Hi, I’m Nix! I’m, um, the new boss. ;)

We’re making drastic changes to the workflow around here. The artist has had some slipshod habits, but now I require him to lay out the comics in bulk ahead of time, so the actual production can move like a greased pig. With a lightning bolt up the butt.

I’ve watched him at work, and I can see what his problem is. He gets the comic in his head, then just sits down and tries to do the finished thing from scratch. So he spends forever just changing his mind and erasing and fudging and thinking. Then he has to take off to walk to the library or halfway across town to deliver stuff, and by the time he gets home, he forgets everything he was working on.

He’s working on the layouts right now. Here are a few for this week; Monday’s is late, but I’m going to make sure you get a full week, this week. And we’re going to keep posting layouts like this until further notice. If you have any comments or suggestions, I’ll pass them along.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Oopsie! Contrary to what I said in the last post, the redirects for the old feed files apparently do not work.

So I set the reconfigured super-automatic RSS maker to make copies of the feed files at the old locations. So you shouldn’t have any trouble getting stuff, now.

The new, official location of the feeds:

• Comics: antelucan.com/tanktop/rss.xml
• News: antelucan.com/tanktop/tribune/rss.xml

These old ones will continue working:

• Comics: antelucan.com/oopsiedoodle/rss.xml
• News: antelucan.com/feed/tanktop/rss.xml

As I mentioned in the last post, we’re preparing Tanktop, Texas for an eventual move to an adult server — so instead of spreading out the content (including the RSS feeds) to make an all-integrated site, instead everything needs to be in one box so that we can pick it up and move it like a suitcase.

There! Looks like we’re back in business.

Due to donor/reader feedback, we’ve decided to start angling more purposefully towards moving Tanktop, Texas to an adult server, so that we can be as wild as we want to be.

I have actually stumbled a bit on content (nudes? no nudes? dirty? no dirty?), trying to figure out how to make the site bring in some revenue while at the same time not getting us kicked off our webhost, getting our Paypal account suspended, etc. This is stuff that can and has happened to other webcartoonists, and I’m just at too scary a place for any accidents to happen.

I’ve been worried that the site updating process just isn’t really automatic enough for somebody like me, as I’ve been having a hard time holding it together, lately (heat, age, health). Thanks to some adjustments in our CMS (Comics Mangling Scheme), the update process now consists of dropping the file into a folder.

That’s it.

Nothing else.

So if I can keep my hands off the webmastering stuff for a little while, I’ll be doing nothing but comics this week.

I do need to update you on the RSS feed situation. If you’re still subscribed to the old Oopsie-Doodle RSS feed, or subscribed to the most recent feed I posted for the comic strip, you should still be getting the news and the comics, respectively, because of a site redirection. If your feed is dead, let me know.

Before last week, making the RSS was still a bit of a pain. Now it’s completely automatic, just like the comic strip updating. I shouldn’t have to look at it anymore. But I had also envisioned a sort of one-stop feed station; now, I need to be ready to lift Tanktop up and out like a suitcase, so the respective feeds need to be with the rest of the Tanktop content.

If you need to change or update your feed reader, here are the new locations:

• Comics
• News

If you’re not into RSS, there’s a real quick way for you to check on updates, now. The homepage of Antelucan is now a gateway, instead of a Swiss Army knife-type page, trying to do a hundred things at a time. Now it simply diverts you to or from the adult content, and also tells you the last time the comics and news updated.

Please consider donating if you never have before! You can help us get moving a little bit better, and get Tanktop, Texas moved to a new webhost. Maybe we can get another air conditioner or something, too. Blarg.

It may not seem like it right now, but I’m committed to getting really rolling, when I can. I am making a vow that not only will Tanktop, Texas become profitable, it will soon help me get a car. I’m just killing myself schlepping around town on foot with my back, and in this heat. I know this stuff doesn’t happen by accident, I need to work really hard. I know I can when I can get everything out of my way.

