VICIOUS WHISPERS – THIS JUNE.
Wow… remember THIS? I can’t believe that was over seven years ago already… Look how cute and tiny this site used to be, the lil’ dickens!
SO! I’m still plugging things in and moving furniture around, but for the most part the new Heart-Shaped-Skull is up and READY FOR BUSINESS. This whole thing took way, waaaayyyy longer than I thought it would (upgrading to ComicPress 2.9 was a much more complicated process than I figured), but it’s finally more or less done and I hope you like what you see. Definitely a lot PINKER around here, anyway. Happier, too, in a strange way…
Unfortunately, all the hideous technical delays pretty much DEVOURED every bit of time I’d set aside for Vicious Whispering this month, so I have to push the launch date to the end of June. I feel just horrible about this, but with ELDRITCH! starting soon (and a freelance Nickelodeon job starting NOW) it seemed like the Vicious cartoons would inevitably start falling behind if I didn’t push it back. But hey, more time to get your QUESTION to me, eh? So far I’ve got about 50 or so, but yours could be better than the lot of ’em. Vicious simply can’t WAIT to get started.
. . .
In the meantime, let’s check out the NEW HOTNESS… and consider what is yet to come:
1) SERENITY ROSE VOL. 1: That’s right, folks… Later today, the ENTIRETY of Serenity Rose Vol. 1: Working Through the Negativity will finally be a part of the Heart-Shaped-Skull. I can’t promise every page will be totally legible (hello, paper version), but we’ll give it a cracking good try.
2) COMMENTARY TRACKS: Once Vol. 1 is up and running, I’m going to go back and add a sort of “commentary track” to the bottom of each page, probably two pages a week. It’ll be your typical commentty-type stuff to start… How I approached each page, what I was thinking about at the time, techniques I used, what the little in-jokes mean, how many desks I had to tear in half with my bare hands, etc, etc, etc. I’ll be sure to tweeter about the tracks as they go up!
3) NEW ARTMENTS: All of my professional-type artwork is now on the BIO/RESUME page, including new categories for JUMP (character designs for a post-apocalyptic parkour-style video game), LYLIAN (comic pages for the upcoming spookycute PC game), and, of course, ELDRITCH!
4) IMPROVED SHOP EXPERIENCE: I can now accept credit card payments for prints and original art right through my own little store. It’s done via Paypal, but you don’t need a Paypal account to do it – your soul is safe! There are some original SR VOLUME TWO pages up for sale in there now, too. I’ll be updating the original art pretty regularly, so keep your peepers affixed!
5) BUY A PRINT OF ANY PAGE: Just click the big fat link right between the page arrows and get a snazzy high-res signed print of ANY page from the site.
6) NICER FAN ART PAGE: Much more easily navigable, I think. (And hey, leave a comment!) Next on the list of things to en-nicen – the forum.
. . .
STILL TO COME:
– TRANSLATIONS. This is the internet. There’s no reason we can’t have Serenity Rose available in every language of the language rainbow. I’ve got Spanish in the works already, but I want every other language I can get. Anyone who feels up to the challenge, please E-MAIL ME. I don’t have a lot of money to spend, exactly, but I CAN offer you free books, sketches, and prints. (And a link and credit on every page, of course!) French, Korean, German, Portuguese, Esperanto, Farsi, Japanese, Klingon… The translation doesn’t have to be perfect – I just want it to BE there, y’know? Will you accept the challenge?
– SERENITY ROSE VOL. 3. “Break Your STUPID Heart.” The third and final part of the first Heart-Shaped-Skull story, coming this Fall. Oh, to break your eyes with beauty…
. . .
Enjoy the new site, REVEL IN PINK and we’ll talk again very soon!
Discussion (41) ¬
Everything is looking WONDERFUL on this here revamped site. Gosh yes.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! happy sera is happy!
great googly moogly, i don’t even want to think about how strenuous creating that repeated squiggle background must have been. it looks fantastic, though. almost suspiciously so.
and yes, i do remember tiny little blinky sera. so adorable.
i am quite enthused to hear that you actually have forum stuffs planned down the line. a new theme perhaps? maybe upgrading to a new version? i know your busy being all famous and stuff, so i am perfectly cool with the forum en-nicen-ing (?) happening later on the course of events, but it sure is swell just to hear that you remember we exist over there.
