Its a webcomic manager plugin similar to the MyComic Browser that I’m currently using except there is going to be more administration-side options available — like uploading and post-creation rolled together — meaning that when you upload your comic, the post is automatically created, with the image attached and that the navigation is automatically embedded. The plugin is going to require a modified version of the theme that I’m currently using and my aim is to turn Wordpress into a full-featured comic manager without hacking Wordpress itself. I hope to have a beta version released at the end of March.

Honestly though, this is actually the final project for my Dynamic Web Applications class. The reason I chose this is that I’ve noticed that there isn’t really much in the way of comic management for Wordpress, except for MyComic Browser and Comicpress. Comicpress never particularly suited my needs and MyComic isn’t quite as flexible as I’d like.

Release date: March 23rd, 2008.

I posted this little tidbit on my Deviant Art page concerning the status of Silent Shadow and when it may come off hiatus:

“Silent Shadow is still technically on hiatus. I could say that I haven’t had much of a chance to update it but truthfully, I just haven’t felt like working on the comic. I’ve been worrying about too many other things (once again — school, driving, and jobs) to really concentrate.

…

So, basically, the way it looks is Silent Shadow will be on hiatus till possibly late spring/early summer. I’ll probably start churning out new stuff then, but who knows? I might surprise you.”

So that’s pretty much it, and now…on to other things.

Daz3D has released Aiko4. FYI, Aiko3 is the base I used to create Syleth and the other female characters of Silent Shadow. Anyway, I downloaded the free Aiko 4 base and since Victoria 4’s morph-pack is cross-compatible with Aiko 4, I’ve been experimenting. Haven’t had much time to really work on it but recreating Syleth and Javanne using A4 might be a tad challenging. Plus, new toon shaders have to be developed for Aiko 4 since the character uses different material groups than Aiko 3. So what does this mean for Silent Shadow? Well, there won’t be any great push to use Aiko 4 in Silent Shadow until the next series (maybe). I wasn’t particularly too excited (or impressed) when Daz released Victoria 4 at the start of 2007. A lot of the body morphs that I was used to using with V3 weren’t the same and I’ve found the same to be true with Aiko 4 vs. Aiko 3. Hence the reason for the difficulty involved in bringing my characters to come out. Honestly, I haven’t had that much time work with Aiko 4. Maybe when I get some serious time where I’m not doing anything else, I’ll work on it and see what I come up with.

***Update

I’ve had some chance to work with Aiko 4, and I will say that I won’t be using A4 anytime soon — well, at least for the current series. More likely later on, in the next series Firestorm. Maybe by the time I start I working on Firestorm, Daz3D will have released Micheal 4/Hiro 4. At any rate, I did manage to create respectable Syleth morph for Aiko4 and even managed to transfer the toon shaders over to the A 4 character. The result is a Syleth that is a tad more realistic than the old A3 Syleth. Seriously, the biggest reason that I am not being quick to adopt A4 is that I have to buy all new clothing for the character and, right now, that’s just not really feasible.

Yep, just another random post to let you good folks know that I haven’t forgotten about the comic; I’ve just been very busy. I do have plans to do a Valentine’s Day one shot which I hope to have out by next Friday (note: probably not in time for Valentine’s Day) but just enough to assure folks that I haven’t just upped and ditched the project half-way through. I’ll note though that a “hiatus” like mine isn’t all that unusual for webcomic artists. Some of the other comics that I follow, namely Kittybot and Alpha Luna, are both on hiatuses that are nearly as long as mine has been. In my case, it has been the development of the new Poser 7 toon shaders that have slowed things down as well as waiting for the release of Poser Pro x64 — which was delayed after Smith Micro bought e-Frontier. I haven’t heard much more on just when Poser Pro is supposed to be released but then I haven’t been paying attention, either ^_^

You’ve probably also noticed that I’ve updated the layout of the site and, about a few updates back, incorporated the MyComic Browser Wordpress plug-in, which is turning out to be much handier than what I’d had in place originally. I’ve decided to do away with the links page and replace it with a blogroll list of the webcomics that I read. The links page will stay around as a banners page for linking to my comic (whenever I can get around to uploading the files, that is). I guess I’ll bring the theme music page back sometime when I have a chance to work on it. I also want to get around to creating character-sheets for each of the characters — Syleth’s is done but I want to finish the others before I upload them all.