Probeersel

Welp, I'm back from the Web and Mini Comics Thing 2005 in London, which I was visiting (as announced in the Probeersel news ). And as usual, I have spent countless hours that I *should* have spent drawing or coding, on making a nice photo report for you all to enjoy. Here's the English version. Here's the Dutch version.

Well, our new Belgian member apparently never received the invitation email I sent to him, so I had to resend it. I hope that we'll see him and his work on the site soon. Another new member (an American !) who will be joining soon was delayed due to some confusion in the audition process. Due to being too busy I haven't been able to get our new members their business cards yet. And to top all this off, today I discovered (while at work, which makes it impossible for me to correct anything) that there's another bug in the Probeersel.com code, which means a lot of the episodes of the weekly comics (which, luckily, only include Satan's Purrrgatory and The Grim DotCom, so only my own work) from this year are now temporarily 'invisible'. I really hope things will run smoother again soon, because all in all these are bad signals on an otherwise not too shabby track record for Probeersel.com. Update . Welp, I've killed the site entirely. It's not completely my ...

Well, all the publicity we're getting from the ClickBurg initiative is, and isn't, paying off. Is, because we have three new members joining sometime soon (as soon as they send their information in) who all seem to be doing interesting, and diverse, work. Yes, you heard me: there will be three new members joining ! Two Dutchmen and one Belgian. The publicity *isn't* paying off, because, well, there are three new members joining. Which means more work for me to set everything up. So there goes the last three minutes of the night that were available for sleep.

By the by, René van Densen was interviewed as well (also in Dutch), by Brabants Dagblad, which resulted in an article about the ClickBurg convention , his work, and of course, Probeersel.com ! Read a scanned version of that article here .

Don't Miss The Bandirah Interview! Reminder for next week: Jeroen Mirck 's online LIVE interview with the upcoming comic artist Bandirah . There are three sessions, on februari 8, 9 and 10, from 11:00 till 12:00 pm. You can follow everything LIVE at The ClickBurg Forum .

from now on, translations in english of my cartoons will be published on my weblog (bandirah.blogspot.com)

Satan seems to have worked his way into a short storyline within Macadamia where Rudy seems to have died and is now getting a good talking to from a female God. Now... this means that he has died , he's talking with god , who happens to be female . However, we know the guy well enough by now to expect this to turn out really original. Isn't this also sort of in the line of Dickens' spirits of Christmas who visited Scrooge ? Man, this is the first time in Macadamia history that I feel like speculating. Satan's doing good work, guys. I just felt like pointing that out. Read his comic, darnit.

Finally, a December posting. It's not like we haven't been busy and have nothing to report, folks, it's just - and I'm speaking for myself here, if any of the other artists have something to say they should say it, since they all have access to this blog.. - the things we're working on are long-term things so to say anything about it now would be premature. But don't worry, plenty of more news to come in the near future ! Meanwhile, I guess I should note that the Histies are going to be buried after New Year. Originally, Bandirah wanted to kick them all offline, which I would have respected, but I think this first run of his cartoons contains a few gems which should be saved. So I suggested that to him, and the plan was formed to decide which Histies would be erased from the past (enjoy them all while you can !!) and which Histies would get a proper funeral and be saved for future generations to enjoy. And who better to plan a funeral with than myself (autho...

November 21st, 2004: Eric-Jan van Gorkum and Anton Dautzenberg (aka Troy Titane ) had the presentation for their book " Doodspraak " in bar Cul de Sac, Tilburg ( see also our news article about it ). As could be expected, we're giving you a photo report of the evening - however, I found out at home that my camera was on close-up setting so everything on the stage came out blurry.. I apologise for this. Update: If you want clearer pictures, there's another photo gallery here , and if you look really well you can spot René and Bandirah in the crowd, and of course everyone mentioned below. You'll be missing the explanatory comments though. Another update: there's yet another photo gallery available here , where you can also spot Jean-Paul Arends.

Protagonist.nl, the company that hosts Probeersel.com, has upgraded all their clients' accounts for free, I just found out. Which is awfully lucky, because we were nearing the 200 MB storage limit, as well as the bandwidth limit, and the former has now become 300 MB and the latter has nearly tripled ! With no extra cost whatsoever ! I must admit, with occasional trouble we've had with Protagonist in the past, and with the knowledge there are much cheaper hosting companies out there, I've been keeping my eyes open the past weeks for any better deals to possibly consider, but I have to admit, this little gesture of theirs will most likely keep me (us) their client. Yay for Protagonist !

Well, God.inc's returning. Tomorrow, the 11th of November, the first new episode gets public. I've done new ones for the next 5 days as well. I don't really know whether the return will be permanent or for the time being...that pretty much dependson how long I decide to go on with it.

I'm pleased to announce there are two new members (most likely) coming up in the next few months. However, both members.. are Dutch ! Which makes the balance shift to 7 Dutch members and 6 non-Dutch members ! We can't have that - people will start thinking Probeersel's exclusively for Dutch members, when we all know that's not true. So if any webcomics artists out there, not of the 'Dutch persuasion', have considered joining Probeersel.com, please, audition ! . We need some fresh blood, dangit ! It's been, er, a few months at least since our last member joined, so send us yer stuff, and if it's good enough, we'll be welcoming you on board in no time ! However, I must also add that the two new members both have very nice drawing styles, and you'd hear and see more of them in the future, even if they weren't joining the site. But, well, more on that later. I'm starting to enjoy keeping things secret ;) Now if you'll excuse me, I hav...

