Blog 1-1-17 – New Years Updates

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Dragon Co (Austin Smith)

(Post is late because the power went out at my house {everyone’s favorite New Year’s tradition})

Well, it’s the New Year. Time to settle in with my traditional Welch’s sparkling grape juice (I may have already). I hope your year was enjoyable and that your next will be better. Putting all world events out of the picture, I had a fine year, through it was far from what I had wanted. Those following my Blog and updates will know already about my moving house, along with social, work, and familial obligations that have really eaten into my capacity to finish projects for my various online endeavors (I’m even out of the house as I write this).

The daily posting schedule is still suspended. Even with the personal goals I set for myself, I am not any particular distance closer to getting it back on track. I have done better, though. Before leaving on my current trip I wrote a post a day (which are coming out a bit more sporadically as they need to be edited) and have continued to write into my “vacation”. So I won’t be launching anything new this year or changing anything up: my goal will simply be to take steps to returning to my former schedule (with comics likely coming back soon). I seem to be getting closer to that goal, but all projects need to be taken one step at a time. I will be posting regular updates along the way, and if all goes well things should be back to “normal” around this time next year.

Hopefully, this new year will bring as many opportunities and interesting events as the previous, and I’ve already got some plans for new releases to come once I’ve gotten back to a semblance of normalcy. I am excited about working on new projects as I try and catch up (I guess that the analogy would be that I have multiple legs taking multiple steps). I appreciate everyone who has enjoyed, supported, critiqued, found interesting, or left feedback on my work this past year. It should be getting better all the time, and with any luck more expansive in the coming year.

Happy New Year!

-Austin

Dragoncompany.org Artsupplycritic.com Dragonfunnies.com

Blog 7-10-16 – July Update

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Dragon Co (Austin Smith)

Hello everyone, Austin Smith here, and it is July 10^th, also known as the absolute last day one could possibly consider in the first week of July. Though I must admit I believe I did fail when I said I was going to have an update up during the first week. I did spend some extra time making sure the two posts I put up as tokens of proof that I am still going to update this site were a little more polished. The update is: I have not reached the point yet where I am in a position to fully restart my posting schedule. But I have said all of the things before about how I’ve seen Internet projects disappear, and how not getting things done snowballs. So I won’t go over them again, instead I’ll tell you about some of the things I did that are holding up the content but were still great to do. I’ll post another update by the first week of September.

The first really exciting thing that I did was go out to California and administrate a wedding for a family member. Unfortunately for me right now the photos haven’t come in, and all of the others that have me in them aren’t great (but I wasn’t who people were there to see) so I don’t have a photo from the ceremony right now. So instead here is one of me in Texas in the same outfit that looks like the Lord is shining down upon me.

I’m also still moving, and here are ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of what a literal ton of books (as in actually 2000 pounds) looks like boxed up and on the shelf.

Most recently I went to both of my local 4^th of July festivities, in Alpine Texas. The first one, Fiesta del Barrio, I attended as a vendor selling some of my books. But I’m bad at taking pictures so I only got one of the parade, and one of a horned lizard. I also missed the second parade and only got one picture of it as well.

And here is a panorama someone took of me from the Reds show I was featured in in early April.

Anyway, hopefully those photos and my posts from yesterday sufficiently prove that I am alive and dedicated to these blogs. Thank you for your patience.

-Austin

Dragoncompany.org Dragonfunnies.com Artsupplycritic.com

Blog 4-1-16 – The Good and the Bad

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Dragon Co (Austin Smith)

Hello again. I’m Austin Smith from the Dragon Funnies (dragonfunnies.com), Art Supply Critic (artsupplycritic.com), and Dragon Co. (dragoncompany.org) Blogs. And I have finally and unfortunately reached the point where work, social obligations, sickness, and just life in general have rendered me unable to keep up with maintaining my web endeavors. Over the past few weeks I have failed entirely to keep the deadlines I have set for myself on all three of these Blogs. And with more than 3 years of not missing more than a day that is a huge blow to me.

I will not give up on posting to these sites. And in fact I can see the crest of the mountain where I can go back to the normal maintenance of them. It is disheartening for me to still have this problem even after I have streamlined so much of my content. But it is still just a hobby for me, and it is a hobby I will have to “leave” on this side of the mountain and come back for once I have brought everything else to the top.

The real announcement here is, I will be suspending my posting schedule in April. That doesn’t mean things won’t be posted. It just means there will be no schedule. I will finish what I can when I can and then review my situation in May. If everything goes as planned (and things, contrary to how it seems, tend to go as planned, just not on schedule), I will catch up through all of these days by the time I am done. So the amount of content in the end will be the same, but will be posted in bursts rather than daily.

Until that is done there is quite a bit still on the site to enjoy, and I will still be showing my art and books in a gallery here in Alpine Texas from April 1^st to 10^th. There will be a lot of photos and maybe a few videos from that. And I will be working on a way to get some of the really cool new stuff I made for the show out and available on my site.

-Austin.

May Update

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Dragon Co (Austin Smith)

ART SUPPLY CRITIC

New reviews will now be going up on Monday rather than Wednesday. I’m reorganizing my entire posting schedule to make it more even.

TUMBLR

Hello followers (mostly Tumblr followers, since this post is more directed at you/them.) You might have noticed I’ve dropped off of posting my comics to Tumblr recently. This is for a few reasons, the main one being that the method I have to use is a very large hassle to do and is affecting how much I can do during the day, I’ve been working on integrating things better, but it hasn’t worked out and is taking up even more time. So, at the moment, I’m going to stop posting comics every day on Tumblr, and replacing that with a weekly post that rounds up some of the best comics from the week with links. This may also include a text post or two. Eventually, this also may become an email list that people can subscribe to (it won’t leave Tumblr, though). Thank you for being patient with me.

DRAGON FUNNIES

The Dragon Funnies is no longer sharing to Tumblr, and while the site isn’t going anywhere, I’d appreciate it if more people followed my main site (www.dragoncompany.org) instead of this one.

POSTING SCHEDULE

Art supply reviews will be posted on Monday now.

Articles will now be posted on Friday.

Videos will be posted on Monday and Thursday.

A weekly recap will be posted on Saturday.

Other written things, like book reviews and such, will hopefully be posted on Wednesday.