WILL VOLUME 3 REALLY BE “THE END”??
ps– i think you ought to bother jimmy miz over there about his german abilities. just sayin’. (sorry jimz but i had to say something)
I look forward to all the hours of joy that this new website and all it’s contents will bring upon me. Good job.
Looks really cool!
This looks better than Avatar! (I saw it yesterday, it was decent, this impresses greatly me though, so obviously it’s better.)
Seeing this website made go “EEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Oh my god it is so CUTE. (And the repeating swirly background is something that will inspire generations.)
:O VOLUME 3?!
Mister A, you have just made. my. freaking. year. <33
I thought I had entered the wrong site. What’s with all the pink? Did we go from gothiness to romanticness?
Ugh, ROMANCE!
Either way, I do think the design is pretty good. And the site is way easier to navigate. That’s awesome! It’s also good to hear that volume 3 will be out soon. Quite exciting, in fact! But all this pinkness makes me scared. It might just be TOO much horror for me! We’ll see. Keep up the good work!
Ooooooh, site looks all shiny now. and A NEW SERA ROSE IN FALL?! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!! Soooo excited, I thought we’d have to wait MUCH longer! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!
Thanks, folks! Glad you like the newnesses!
WTB: The repeating background thing wasn’t too complicated, actually: http://tinyurl.com/5t2ueh (It’s all about lining up the edges juuuuuusssssst so.) And yeah, I feel bad that I haven’t been able to spend more time with the forum… Upgrading that thing is just a wee bit beyond my expertise level at this point. Hopefully I’ll have some time to edumacate myself soon, but in the meantime, maybe you guys can look into it: http://www.phpbb.com/styles/ See if any of those styles jump out at you there.)
Hassu: Yeah, ROMANCE. With kissin’ an’ happy and ALL that icky GIRL junk. And monsters, too. Horrible, godawful horrible monsters.
“And monsters, too. Horrible, godawful horrible monsters.” but isn’t that the epitome of girlishness? o.O
Jus’ so’s ya know, I gots me some German too (quite a bit really, & mean, tho it’s mighty rusty German). & since Jimmy & I seem to be able to tolerate one another, I could help out a bit.
My other language skillz are far too basic, alas.
It seems both yesteryear and 1000 before I first picked up issue 1 off my local comic shop shelves. Upon completion of reading the comic, I logged on to the wired and was met with the blinky eyes of Sera and a goblin with an affinity for cookies. With the passing of time, all the aspects of Aaron’s work have evolved, and the diligence and hard work into his website is a reflection of that work as well as prime example of his connection with his readers. There’s a reason my homepage hasn’t changed since that first fateful day.
I’d love to translate SR into German, but I don’t think I can really do it justice.
For one, my German is almost all book learned, and learned quite some time ago I should add. I have only been getting seriously back into German fairly recently. I’ve not had much of an opportunity to hang out with people who speak German and have conversations with them, therefore my German is kinda stiff and bookish. I’d lose a lot of the conversational tone of SR if I translated it into German. It would come out rather dry I think, and there would be many subtleties that would get lost by my hack-job translating.
There is a fair amount of subtle ambiguity and asides to things in SR that I’d probably have difficulty getting across in zer ol’ Deutsch.
Plus my knowledge of German is only about 55%-65% that of my knowledge of English, so there are parts that I’ve read in SR that I know I would probably get completely wrong in German.
I certainly don’t want to stuff things up in one of my very favorite comics.
So basically it all boils down to thanks WTB and Alphatroll for thinking of me, but I fear I’m not really up to the task. Not for something that involves so much text and is so important to me (not to mention the rest of the fans, and Aaron himself of course) as Serenity Rose. Perhaps in another couple of years I will be up to snuff, but I’m sure Aaron would do better to find someone who knows the subtleties of the German language and culture better than I.
I was thinking if a swedish translation would be intresting. Although I’m really not sure myself. Since it’s a small country and a most has a “decent” english.
