If you’re reading this, that means the domain has transferred over, and everything has begun anew. Welcome to the new Real Life comics, as hosted by ColoGuys.
I’ve been contemplating a move for a long while. I know what you’re probably thinking, and no… it’s not because of issues with KeenSpot. KeenSpot has been very good to me, and they are a wonderful organization. I wish them the best of success. However, for almost a year, I’ve had in mind some ideas for business ventures that will bring Real Life from what it is now, to the possibility of a full-time job for me. I just wanted to take the future of the comic into my own hands, and this is the first step.
I actually bought a full-on server box to be hosted at the ColoGuys facility. It’s a pretty sweet machine, and I’ve had Ukyo name it “PAL 4200”. So PAL is officially in charge of hosting from now on. :) A little info on ColoGuys : they’re the hosts of Megatokyo, Mac Hall, and Little Gamers, amongst others. I’m very excited about this whole thing. I’m using the ioncomix system to run the comic backend, which means a shift to php for handling the site now. This is nice, because things like the navigation menu, the footer, and all kinds of other things are now PHP includes, meaning I only have to update one file, and the whole site feels the change. :) It should also reduce the data load a bit, since the page used to display the archive comics is the same page, not multiple pages.
As far as other ventures I’ve been exploring, I’m currently working on a Real Life book, to be published by I.C. Entertainment no later than late August of this year. The book will be mostly in black and white, as it is a collection of the entire first year’s worth of strips, but any strips that were in color will be in color in the book, and they’ll look great. I’m also going to be adding commentary on all the strips, as well as a few yet-to-be-determined extras that will only be in the book. :) The book will be the same size as an anime graphic novel, have a full-color glossy cover, and at one comic per page, should be a pretty hefty book. The nice thing is that for once, you’ll be able to see the small details you may have missed while reading the online version. The book will retail at $14.95, and I’m not quite sure of the venues it will be available in, but you can already preorder it through I.C. Entertainment’s page (as well as get a little glance at the cover image).
I also have some new merchandising opportunities that have been made available to me, but as nothing is finalized on them yet, I don’t want to discuss them in too much detail.
And i’m going to be working on a system for it, but one of the things this entails is that I will be selling advertising space on Real Life directly. Until I work out the system, Real Life will be ad-free, but even when I do sell ads, they will be unobtrusive, and non-offensive. This is just one part of the method to get Real Life self-sufficient.
Even with all this stuff going on, I want to stress that I do not intend to lose sight of what makes all this possible in the first place. On the contrary, i plan to concentrate more fully on the comic itself, to make Real Life better than it’s been in a long time. I hope to continue doing Real Life until I am physically unable, so no matter what, be assured that I will be here making comics for your enjoyment and mine, and I hope you’ll stick around for the ride. Thanks for reading!
A little bit of clarification, because I’ve already recieved a few e-mails about this… Ragnarok, despite being the name of another MMORPG on the market, is simply the name of the server Liz and I play on. It’s a largely importer-populated server, so it makes things kind of nice.
Speaking of FFXI, I did a test run last night of my own version of an FFXI Webcam. I mean, we don’t really use the webcam all that much anyway. I’m going to be working today on a seperate webcam page that has both mine and Liz’ current game screens for viewing. Basically, I used snagit to automatically capture the screen every 10 seconds, resize it down, and upload it to the server. The result is a really high-quality webcam. And the neat thing is, I can place hers and mine on the same page, and since we often go out and fight as a party, you can see the action from two different perspectives. :D
Anyway, all I have up right now is a filler image we’re going to use when not playing, but I’ll have the seperate FFXI webcam page up hopefully by tonight, and like the filler image says, we generally play after 9 PM, though we may start earlier some nights. :D