Callidus

Well its been another month without an update. Dammit. The problem isn’t lack of effort so much as lack of completion. I’ve been whittling away on a few things but have nothing to show for it…yet. So, I thought I’d post a little something so you don’t think I’m slipping back into the abyss of 2016. Let’s catch up shall we?

Cult
An experienced adventurer crosses paths with the seductive members of a ancient cult.
This twice-teased tale continues to coalesce. I’ve finished four images for it right now but I may end up reworking one of them. I’ve recently come across a photo series that has a similar vibe and may actually work a bit better. But I’ll have to play with things a bit to see if the gains justify re-doing the work.

The story itself hasn’t evolved too much since I last spoke about it. I just need to finish writing the final chapter and then polish it a bit.

Trending
A software engineer working for a social media company discovers their system is infested with a naughty piece of malware.
This is a new story (sort of) that I’ll be rolling out this year. Its an adaption of something I did as a commission piece. The story has been tweaked and updated a bit from its original form and I’ve found a series of images that match with it terrifically. I have some more work to do on the animations but the writing itself is complete.

I’ve actually been using this series to help test the new site theme I’ve been working on. Which leads me to…

New Website Theme
I teased last year that I was going to give the website a modern, mobile-first, facelift. I think I said it would be done by the end of the year. *facepalm* So its not done, although at one time it was 99% done but then Bootstrap put out a new alpha version of Bootstrap 4 and it had some features I really wanted to incorporate. You know how these things go.

So, where things stand now is this: the new theme for manip pages is 95% done. I have some slight design tweaking to do and I want to try out one javascript plugin that might solve a problem I’ve been having. But the design itself is pretty much locked down. Moving forward, manips will read very nicely on mobile devices and I’ve changed the way that series are displayed to make a better and more consistent experience across different devices.

I have a lot of the other design worked finished as well: the front page is 80% done, the blog is about 90% finished. What is still very much in flux is the podcast page and then the design for the individual episodes. I’ve got a slick plugin that I’m testing that will allow me to create a topic list and link to that time index on the audio player. So, say you want to listen to the interview that episode, just click the link in the episode’s description and the player will skip right to it.

I know what I want the page to do, but it needs some work with regard to what it will all look like both on desktop and mobile screens. So that’s a bit of a bottle neck right now. Work continues but I’m hoping for some flash of inspiration for the design. Right now I’m just trying things to see if something jumps out at me and, so far, nothing has.

Interview
I’ve recorded an interview for an upcoming video on The Anax’s YouTube channel. Not sure when it will be posted but I’ll certainly link here once it is. Some good questions and, hopefully, some fun anecdotes from yours truly. I’ll keep you posted.

That’s it for this time. Let me know if you like the idea of this update post becoming a regular thing. Or, if you’d rather I just hold off posting until I actually have something completed. I’m curious to know what people think.