Sta.sh
I'm leaning on the side of axing it entirely. I know that I pretty much owe my online "fame" to the popularity of SYAC, and that despite a small core group of naysayers the vast majority of my watchers love the series... but I personally have always had problems with it. It was never meant to be more than a few strips long, and my attempts to turn it into a full blown series have been awkward and clumsy at best.
Using myself as the main character for SYAC was a huge mistake, one which I realized early on and one which you can see me struggle with throughout the rest of the series. Even after completely retooling it to be a new story with Emily and Jade, I didn't get very far into it before complications forced me to stop. I don't really want to do anything with SYAC right now, but at the same time I understand there are a lot of fans of the series I need to consider. So here are a couple of ideas I had on what I could do with it, but feel free to jump down into the comments section and add your own.
Upload Sketches?
When I retooled the new series I wrote about 30-40 strips before I started coloring and uploading them so that I wouldn't have to worry about coming up with strips every week. I still have those uninked strips... Maybe I should upload them still in their pencil stage so you can all see what might've been had I continued them? It would at the very least be a way for people to enjoy the last bits of the series without me having to ink and color them...
Unreleased Storyline?
There was also a 15 page short story that I wrote but never inked almost 2 years ago now along the same line as the "Persistence of Vision" idea. Again, still in rough pencil phase, never inked, and has a lot of story beat problems and very loose artwork... It's the underbelly 1st draft of a story but... maybe people would like to read it anyway?
Hire Artists?
Another idea I had was to use SYAC as a brand name and hire artists to tell their own jokes about being a cartoonist. That way there would be a wide variety of opinions and ideas and art styles, but all collected under a single unified subject. I'm sure a lot of artists here would love to get their jokes or stories about being an artist out to a wider audience, and this would be a great way to do that.
Your thoughts?
Those are my thoughts right now... I'm not sure what I should do. If you guys have any suggestions I'd be open to hearing them. I wanna know what you all think I should do with SYAC. Should I continue it with Emily and Jade, should I just upload the sketches and let it die? Should I hire other artists to do strips under the name of SYAC? Should I just end it all completely? What're your thoughts and ideas?
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Anyway, I just wanted to mention I've never really noticed any awkwardness in SYCA. Just my thoughts. Good luck with whatever you decide!
That being said, you are right about how many of your watchers love the series and will be sad to see it go. I know that's the reason why I started following you myself. Go back to how you originally planned it, maybe just add a new strip whenever you get a fun burst of inspiration for it every few months. In the meantime, the hiring new artists idea seems really neat. Or maybe have some sort of submission system or something, so you get a wider variety but still keep it under some control.
But in the long run, it's up to you to decide what to do with SYAC, not the internet's. Good luck.
2. Why don't you draw it all, but have people submit stories?? That's what I'd do, given your situation.
It's easy for you. People send in comments about their personal cartoonist stories, you pick the best ones, and make them into comics, each with a different star.
Or maybe you could turn the site into something for guest artists so they can draw their own versions of SYAC and you could post it on the site, that way you might not have to feel like it's too much of a burden.