Changes

I had a revelation today. Not life-changing, no flash of light or spiritual awakening, but a revelation nonetheless. Saturdays and Sundays draw the fewest visitors to the site. The Sunday strip usually takes a loooong time to draw and color. So I decided to cut the Saturday and Sunday strips. You'll still get to see a free comic Monday through Friday, but now my cast has the weekend off, just as I--and probably you, too--do. This frees up a lot of time to explore other ideas. I'm considering a number of things: altering the drawing style a bit to get closer to the freedom of my original sketches, which are almost always transformed into a less fluid look when I pencil them and then trace the penciled drawing with ink.

 I'd like to get closer to the off-the-wall nature of some of the cartoons I've done, and away from the comfortable, often pun-based strips which are clever but may not appeal to a wide range of internet-surfing cartoon fans. And I have a very different approach that I'm thinking about, but that will need more development before I'm ready to talk about it.

So what do you think? I love getting letters, emails and posts telling me what you like, but I'd like to hear ideas of what would make you tell more friends about the site; what would make you more likely to check it out daily; what you would like to see on a T shirt, mug--or any other object--that you'd be likely to order. Would you like to be able to order T shirts for the cast of your show or the workers on your project with a custom cartoon on it? (Clowns doing Hair? Clowns building a Habitat for Humanity house?) Have you always wanted a ten-foot-tall clown statue on your front lawn? Send your feedback to dsmith-weiss@qlowntown.com.

Today is Work at Home Fathers' Day. I guess I'd better take the rest of the day off, now that I don't need to get Sunday's strip ready.

(Would that I could take the day off--but now I can spend it on exploring!)