Listen, guys. You want to meet the girl with the biggest boobs in the known universe? Meet Annie Hawkins-Turner.

Ms Hawkins-Turner, who today makes a living as a glamour model under the pseudonym Norma Stitz, said that the bullying over her chest size began when she got her first bra at the age of ten.

‘I don’t know what size I was. I was just big,’ she recalled. ‘The only thing I remember about those bras is they were cotton and they stuck out just like footballs and that’s when I knew I was different.

‘Kids are some of the worst people in the world when it comes to picking on people. I was teased a lot.’

Annie really has faced real obstacles to living a normal life, but has also been blessed.

Ms Hawkins-Turner also discussed her late husband of 13 years, Alan, who died six years ago.

‘He turned my whole life around,’ she said of the retired Air Force officer.

‘He treated me like a queen. He loved me and he loved my kids. He was my angel, it wasn’t just sexual.’

That’s the one thing I want people to learn: we all come in different shapes, sizes, and packages.

But, she says, she will never get breast reduction surgery.

She explained: ‘Every time I get a new doctor they offer me surgery but I don’t need surgery.

‘I’ve got a strong back and have never had back ache. I’ve had therapy on how to hold myself so I won’t hurt myself.’

Posture! Get it whether you got boobs or not. I used to go around stoop-shouldered in junior high, as if I could hide them. That’s the worst thing you can do. Stick ‘em out and let the world know you’re one tough mother. :D

Tags: world record, huge boobs, life stories

An open forum! First, I will make some meandering comments, and then you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. Ignore my depressing tone, it’s the best I can do right now.

Haven’t been able to get back to daily, yet, but I’m trying. As usual, the back end of the week got jammed up with chores and errands — and I hate to be such a sad sack, but all my errands are done by foot, and take a lot of time. If I could only make enough money off this site to buy a freakin’ bicycle…! Or maybe some roller skates! A plank with wheels, maybe. I had a bicycle once, but it was lost or stolen in an earlier move, even before the ransacking of our last storage unit, which was supposed to keep our stuff safe while we were in homeless limbo for a year.

Did you know…? One of the reasons I’m doing this comic is because I got to thinking all the crap I was piling up on the heroes of Elf Life was coming back at me. If you’re not familiar with my old fantasy series, the characters seem to be happy-go-lucky elves at first, but are really beset with incredible tragedy and all that hoo-ha. Comic strip karma? I tried a few other comics since then, but I really wanted a comic about heroes whose lives aren’t always being smashed; who don’t have to worry from week to week where they’ll live, or how they’re going to eat. In other words, I want some of Beryl’s good luck to start rubbing off on me and my readers. :D

Aha! That’s an idea! A page where you get to rub Beryl’s boobs for good luck! :D

You could say, then, that Beryl’s anatomy becomes a symbol of bounty, never-ending bliss, however you want to put it.

I’m also kind of obsessed with the idea of activity earning revenue, which is why Beryl owning a farm appealed to me. I was addicted to Harvest Moon for a little while, because I was captivated by the idea that this constant productive activity was actually rewarded on a consistent basis. As opposed to finding cool weapons and ammo littered here and there for free, or finding rupees inside of pots. I get mad thinking about prior jobs I’ve held, where I have actually been penalized for working hard. Seriously. I know it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, because you want more updates, but in an ideal situation my natural inclination is to crank stuff out. But financially my butt gets kicked because life’s not like Harvest Moon. You can put radishes in the bin all day, and sometimes you just wind up with a bin of radishes that nobody wants to eat.

I hate radishes. :p

There are still things that make me happy, but lately it’s the dull tech stuff. It just occurred to me the other day that since I now stand at my computer instead of sit, I can bump up the resolution higher than the standard 1024x768. I’m now a 1280x1024 worker! Everything looks sharper, and I’ve got more room to work, and I don’t even have to squint to see it all. Coloring the last comic was a treat!

