Lavender Legend

I’m posting just to keep everyone informed about the update schedule. I took a few breaks this month because of Kami-con and Megacon. Now I’m back, and there’s going to be no more cons for a while. My goal for the rest of this month is to get my updates back on schedule. I went for a few months without missing an update, then in December everything fell out of sorts. Time to fix that.

Focusing on my health, too. Now that cons are out of the way, I am going back to exercise, eating right, and cutting down on sodas and energy drinks.

Yesterday we drove back from Orlando, and today I am still so tired from the trip. I focused on the website today, ran errands, and pretty much got whatever needs to be done outside of comics done so that I can focus on them.

On the site, I broke up the sidebars into a 3-column layout, and added a lot of the important things I needed to put up. Now all I need to do is fix some of the internal pages, and maybe clean up the right sidebar. I’d like to do a new, possibly rotating, banner image. But the old one will work until I can do that.

The chip-in is going pretty well. $110 has been donated so far. I’m not sure why it shows $0 half the time.

I was trying to get everything done on time so that a new page would be up, but a few of my “projects” went a little off course. In particular, I was trying to screen-print T-shirts at home. The design I made was way too detailed and the screens I was using didn’t have a high enough mesh. Something. It was a big mess. I’ll definitely wait until I’ve saved enough money to go to a print shop and let the professionals handle it.

Here’s the design:

I’ve printed it to some T-shirts with iron-ons for a “beta test” of sorts, and it looks pretty awesome. Actual product pics will be posted later.

Hopefully this little bit of art will help make the page lateness a little less sucky.

I have been thinking long and hard about what I can do to help Lavender Legend grow, and I keep coming around to the fact that I lack seed money. I’ll explain that later, but first let me tell you about the rewards.

Bonus Comic: Not only will you get individual rewards depending on how much you donate, but I’ll also reward EVERYONE for the group effort if the goal is met by publishing a bonus comic publicly. It will be a funny one.

Bonus Wallpaper As usual, if you donate $2 or more, you get your choice of wallpaper from the Donations Page.

Sketch Commission If you donate $10 or more, you’ll get a sketch request. Just send me references so I’ll know what it is, haha.

Original Art Donate $30 or more and you’ll get an original color artwork from Lavender Legend.

Original Page Inks Donate $100 or more and you’ll get your pick of one original ink from chapter 1 (except page 1).

Okay, now for all the tl;dr about why and how.

Lavender Legend is a free webcomic that has maintained a small but dedicated following since beginning in 2009. Despite having elements some people might find uncomfortable, the response has been generally good and hopeful for the future of the storyline.

The fans are very dedicated! I’d say about %5 donate the minimum amount regularly, which is impressive as far as things go on the internet. However, there’s just not a large enough audience to support the comic as a professional venture right now.

The goal is to bring Lavender Legend to a larger audience, and then offer products and services that generate money for the site. That will allow me to work on it full-time, and maybe look at full color as an option.

This money will not go into the my pocket, but instead goes into ways of making more money.

Part 1: Better books.

The print-on-demand Lavender Legend books that exist right now are great, and don’t cost much to produce. However, most of the money you’re paying for an $8 book is going to the print-on-demand service, and not to me, the artist. I generally spend what I make on new books. What I want to do is buy from a bulk printer, which will allow me to sell you a cheaper book with even better quality and make more money doing it.

Part 2: Merchandise with wider appeal

I want to start making T-shirts and other items that people will want, without a whole lot of investment in my work. Just cool and/or funny stuff in general. Some stuff for Lavender Legend fans, and some stuff for people who like to wear cool-looking things. Time for me to put to use my graphic design skills.

Part 3: Advertising

Some of the funds will go to advertising, which will bring more people to the site and help generate more money for the site. A lot of the advertising will be on other webcomics, so think of the money as sort of a circle of life that funds everybody.

So basically, I want to make things to sell, and find people to sell it to. This goal won’t cover everything, but it will be a nice start.

Just a disclaimer, if somebody decides to be wonderful and we hit the goal very soon, it will still be a few weeks before I can make good on the rewards. Already working on the bonus. It shall be done in good time, my friends!