2/17/2014

OFF TOPIC

I'm going to use this blog to write this up, since my old one is kinda defunct, and Facebook seems like a dumb place to post it.  My makeup blog people, I got you.  I'll be back on here soon, posting and all that.  I've just been working on some stuff, reorganizing, blah blah blah.  I'll be back.  I had originally planned to fire this site back up at the beginning of the year, but we got all that snow, and my kid ended up having school cancelled more often than not, so a lot of things are behind schedule because of that.

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My main gig for the past 11 or 12 years has been nataliedee.com.  It started out as something I did for fun, and eventually people decided they wanted to look at it, and then it snowballed and turned into what it is now.  It was something I did because I liked it, and it was something I continued to do because I continued to like it.

Anyway, what I am getting at is that I'm not going to be making nataliedee.com anymore.

I've made 4000 comics on my site.  There are a ton of mainstream comics that are way better and more popular and more lucrative that stopped way before 12 years and 4000 comics.  I don't feel bad about stopping now.  I feel like I'm done.  I started because I liked it, and I am stopping because I don't like it as much.  I'm 12 years older than I was when I started, and my life is unrecognizable from what it was like when I started.  I have a lot of other things I work on now, and it got to a point where it felt regressive to have to stop what I am doing to make comics from the perspective of a 22 year old.

I stopped back at the beginning of December.  I wanted to duck out the back door and not make a thing out of it, but I've been getting bombarded with emails from people who think that my comic hasn't been updating because I somehow forgot how to run my website and am too dumb to figure out how to post right.  After 4000 updates.

When I was a little kid, I went to some Easter egg hunt.  When everyone got there, the organizers explained that there were all kinds of egg with candy in them, but there was one giant egg with a twenty dollar bill in it.  I walked around the building, looking for eggs, and looked behind a folding table propped against the wall, and there was the giant egg with the $20.  I just left it there, because I didn't want the attention of being the kid who found the egg.  I would rather not have the egg than have everyone looking at me.  A lot of people saw me find it and leave it, and hassled me about it, but I just didn't want the attention.  Anyway, the reason for the anecdote is to kind of give a window into how my personality is...  I am sure I could have made announcements beforehand about the site stopping, or even said something about it when it happened two months ago, but I just didn't want to make a big deal out of it.  I didn't start making my comics expecting a ton of attention, and I didn't want it to be a big thing when I stopped.

So, that's that!  I appreciate everyone who has looked at my site over the years, or shared comics with their friends, or commissioned art or bought shirts.  It is very uncommon to have an opportunity to make a living off a creative project, let alone a creative project with no editors or oversight.  I really do appreciate being given the opportunity, and I wanted to honor that opportunity by not putting it on life support forever for the sake of squeezing every drop of life out of it.  The archives are going to stay online, I suppose until I'm dead and GoDaddy pulls the plug because my corpse didn't pay for hosting.

I'm still going to be around, working on my other projects.  I make stuff, that's my main bag.  I am just going to be making different stuff.  This blog is going to be back on a regular schedule in the next month or so, and I am going to be working on my polish business, Super Black Lacquers.

As a final gesture, I've chopped up the entire archive of images and text from nataliedee.com and created nataliedeemachine.com.  If you feel like you want more comics than I've already made, visit the Natalie Dee Machine, and it will generate a new random comic for you.  If you don't like it, hit the button and it will make you a new one.  Hit the button 1000 times, and get another 3 or 4 years worth of comics.  Hit the button a million times, and maybe it will write Shakespeare or something.

Thanks again, y'all!  I'll see you around!
ND