack O’Lanterns
5. Yellow Alien
6. Nizz out standing in her field
7. Yellow Brick Road
8. The Face
9. Stardust the Super Wizard
10. Octobriana
11. Fantomah
12. The Heap
Please choose the five banners you like best and reply to this email with the numbers of those banners. (For example 4, 7, 9, 11, 12 or maybe 1, 3,4, 6, 7.) If you’re reading this post on the website you can either post a reply or use the “Contact Me” button at the top right of the page. Thank you!
If you’ve made New Year’s resolutions (or set New Year’s goals) I’d love to hear what they are. For myself, I make New Year’s plans. I give myself annual projects.
For the last couple of years I’ve been posting the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. Every Friday I would post a process GIF of a design I was selling in my Zazzle and Redbubble online stores. For 2022 I’d given myself the specific project of doing 52 designs, one for each week. I’m happy to say that I exceeded that goal. I’ve currently got 230 designs available in Redbubble and more than 300 in Zazzle. (Zazzle doesn’t give me a count.)
This year my main big art project is drawing Mighty Nizz comics. I’m sure I’ll add more designs to my online stores but my focus will be the girl in the wolfskin hoodie. I considered taking a break from writing a newsletter. I’m not expecting to make process GIFs of the Nizz strips so …
So I’m changing the title of the newsletter. Writing to you each week is a habit that I will be maintaining. Once I start posting the finished pages for the next Nizz story I’ll post the scans of the physical pages here. That should start happening on February 1st over at the Mighty Nizz website and here (or in your email if you’re a subscriber) on February 3rd.
Some of my other projects –
I’ve set up a Ko-Fi account. Ko-Fi is a crowdfunding site similar to Patreon. Ko-Fi has options for payment and services that I think will work better for me than Patreon. Please come visit. I’m still figuring things out so any suggestions you have will be welcomed.
I’m working on creating a store here at Skookworks, similar to what I’ve got going at Zazzle and Redbubble but without the noise that is endemic to those platforms.
As I mentioned, I’m streamlining and simplifying Skookworks.com. I started posting a blog at skook.blogspot.com on January 8th, 2003. That eventually grew into this website. I’ve published over 3400 posts. Some years I’ve posted daily. You can find over 2400 images in the posts or in galleries here. I’ve been a packrat most of my life. In the last couple of years I’m been working to become a different sort of rodent, one who can fit all his possessions into a small van. I’m a long way from being that. Skookworks.com doesn’t weigh anything but it’s a huge site. A huge site that, according to my analytics, no one visits deeper than the front pages. I understand. I rarely go deep into the sites I visit.
Over the next few months I’ll be going deep. I’ve already archived the Archives – my older art (portfolios, minicomics, Misspent Youths, Morgo the Mighty). Those pages have only been visited by spambots in recent years. I’ll be deleting most of the old posts. (I’m still a packrat. Anything I delete will get archived somewhere.) If you ever planned to read my ramblings from 2005 or 2010, now is the time to do it.
I hope 2023 looks like a good year for you.
Thank you for reading this newsletter! Remember to send me your banner selections.
See you in seven!