Unfortunately, despite testing and bugfixing before putting the new engine into production, there are some bugs remaining. Tom and I are doing our best to figure them out, but he's of course busy with his study and can only put in occasional bits of spare time, and I'm no hero with the new database, nor with the new code he put in, so we're getting there little step by little step. The bugs aren't really major, thank god. One of them is that the week now starts on Monday instead of Sunday, and I'm sure there's some way to fix that. Somehow. And another is that the current comics popularity tracker apparently tracks unique page views instead of unique visits to a comic/series, causing a very confusing and rapidly changing list of five most popular comics. So, fellow artists, don't worry, your comic hasn't suddenly lost popularity, people are just clicking around too much on various other comics, causing them to go way up. We'll attempt to fix bugs lik...

It's currently Sunday night and my back and feet are sore from walking around endlessly on the Str!pdagen convention. I guess I should at least tell you all a little bit about it - I'm going to keep it brief because a bigger article should appear later this week on the site. With hopefully several pictures of myself and Bandirah in the crowd. I'm waiting for other people to put their pictures online - mine can already be found in this thread on the StripLiefhebbers Forum , but the commentary is all Dutch, bear that in mind. I've seen four StripTassen (of 1500) and all contained the booklet (and none had a double copy) so I'm fairly sure everyone who got a StripTas has the booklet and now knows about us ! Bandirah got the copy from my own StripTas, and today the organisation was semi-randomly handing out the last remaining ones in the crowd by the time the day was nearly over. So I, of course, obtained a copy of my own as well now ;) Don't worry, other Probee...

The booklet is being printed this week. This means that seven of our ten artist members will be appearing in print, most for the first time. Sure, it's just a small promo booklet, and it's in black and white, but still, there's 1500 of them being printed and as mentioned before, they'll be distributed in the Striptas on the Str!pdagen. I have the test print lying around in the house right now, in fact, and despite several points of perfectionism that annoy me, it came out pretty decent. As for a few of the bigger issues with it, I already explained that to the people involved and I see no reason to mention that in public. The perfectionist things are embarassing enough as they are.. Anyway, just thought I'd keep you all up to date. So if you happen to be a member of Het Stripschap, or if you are one of the special invitees, expect to find this nifty little booklet in the free Striptas ! Now all there's left for me to do is pick the booklets up later t...

Just to let all of you know, there is a site called ComicAlert out there. This nifty site checks for you wether or not your favourite webcomics have updated recently and lets you know through an automated XML-file that is specifically yours and where you can add all your favourite comics to (provided they're in their extensive list already). Given all the controversy on the web as of late about deeplinking and sites that 'steal' your newest episode for reader convenience (in other words, sites that continuously show the latest episode of various popular webcomics, thrown together on one page, like here ), ComicAlert was smart and basically only lets you know it's been updated, with a link to the page with the new episode on it. This idea benefits both audience and creator, so anyone whose comic isn't in there yet should join the club ! I took it for a lil' testdrive after I noticed someone submitted The Grim DotCom (honest, I didn't submit it myself) and...

Haven't been able to go online since last friday due to the installation of my new cablemodem and the slooooowness of my Internetprovider. Anyways - I've started working on the final version of 'The New Comic' (and it isn't called 'The Wall' as some of you might've assumed already). I've made some sneakwallpapers of it including a few wallpapers for RCH, which you'll be seeing as soon as my internetconnection at home has been fixed.

Here's a little round of 'Us in the media' only about sites that have recently linked to us. I appreciate every link to our little initiative, especially if just out of appreciation for all the hard work we put in. So I'm taking this bit of time (during my short vacation, so feel special !) to put in a special mention for those sites who have honored us recently. It's also a small 'fuck you' to the sites who haven't linked to us - we're not gonna give you any love if you're not gonna give us any. So here goes. First off, Het Stripschap will soon be adding us to their list of links. It's a majorly appropriate location, and it's their own initiative after I contacted them for more information on how to get the booklet (see previous post) delivered to them. Thanks ! Secondly (I'm trying to put them into order of personal preference here) my favourite bar, Cul de Sac , added a link to our site in their newly redesigned homepage. O...

There's a new comics convention coming up in the Netherlands, the annual Str!pdagen in the Archeon, Alphen aan de Rijn. It will be on the 23rd and 24th of October, and Probeersel.com will be there ! Well - we're not there with a stand or anything, and we're not on the guest list - as with previous conventions, I will be there merely as a visitor, and who knows, perhaps some of the other artists will come as well. We'll see. I will, in any case, be there to promote the site, chat with artists and fans, perhaps hand out some free shirts, etc. But we're all working hard right now to also present all the members of Het Str!pschap (the organisation behind this event), which mostly consists of people interested in comics (in other words, our target audience), with a little artist showcase booklet that shows off the work of our artists. It's already taking shape now and I'm glad to report a lot of the artists are joining in, so it should be an interesting lit...