My Weekend.

I can pretty much sum up my plans for this weekend in one photo.

I’ve heard a lot of people call Cold Fear a Resident Evil 4 rip off. But considering Resident Evil 4 is my favourite game of all time, somehow playing an imitator of it strangely appeals to me. As you’ve probably no doubt guess by now from reading Babayka-Lives, I’m a big fan of survival horror, so I’m very much looking forward to this game (I’m also very much looking forward to the white, chocolate buttons, too.)

By-the-by, it’s officially less than a month now until Babayka-Lives returns. Something else I need to do very soon-ish is update the Brides Of Babayka recap from earlier in the year, to give return readers a chance for a quick catch up before the story gets going again on the 22nd next month.

Summertime In Hastings.

Sub-headline: Boo clouds.

There’s something ironic about living in a seaside town that doesn’t get much sun. It’s like the God of clouds is punishing us\me or something. I live about a 5-minute walk away from the local park, and about a 15-minute walk away from the beach, it’s the middle of summer, and I can’t enjoy either right now. It’s very frustrating. At least it’ll give me a chance to stay indoors and do some much needed inking, I guess, but I’d like to think we’ve got a few more sunny days to come yet this summer.

Here’s how things look out my window as I write this blog.

And here’s how that makes me feel.

Nothing To See Here.

Just a quick post today to say if you’re subscriber of Babayka-Lives and you got a message today to say there’d been an update… just ignore it. One of my many tasks this summer (because I can assure you, just because the web-comics on a break, doesn’t mean I am), is to try and sort out and get early pages from Babayka: Book 2 ready to be posted when Brides Of Babayka concludes later in the year. So yes, today I did do a test run and post the first page of Book 2 to make sure it looked ok (you only have to look at the less-than-perfect quality of the current Summer break image that I did a little too quickly for its own good, to see if it’s not done right, you get resolution problems), thankfully, it looked great.

I doubt anyone did snag a copy of Page 1 from Book 2 while it was briefly posted, but if by some jammy chance you have, please keep it to yourself. There no real danger if by some chance it did leak onto the internet, as it has no spoilers to the end of Brides Of Babayka, or any other real spoilers, anyhow, but I’d be grateful if any AWOL copies could be kept offline.

Hope everyone’s excited about Brides Of Babayka returning next month? Not much longer to wait now until we find out who-or-what resides in the room at the end of the hall, and what will become of poor Blake, the last bachelor standing.

Something Or Other.

One thing I’d like to do more heading into 2016 is maybe try and utilize the awesome power of Email more in regards to my web-comic. Both using it to get information about Babayka-Lives out there into the world wide web, and also as a quick and free way to maybe send some kind of extra bonus material out to readers. What this extra content would be, I don’t know yet, which is why I’m throwing it out to readers to get their input. If you have an idea of something Babayka-Lives related you like to receive via Email, let me know, as I’m open to all suggestions and ideas about online bonus content. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now, and so far, these are the best ideas I’ve come up with myself.

1: A Babayka-Lives desktop wallpaper image. A high-resolution, black-and-white, screensaver mash-up featuring Yana and co (and maybe even Babayka himself), as a background for reader’s computer screens.  

2: A short character profile PDF. A small PDF feathering shots of your favourite Babayka-Lives characters (they’ll probably be mostly of The Brides themselves) with maybe stats and unknown background details to read and get to know these characters better.

3: A quarterly Babayka-Lives Email newsletter. A four times a year newsletter that readers can subscribe to, and get updates and the latest news about all things Babayka related sent straight to their inbox. I’m not sure if in the age of blogs and online journals, if Email newsletters ain’t a bit out of date, but if readers show an interest, I’d be open to doing one.

4: An Email exclusive Babayka-Lives pin-up. A piece of one-off artwork featuring Babayka, or The Brides, or both, only available to readers via Email. This pin-up would not be available online anywhere. Readers would only be able to get a copy by having it Emailed to them.

I’m in no way committing myself to any of these ideas yet. It’s all still very much up in the air at the moment, but I would like to do something Email related soon, so all ideas and suggestions at this point are very welcome. All ideas do have to be something I can do via Email, though. Something like ‘post all readers a cool, free, bonus mini-comic’ wouldn’t work, as apart from the vast amount of time it would take me to draw and put together a mini-comic, it would also cost me a small fortune to post them all out to people (and I’m poor enough as it is), so no ideas involving big spending, please, or anything that would take months for me to draw or make. This is content I’d like to put together while working on Book 2, that shouldn’t be overly time-consuming.

I’d also like suggestions on what you think would be a fair deal for readers to have to do to receive this extra content. Should someone who’s just sending in feedback get it, or should readers have to do a little more for bonus extras, do you think? And if so, what should that be? Maybe extra content should only be for people who send in fan-art or fan-fiction? Or as some kind of reward for people who send in pictures of themselves with the graphic novel as a thank you for buying the book? (it should be noted at this point that the book does already have exclusive pin-ups and the original Babayka character sheet included, as bonus content that can not be found anywhere else, as a thank you for buying the book.) Or maybe you even think it should be handle like a competition? I put out a clue or question, and if you get it right, you get Emailed a prize of some sort?          

As I say, nothing’s set in stone yet, and at the moment I just want to throw a few ideas around before I settle on any course of action. If you like the sound of any of the options above, or maybe have one of your own, please Email me at the web-comic’s Email address HERE.

A big thank you in advance to anyone and everyone who does get in contact. I promises I will read and consider all ideas sent my way.