HAPPY 18th ANNIVERSARY
18 years ago today, a Goblin and a Beholder first met!
Happy 18th and thanks for sticking with me!
-Rich “BK” Morris
And so my contract with this studio has run out and I’ve been doing pickup/uncontracted work with them for the past 5 months or so… and now that too appears to be drawing to a close. So I am about to exchange the stress of difficult clients and painful deadlines with the stress of unemployment. On the one hand it seems that I may have more time for drawing YAFGC comics, but on the other hand…. I’ll be in a low – to – high stress level until I get ‘the call’ from the next job. So, thanks for putting up with my gaps, and bear with me while I panic about something completely different.
Also: Thank you for the kind words and wishes, YAFGC has been a strange companion of mine for a long time and it makes me proud to have so many wonderful people reading and enjoying it with me. Happy Anniversary!
-Rich “BK” Morris
EDIT May 30
I just spent a few hours re-reading the “Force of Hobbits” story and had to force my way to stop at “The Things I Do”. I wish I was confident that I could still write like that. Wish me luck for the next few stories!
-Rich “BK” Morris
The comic and I share a birthday! I've got about 20 years on it though ha
Congratulations! Here's to 18 more!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KWEH!!!!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday, Kweh!
A very happy day to you!
Be happy in your day
Nearly for me. May 30th is mine and I'm (Loud Cough) years young
Wow. Congrats on 18 years. Here to the next 18 being even better!
Thank you! Cross your fingers for me!
Congratulations and many thanks, Rich, for 18 years of YAFGC. Your comic has been a wonderful part of my life. The stories and characters you've created have changed and grown over the years. It has been a delight reading your comic, and I look forward to many, many more years. Thank you again.
It's also a treat to see Arachne and Charlotte again, being, well, Arachne and Charlotte. 🙂
Thanks for being an important part of Our World!
Happy Anniversary!
Thankee!!
Happy 18th! Many more, Rich!
Wow… 18…. Does not seem possible! Your stories and characters have been so fantastic and real, it's a joy to share time here. I cannot thank you enough, and am glad you still find as much delight and fun in your creativity 😽
Happy Birtday! Thanks for this great comic. 🙂
Happy Birthday!
And thank you for indirectly leading to me having the wife and friends I do now 😀
Thank you!
Now that's a story I really want to hear!
I think I mentioned it in a comment before but I’d always been interested in fantasy and monsters, and saw YAFGC while browsing the internet and checked it out.
That sparked a desire to learn more about DnD and then roleplaying games in general, joined a play by post roleplaying forum and that’s where I met my wife and all the close friends I have today.
So thank you 😀
I owe my marriage and friends to goblin boobs and a pervy eyeball monster.
Well, glad to see Arachne and Charlotte again.
Anymore Drows planned for comic…maybe some turning to surface due to A. fugitive wanted to bide their time until gotten used to their new life (also lack of backstabbing and actually being nice rubbed out them) B. Drizzt Do’Urden copy or actually nice (even by surface culture) Drow who wanted cookies and sunshine. C. Trade.
GO VOTE you young rapscallions!
Happy 18th Rich's comic! XD
If you didn't hit such a perfect chord, we wouldn't have loved reading it. You rock!
Wow! 18 years. Has it really been that long?
Good times. Good times indeed.
Being unemployed is a drag but the human spirit endures while the wheel of fate turns.
18 years? Only? It seems very much.
How can it be possible to tell so many storyes in than little time?
I say happy to you like the others but, we will be fair. Happy us to enjoy all those strips.
congrats on the big 18!
Happy Anniversary! And thank you for the great stories you provided us with all this time!
On a side note: In case you would start to publish YAFGC Volume 6+, I would be willing to buy them 😉
This comic has evolved and changed so much over the years. Started out as just a wacky/sexy slice-of-life D&D parody, and grew to become a longform story epic that has changed protagonist focus many, many times.
If you told someone just coming into this that it started as a comic about boobies and the monsters who love them, they'd probably be entirely confused. XD
Glad you've managed to stick it out all these years, Rich! I hope you can find enough stability to keep it going for years to come.
I was already old enough to vote when this comic started.
Yeah. Now I'm inching towards retirement.
congrats :3
Happy birthday YAFGC 🙂
I was so hoping that the anniversary would greet us with a treat and I wasn't disappointed.
Thanks for the wonderful years Rich.
Congratulations!
It's really good to have you back, man.
Congrats.
t!
Congrats on 18 years!