Now that I’ve got the grumbling out of my system, pat me on the head and talk about what you want to talk about.

Thank you, donors!

Despite my hand-wringing, people have donated and continue to donate to the effort. When I got sick a couple of months back, an angel of a reader coincidentally donated \$65 all at once. Some of the medicine I had to get was expensive, and I wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise. Another angel reader the other day gave \$25, and I was able to pay our past-due gas bill. Yet another angel donated an entire computer, with a more up-to-date system, which I have not really been able to fully utilize, yet.

If I whine and complain about donations, or my frustration trying to get art sold or whatever, it’s because I don’t want to let anybody down, including the people in my life who are depending on me for income. If it wasn’t for people depending on me, I’d just chuck some stuff in a backpack and disappear, Baughb the elf style. But people are depending on me. The last \$2 of the last donation, after the gas bill, went to buy cat food. Even the cat depends on me!

I’m also happy that people are taking part in the contest Beryl’s Challenge — it shows me that there is interest in the comics and other fun stuff, and I need to hurry up and get my act together so we can concentrate on the fun stuff! :D

We’ll be posting the contest guesses a bit more officially, soon. I’ll probably pin them on the homepage somewhere, and I may even reference the contest in the comics by showing a “board” behind Catwallander. When Beryl asks, what will his explanation be? Maybe they held a bingo party in the studio the same day. Nevertheless, here’s where we stand so far:

• Oppairex: 34U
• kusanagisama: 32JZ
• crazyspider: OO
• Rocky-3: MM

Yes, somebody used the sample nickname I suggested. :D

I can’t say if anybody’s right or wrong, so far. I should add that we will count single, double, and triple letters as the same. Although there is technically a difference, we’re not going to split hairs. Guessing the chest size doesn’t count against you, either.

Also, if I drop any hints, you can change your answer. I believe “JZ” means something like another trip around the alphabet, which is an acceptable answer. Beryl might be past Z; she might not.

Hey, how about some hints? First hint: she was nicknamed Oopsie-Doodle in high school partially because she knocked over things with her big boobs, but also because a classmate got a look at her bra in gym class and saw the label: double-O OOPSIE! But, remember — in high school. Has she developed more since then? Or did her weight loss compensate? Actually, that’s a pretty lousy hint. You already know she’s overdeveloped!

Second hint! A reader on DeviantART observed correctly that it’s hard to tell because her size varies depending on the art. This is true especially when you look at the cartoony style, where ratios are pushed around on purpose. There’s no way you can look at the drawings and arrive at a precise, physical, mathematical answer.

What you need to be looking for is something more like a puzzle. What kind of cup size would be unique and have special meaning for Beryl Thunderstrom, as opposed to her friend Moneesha, and other girls around the world? Put on your thinking caps, gentlemen!

Do not despair! There may be a few more hints in the comic strip before we reveal the final answer.

Oh, one more note: I have applied to yet another ad network that might be a little more OK with the big boob cartoons, but would restrict me from pursuing more “adult” aspects of the series. I guess if I have to scrub the nudity or whatever, I may have to do it. We might have to take nude scenes and other steamier material off-site. I’m not sure where. But understand that if I do so, it’s not because I’m trying to be a prude or hold out on you, it just seems that there’s a double-standard for independent content producers and “real” content producers. I can’t show you half of what you’ll find on YouTube. If I posted a video of Beryl shaking her stuff there, nobody would bat an eyelash; here on my own site, it would be a crime against humanity. :p

I’ve been wanting to go even further, and play around with something like modern-day Tijuana Bibles, but I just really don’t know where I could get away with it, and not get all kinds of different accounts suspended on me.

The cartoon parts test I was working on looked fine while I was working on them. Looking at them again, I decided they looked too sterile and stiff. I hate to be such a — well, guy about this, but half the fun of Beryl should be seeing her bouncing around!