Perhaps it would it would give the comic a bit more attation out here.
Jimmy: I’d be totally fine with a stiff, bookish German version of SR, actually. As long as the translator has fun and we wind up with something intelligible, that’s all I really care about.
Slinker: A Swedish version would be brilliant! Like I said, if you think that’s something you’d have fun doing, I’d be MORE than happy to put it on the site (and give you some free books and sketches, too!). By the way… why IS English so common in Sweden, anyway? My site gets more hits from Sweden than any other European country except the UK!
Speaking of translations, I was thinking about offering to provide a Danish translation. Of course, I wouldn’t want to make any promises. I still have a few more exams to cover up before I can commit myself to such a challenge. But if it is something that would be welcomed, I could give it a shot in the near future (that is to say, in July at the earliest)!
Danish would be beautiful, Hassu! I’m transcribing Books 1 and 2 right now, and I’ll have them available for folks to download and work on at their leisure very soon.
Hey, nested comments are working! WOO!
Speaking for myself & prolly more-or-less Jimmy too, it’s not so much a problem of bookishness, but more lacking the advanced and specialized stuff. I’d be pretty lost on figuring out how to phrase most of the magical terms, not to mention anything that isn’t just plain stated rather than just implied. That’s why I really think a team of one native-English and one native-non-English, both with decent knowledge of the other, would be best & probably easiest. I know I could cover the “English fluency” half, but I’d need someone with “real” German fluency to fill the gaps.
Of course, I’ve spent far more time studying language in general than could possibly be healthy, so I may be biased. π
Good work with the new layout, very cute! I actualy let out a squeek of excitement when I read that the third volume is coming in fall. I love your work and can’t wait to see what you have in store.
Alphatroll brings up a very good point when referring to having a non-English speaker help with translations. I say this with my personal experience with learning such languages such as Japanese, where, when translated into English from Japanese, the translation goes well enough, but when then taking that translation and translating it back into Japanese, things go horribly wrong. To reverse that, a phrase like “You’ve been keeping us waiting, Serenity Rose.” can translate to: “γγͺγγ―οΌδ»γΎγ§οΌζγ γεΎ γγγ¦γγγ¦γγΎγγγ Serenity γγΌγΊγ”, but translated back to English from that translation would be: “The Serenity rose that you kept us waiting (so far).” Now, I did that translation with an advanced translation software, as my skills are not nearly qualified to do so otherwise, but I think it at least suggests that finding readers of a country to at least do some grammar check and the such would be totally helpful–kind of a disclaimer of “Please help to fix this translation.” or something, if that person is somewhat knowledgeable of the English language as well. My concerns for any literature translated from one language to the next would be maintaining the tone as originally intended by the author (Aaron A.), lest the feeling and undertones of what make the subject material for us English readers be lost. I’m sure we’ve all read some really great and some really awful translations of different books, comics, and manga in our time, or at least we have watched a few foreign movies in our time. Just as we would want to get the best translation for something like that in English, we want foreign readers to be exposed to the best possible translation of Serenity Rose in their language. I have no doubt that the true lovers of Serenity Rose and the other works of Mr. Alexovich will do exactly this. I can’t wait to read a foreign translation of it myself!!!
p.s. Might I say that’s it’s really great to see so many people stepping up to the plate to the challenge!!!
Thanks, Joseph! And yeah, two-person operations are definitely preferable. But obviously, it’s easier to do that for some languages than others. Lots of Spanish-speaking fans out there; not so many Japanese-speaking ones.
In general I’m pretty forgiving of somewhat iffy translations of comic books, especially if they were done by fans. The point here is to give various members of the non-English-speaking world some kind of a starting point… Like, for example, a really utilitarian Portuguese translation might bring in a bunch of new Portuguese readers, and one of THOSE readers might be interested in providing a translation with a bit more ZAZZ. That’s my theory, anyway. And it’s probably the only way we’ll get anywhere CLOSE to “the best possible translation” at this point. (I’m just some artist with a website, after all!)
I just ordered Vol. 2, and it’s not going to be here for a while yet, but the occasion deserves more fanart, I think.