Made me realize that I have been a YAFGC-reader for more than half of my life. Wow. Achievement unlocked? 😀
Rich, don't worry about the gaps. You have still given us over 3500 pages. That's a page almost every other day and that's impressive. I think few webcomics have done anything like this, and even fewer for 18 years. If somone ever feels they don't have enough YAFGC, they can just do a reread, and one more after that.
And thank you for the stories and the adventures!
Congratulations!
I'm ashamed to say I didn't recognize Charlotte at first, even with her distinct hair–Arachne needs no introduction, of course.
But my failure helps reminds me it has been 18 years–so many good characters out there to follow and empathize with as YAFGC has developed.
Cheers!
I knew it was charlotte at 1st glance- but only cuz who else would be exuberantly stripping? Lmao
I love that the characters can be recognized by actions in addition to looks. It shows how nuanced and detailed, and the time BK purs into them 😽
The stripping was the other thing it took too long for me to recognize…LOL!
Congratulations on 18 years.
Arachne and Charlotte, yay. Happy anniversary!
Yes, please, more adult "movies" 🙂
Born? Oh no, I was 29. Now I'm just old hag. I started to follow this comic 2007. But congrats, I have enjoyed and I am still enjoying your stories.
Who killed whatserface?
El'zirbeth? Arachne
The gambler.
Ah, that storyline is not over yet.
I wish you luck, but we already know you have it within you. That will never go away.
Happy aniversary! Your commic now can drink!
But not anywhere in Canada or the United States
RIP both of these characters. 🙁
I miss these two..
Happy Birthday YAFGC!
YAFGC is easily one of the greatest epics of webcomics, right there with OoTS and Prequel and Gunnerkrigg Court and Drowtales. And you absolutely rock the writing still, Rich. We all have our favorites and peaks and valleys.
You know what? That is it. I am rereading the entire thing. See you guys in a few months! Wish me luck, I am going back in!
Happy 18th Webcomic Anniversary!
Just wanted to leave a note of appreciation. I had a really, really bad flu some months ago, and I stumbled across YAFGC and read through the archives. I've never seen a comic do such a good job of integrating the characters' gestures and facial expression with their words; very vivid and engaging. I like narrative complexity, and keeping track of the extremely inter-strip-referential plot and characters kept me from focusing on how horrible I was feeling. And it made me laugh. Thank you!
You've made a few requests for information in your comments, and useless information is, at worst, annoying, so I'll attempt some answers. No guarantees are given with this information, not even guarantees of desirability or fitness for a particular purpose. 🙂
1.
>Anyone out there know how to edit WordPress themes? The one I’m using is starting to… decay, I think, hence the mysterious broken jpg at the top of the home screen and the weird reorganized chapters in the archives, among other issues. I’m going to keep struggling with it when I can, but if anyone has any insights, do please let me know. (from https://www.yafgc.net/comic/3518-alone-with-his-thoughts-2/)
The images that aren't displaying have filepaths that begin "wordpress.yafgc.net" or just "yafgc.net", while the ones that are displaying have filepaths that begin "www.yafgc.net". Rules around cross-domain content have been tightened due to security problems, which is probably what broke it. If you change all the filepaths to match those of the images that load, all the images may well load again.
Unfortunately I am not familiar with your WordPress theme. Have you tried contacting the developer of the theme and asking how to order the chapters numerically rather than alphabetically? The developer seems to be answering queries:
https://frumph.net/wordpress/faq/theme-comicpress-2-9-css-overview-part-1/ (recent query)
https://frumph.net/category/wordpress/comicpress/
2.
You've said that redirecting all your "3563"-style URLs to the "3563-some-time-ago"-style new ones would require far too much tedious manual work. Certainly it isn't worth much effort, but it can be done with 1 or 3 lines in your Apache config (Rewritemap), and a handful of lines of code (implementing an autocomplete) in an external program, and it would work for all future comics as well.
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/rewrite/rewritemap.html#prg
I don't know if your webhosting service would let you do this, but if so, anyone who knows servers should be able to set it up while you are getting dinner ready.
It still might not be worth the effort. Search engines boost pages for old URLs and unbroken links, but the effect is unlikely to be huge.
3.
I am personally in the "your underdrawing is interesting" camp, but presumably you have to remove your underdrawing for some of your professional work. You once uploaded a scan with the underdrawing still in cyan pencil. On any computer with the free and open-source program "ImageMagick" installed, you can use this command to remove all the cyan lines, leaving only the gray ones:
convert 2016-11-28-short-intermission.jpg -level-colors 'cmyk(0,100,100,100),cmyk(0,220,220,220)' -type Grayscale 2016-11-28-short-intermission_cyan_removed.jpg
There are variations to remove other colours of lines, and to process as many files as you like all at once. You could even set up your server so that if you uploaded raw full-colour scans, it would automatically make a colour-removed copy, and serve both on your website.