I’m also thinking that it was probably a mistake to abandon the original style of the comic strip — even before I suffered a health setback earlier this year, attempting a more difficult, realistic style had already sharply reduced the frequency of updates.

So now we return to a cartoony style in order to provide a daily or nearly daily feature once again.

The more realistic style will be reserved for special features like “Go Go, Cavegirl” — but somehow I’m going to have to tie that more in to revenue. Maybe that kind of feature will be for subscribers only, or something.

In any case, Tanktop resumes with an interview situation so we can cover several topics — Beryl will explain what’s going on with the Cavegirl “movie”, and perhaps we’ll revisit the original concept and tie things together better. She will also reveal her cup size, after some good-natured badgering.

My pre-eviction confidence has mostly returned, but I still have many obstacles to overcome. I need to do more to keep my health under control. Part of what does me in is that I’m worn out by trying to cope — sorry to be a broken record, but we have no car, no power mower, no dishwasher, the clothes dryer is broken, the sewer by the side of the house is overflowing (right next to my window). We really need some more fans at the very least in order to cope better with this oppressive heat. Last year, we had a few successful donation drives, but almost all the money went to an electric company that, as it turns out, was seriously gouging us. Our bills now are very low, but because of our situation we have difficulty paying them all — I am supposed to be making up some of the difference with the comics, and I have been given something of an ultimatum. I’m not sure exactly what’s going to happen, but there are people who have the power to arbitrarily shut me down (they have been able to stop me from updating in the past, but I can’t really talk about it online), and I think whatever is going to happen may happen very soon if I don’t turn things around fast. This tends to happen — I start making progress, but it’s not fast enough, so somebody comes along with a sledgehammer thinking that they’re helping me by busting me up and making me start all over again.

HELP ME STAY ON THIS HORSE THIS TIME. I don’t need a lot of help, but, for the love of God, SOME help — it’s as if readers are on strike against me right now (one reader essentially said that in a recent comment). I’ve had disruptions this year, more than I should have had, but does this really mean that you shouldn’t buy art, just to punish me for my updates? I was really hoping that the current wallpaper was colorful and attractive enough to generate donations on the strength of the wallpaper itself, so that I can get back into a good position where I can update regularly again. Catch-22!

To fulfill my “contract” with you, I need to gain more independence from those things that are dragging me away from the comics. Please, please. Help.

Here’s one idea for generating some honest revenue, but I’ve put it off because it really would be more effective when the site is back to high traffic. But, do you see that huge space on Beryl’s chest? Buy ad space on Beryl’s t-shirt! Just to throw out an arbitrary dollar amount, say, \$100, and you get your ad/icon image on Beryl’s t-shirt on one new, archived comic strip, a shirt which is actually clickable to your website.

Starting with the new Beryl Thunderstrom comics, you can now buy the original art. How much? For now, again just throwing out an arbitary dollar amount, \$100 or the best offer.

Like I said, my pre-eviction confidence has returned. I know my stuff is unique and entertaining, at least; it has value; whatever it is that’s preventing me from escaping this nightmare, whatever curse somebody has put on me, has got to stop.

Posted some Pippi sketches from a few years back.

One of these days I’m going to have to write a children’s book. I look forward to filling young minds with subversive mush. :evilgrin:

I know readers hate my constant left turns as much as anything, but I’m putting together a project that will let me update more frequently.

I’m taking my cues from animation, and putting the characters together as “cels” and cel-parts. This way, I can produce relatively quickly entire batches of comics featuring characters interacting, at least conversationally.

Mr. Catwallander, seen below, is already mostly put together, with a full range of available expressions which he can wear either looking straight ahead, or side-to-side. Beryl’s coming right up along after him.

So for right now, I’m going to do some comics in an interview situation, with Mr. Catwallander (of Catwallander! on a local TV affiliate) chatting informally with Beryl, and trying not to stare at her monster bazoombas. It’s not what you think, being a cat he just has an immense desire to curl up between them and take a nap.