I will soon be holding to that statement…
I think Alphatroll and JosephFrancisG make some good points here. There are various grammatical things, cultural inflections and such that I’d most likely get lost with. There is a whole bunch of stuff that I’m just getting back into remembering about German, a lot of the things I learned back in school are just starting to peek out at me from the mists of time. A chunk of my translating attempts would probably not be any better than running the script through Google Translator :p
Another factor I forgot to mention in my last comment is time. At this stage I really don’t have enough spare time to commit to getting such a task done in a timely fashion. That actually makes me sad, now that I think of it :/
But I’m sure someone will come along to help out in due time though.
God, I know how you feel… I have some vague, flickering memories of having “spare time” at one point… In aeons past, there were times when I could even do something called “playing video games” on a semi-regular basis. Crazy stuff!
essrose: Kewl, I would be intrested in translating the comic. Could be a fun and useful experiance. Although can’t start right away. Buuut, I’ll send ya a mail about that.
And why english is so common in Sweden? Well, isn’t english common everywhere nowdays? π
It’s just always been consider the more important language to learn over here other than swedish and is learned at a early stage in school. But that doesn’t really mean everyone knows it THAT well. I wasen’t that good at it before I started to play video games or read books and comics in english.
And I suspect a large part of those visitors on the website is me. :S Otherwise I don’t know why, I’ve only meet one person who read Serenity rose excempt me. And it was a very breif meeting. But pretty cool none the less. It was a friend of a friend, that just during a conversation in a cafe, picked up the first book from her backpack and recommended it to everyone around. And I was like “Oooh, I just bought that too!”
Guess she liked it. ^^
Wow, so YOU’RE the one keeping Sweden five spaces over France in the rankings… Impressive clicking, sir!
I should have a transcript of the first two books available to download later this month, but yeah, there’s absolutely NO HURRY at all. This is all for fun.
I kinda like mr JFG’s suggestion about letting various users suggest improvements to the translations and gradually, ‘organically’ smooth them out that way. Sort of like a Wiki-Sererenity, probably with some kind of requirement that one or more other users vouch for a change as well. Although I’d have to wonder if we’d get enough registered users, of course, but still a cool thought.
Remember, the people that do the subtitles and dubbing on your favorite anime are *professionals*…. translating is no simple matter.
7 years? Damn. Glad to have been here to see it all π
I can’t wait for the new volume! Does this mean this is the last we’ll hear from Sera? Will the heart shaped skull go onto other adventures?
Love the new site design.
Waaah, translations, languages — my head just overdosed on happy!
I sent you an email immediately after reading this and I’m very excited as to whether or not I’ll actually be able to do it.
Pink = <3.
Serenity Rose means a lot to me. I hold her in my heart.
Eat some cake for me.
PS: english is just as common in norway as in sweden, as far as I know. Sweden is just a lot more known than Norway.
Oh. Yes. I’m norwegian myself. And norwegian is the language I will be translating your comics into if you let me.
Luv.
EXCELLENT site!! I absolutely love what you’ve done with the place, Aaron! Oh, and the idea of commentary….BRILLIANT! I can’t wait to re-read Volume 1 as you post it.
Thanks! Yeah, I sorta-kinda started the commentary thing already, but got distracted by other shiny things. I’ll be sure to post something when I start it up FOR SERIOUS (hopefully very soon)!
woooo, we’re gettin’ kinda close to that “end of June” thing……
“Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
I GOT A QUESTION IN!!! WOOO! It’s all mopey though… π I TRIED to be happy, Mr. A, I really tried….
but it proved too much for my fragile little jelly-heart to handle.
I got one in that all mock-deep & hideously monstrous & authority challenging & stuff…. made me all gleeful! π
(hopefully V will like it too….?)
(AND kept it within 2 sentences!) π
Ha!!
This comment thinggy is awesome!!
Hey, ummm, just wondering here… Is there any chance of Sera and Tess “hooking up”? I mean… I think it’d be seriously awesome. They’d be great together. Sera’s all shy and stuff and Tess is so hot headed and loud. It’s like they would complete each other yknow? So yea… Just wondering…