There are also scanners with a don't-scan-blue mode. But you probably don't want to buy a new scanner.
4.
You mentioned trying to use GIMP, because it's the open-source "equivalent of Photoshop". I use GIMP, but never for sketching. GIMP is good for **photograph manipulation**, the original core functionality of Photoshop. For professional-level raster art, like you are doing, the equivalent is Krita (for vector art, it is Inkscape; for storyboarding, I've heard the new Blender Storypencil is good, and improves Blender's semi-automated flat colouring and automated shading).
https://docs.krita.org/en/
https://krita.org/en/features/
https://inkscape.org/gallery/
Krita ought to have a button that will remove coloured underdrawing, in any colour. I don't think it does. If you ask the developers, they might add one.
For art software questions, or art hardware questions like "how do I make my tablet give me thick and thin lines?", or art-webhosting questions, the person with answers is often David Revoy. He is a sort of paladin of digital-tools-for-artists. He has written a lot of useful free software, and he genuinely seems to appreciate bug reports and suchlike cries for help. Judging from his blog (https://www.davidrevoy.com), he's spent his recent months working on developing some of your core artistic skills, and plans to do more of the same. He speaks fluent English, but feels more secure in (European) French, having perfectionist tendencies.
Oh, and he has a fantasy webcomic! https://www.pepperandcarrot.com
5.
>However…. my experience in public critiques of YAFGC have mostly been:
>1) Glowing praise for my art (!?) and my storytelling ability (!!?). Two characteristics /not/ shared by any professional animation studio I’ve ever worked at since 1992.
>2) Pointing out -quite rightly- that I’m a crappy editor and make a lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes. […]
>So what I’m saying is…. are people just telling me the good stuff and are afraid to share the bad stuff? What can I do to make YAFGC a better experience?(from https://www.yafgc.net/comic/3400-another-end-another-beginning/)
I was taught that if you ask anyone (who doesn't actually hate you) "What do you think of my work?", you get glowing praise for the best bits, and a few minor, inconsequential nitpicks. Quite regardless of the quality of the work. This is extremely aggravating if you wanted constructive criticism.
The traditional theory: this happens because people prioritize social relationships. They aren't scared of your reaction, just inclined to be kind. They aren't lying (lying is a hostile act, and they are friendly). They unconsciously select aspects of your work in order to give you an opinion that is honest and inoffensive (and useless).
The traditional workaround: ask "Would you recommend my work to your friends? Why or why not?". The theory is that this forces people to worry about other social relationships. Recommending something to a friend when you know they won't like it is not nice. Having honestly considered which of their friends would like your work, they will honestly tell you, and they will be as helpful as possible to make up for the criticism. They will also skip the piddling nitpicks their friends won't actually care about, like spelling errors.
I understand the television industry has people who professionally extract helpful opinions on pilot episodes etc.. They would presumably know a lot more than I do about question design.
Are you allowed to say who you were contracted to, or did you sign a water tight NDA?
I don't know how Hollywood/"Maplewood" works.
Not the Arachne return I was hoping before, but I'll take it!
Happy Birthday YAFGC. And good luck on the jobs. Hoping you get a good break.
The only problem with checking this strip every day is there's a danger I'll end up seeing more of Charlotte than my wife. 🙄
Yeah, it’s also pretty awkward to check in public…
Well, I gave her a fine service, so she'll be good for a few more days. 😉
It's ironic. My whole life I chased the girls and people told me my sex drive was out of control, now I'm married to a woman who has a greater sex drive than I do. I guess it had to eventually cool down. Time leaves no man unscathed.
Thanks for making this amazing comic Rich, and congratulations!
I hope the past very busy contract has left you with breathing room financially that you can easily bridge the gap to the next job. Wishing you all the best!
I find that quite often I browse the archives of your comic and then start to read from some point, and keep reading for hours. It's just so good.
Surprise break?
Welcome back! We missed you!
And don't worry, A bit of time and practice pcs and you'll be back to your old self in no time!
If you were born on the same day as the last time I got killed you would have been old enough to drink for 3 years now. Not to say that it's been a long time, but I was alive twice as long before I was killed as I was after.
Congratulations on 18 years, and sorry that you are dealing with unemployment.