Yes, it’s sort of a return to the original Oopsie-Doodle situation, where Beryl is surrounded by many talking animals, but she will also talk some about her other projects, like the “Cavegirl Beryl” movie she’s making.

I know what’s happening to all my projects — I need solid blocks of dependable time, like on a punch-clock, to get everything done, but instead I’m only getting snatches of time. That’s why for a few weeks I’ll seem to be going like gangbusters, and then — something happens. Either I get diverted by other people (which is about to happen again if I can’t get something going) or I get sick, or it gets too cold or it gets too hot. Today, it’s so hot in the house that we’re sweating; my roommate has had to abandon his work so that he can sit in front of the AC. And it’s not so much that I mind working when it’s hot; put a shovel or something in my hand, and I’ll dig ditches for you until the sweat pours off me. But my brain doesn’t work in the heat. It goes all goomy.

So I need an easier way to stitch together the frequent, recurring feature, and maybe that will make folks happy enough so they will support me again, so that I can kind of upgrade the situation and get to where I can spend more time on the “premium” projects, like the more cinematic comics, Beryl novels, and all that.

The “interviews” will be very simple, at first. I’ll build up more parts, other characters, and some backgrounds as I go along. The next step will be to have a kitchen “set” where Beryl can drink coffee with her friends. Things shouldn’t look too stiff; I don’t think that sample above looks stiff at all, does it?

An interview with Beryl is coming up (in comic strip form, using an entirely different technique for reasons I’ll get into later).

Beryl is going to open up about a lot of stuff, but most importantly she’s going to reveal her most closely guarded secret — her cup size!

She’s even agreed to let me pass along this challenge: anybody who guesses it correctly before we post the interview gets the wallpaper free. If nobody guesses it (which is likely) we’ll draw a name (or names, depending on how many players we have) at random.

To help you guess, take a look at her again, as cavegirl Beryl in the latest wallpaper. It won’t be easy, though — I don’t always draw Beryl consistently, and the answer may be such a surprise that you might get mad! :D Play the game only in good spirits, please!

Email your guess, or tweet me or Beryl — pick an alias so that we can post all the guesses here on the website (without compromising your actual identity). So there’s no confusion, put it on one line, like so:

CrazySpider: DD

If you’re OK with us using your Twitter ID, just tweet your guess and nothing else.

And if I can get the actual donations — or art sales — or freakin’ something going, I’ll add to the prize. :D For now, though, I can’t promise anything that’s not digital.

Cars told me to be on the lookout for “stupid things” (his exact words), and now I found something:

The Real Force Behind Ebook Sales: Heaving Bosoms

Looking at these covers, though, you gotta wonder: whose bosom is heaving, hers or his? These dudes got HUGE boobs! OK, maybe not as big as me, but you know.

Before I posted the latest wallpaper donation drive, I sent out password info to many recent donors. A comment on a completely unrelated post nudged me into updating my records and sending out info to donors from last year, as well.

So check your email; if you don’t have it, check your spam folder, or make sure you’re checking the same account you use for Paypal.

My aim isn’t to keep sponging off the same donors, which is why I’m sending the password out to those of you who have already registered your support for my work. My hope is that some new readers will like the incentive enough on its own to donate, just as I hope that my artwork is good enough that somebody might want to buy it, regardless of how often the comic is updating.

I know that the comic not updating hurts me. Let’s make this clear: not updating hurts me worse than it does you.

I mentioned the health issues the other month — those were sharp head pains that persisted throughout the month, with little relief. Most of the time, I wanted to tear my head off. Other times, I was actually banging my head against the wall to divert the pain. It didn’t go away at night, when I was trying to sleep, but instead sometimes got so bad that I had to wrap my head in my blanket. In the morning, there would still be pain, and I would be deadish from the lack of sleep, too.

That was just a portion of my life scooped away and thrown on a dungheap.

That is a chance that you’re taking by donating to me, I’m afraid. I’ve been Mr. Unlucky for a while, now. At the moment, nothing is easy. We have no car, so I have to walk errands everywhere; there’s no power mower, so I’m having to keep up a wild yard with a reel mower and a weedwacker; the dryer is busted, so our laundry is taking forever; I could go on. At every turn, there’s a huge job or a disaster. I think I admitted on the site before that I was evicted a while back; I’ve been trying to work to put my life together, although it really wasn’t much together before that. And I’ll make another admission here that I’m not happy about making, and I’m not sure if I won’t come back along and delete this: people in my real life pushed me into going through the whole government disability route, again. People in my life think I qualify; the government doesn’t. It’s a lengthy, time-consuming, humiliating process. And it was for nothing.

Here’s what I’d like to ask of you: if you don’t donate, make it because you don’t like the stuff, not because you want to penalize me for having a crappy life to begin with. OK? You’re just like the bank penalizing poor people $20 for being ten cents overdrawn. For some of us, \$20 is devastation. Tell me my stuff sucks; I’m getting some of my old self-confidence back, so I might be more likely to argue with you, but I’m open to hear about it. But I’m kind of tired of getting beaten up for the other thing. I’ve worked very hard in the past to produce comics in adverse situations, out in the desert with 120 degree temperatures, and no air, hiking to a library to update because the computer’s dead — and people will still beat up on me for not updating more frequently. I’m not a kid with tons of spare time; I’m not living at home with the folks; I’m damaged goods trying to do what I can.

My main obstacle to producing art and comics remains my financial condition, which drives a lot of this disaster and everything. If I could scrape up the money just to fix the dryer, for example, that’s one less problem in the way of production. I’m not asking donors to fund all this, but I just don’t have much else working in my favor, yet.

A quick response from the one ad network I was pinning some hope on: declined for “adult language”.

Not completely unexpected, since this site is, you know, aimed more at adults than my previous sites. But, alas, one more potential source of revenue shut. At the same time, I’d prefer not to have the ads, anyway. They’re intrusive and erratic.

Hmm. So what next? I checked the site of one of my inspirations from youth, Heavy Metal, and find that they have no ads whatsoever — except for plugging their endless array of actual merchandise. Ay, but there’s the rub.

Maybe if I can get Beryl to sit still for a plaster cast…

Beryl Thunderstrom fans, don’t forget our NSFW wallpaper donation drive is still ongoing. I’m between a rock and a hard place, again — I really need to raise funds so I can get the comics back into production, after hitting a few more figurative potholes along the way.

Don’t like NSFW stuff sitting on your desktop? I’ll have some Elf Life wallpaper ready soon.

I’ve been trying to suppress my panic for fear of scaring everybody off, but my bills are at a really, really scary place right now.

I asked once before about some previous art, with no response, but we’ve got comments reinstated, so it’s easy to say something. Would there be any interest out there in bidding on the following art? It’s more along the line of workbook-type stuff (note the abandoned Beryl figurine drawings in the bottom corner), but it’s fully shaded, with several fun images.

It’s a 9 x 12 sheet of bristol with drawings. I haven’t really even had a chance yet to reveal on the site what I’m up to with this stuff. My worry about putting this up for auction is that I’m spending a lot of time trying to raise money and falling flat. I was running out of time. Ι ran out of time. Right now, I’m in that period of time past running out of time, when pink slips are in the mail and all that.

I had also floated the idea of doing commissions, but response to that has been so poor that I’m having to look elsewhere for fast revenue before I can really even get started on that.

Free content is at a standstill until I can get this stuff caught up.

Going through my archives of Old Junk, I found this Flash animation experiment. It’s rather crude, but I’ve often thought it would be neat to produce some of the comic art in separate parts so that it could be animated cut-out style here and there, just for fun.

%%../flash/boobs.html%%

This is the mermaid queen Thea from Elf Life, of course.