Six months. That’s how long we were on unplanned hiatus. It truly was unplanned. However, there were many reasons for this. One of the main ones was burn-out. Thing is, it wasn’t Bitmap World burn-out, but web burnout. Hosting a dozen sites over the last few years just totally caught up with us. Another problem was health related. Mirz ended up having some issues with fatigue that made it difficult to do the comic. Despite the looks of the comic, each strip can take 1 to 5 hours, depending on the complexity of the art and story. There were simply times she couldn’t sit at the computer for a long stretch to do a big comic. Lastly, just life. Things were hard and when priorities had to be set: family/work or comic, family won.
Nevertheless, since January, we have been itching to get the site back up. However, a couple of things nagged at us. We have tried to do a forum many times on the site, but one of the biggest hindrances was the program. We wanted something that would work and integrate into our comment system. Before, everything we tried that *claimed* to do that simply didn’t work. However, during our downtime we found a fantastic system that DOES work. So, we wanted to use that. Secondly, as much as we really loved the old site, after 3+ years, we knew a change was needed. We did a massive re-design of the site on the front end and back-end, making it easier for us to maintain and making it prettier. There were lots of other changes too, which you’ll see as you poke around the site.
Artistically, we have not been idle. We do participate in the deviantART community (thought admittedly, that’s been spotty lately due to time and health issues). We also started a fiction serial called Relativity. Branching out on our love of superheroes, it’s a written bi-weekly series following the crimefighting team led by Black Torrent. This is a PG-13 series that has some hardcore writing and very deep and complex storylines. So, be warned, it’s not light reading like Bitmap World. But it’s good story-telling and great characters and if you give it a shot, we’re sure you’ll like it.
Other than that, Bitmap World celebrated its 4th birthday in March. Of course, we were down. But we hope to celebrate with some kind of booyah and party in May. So, stay tuned.
A big thank you to all the fans and friends who have continued to support us and the comic during this downtime. All of your nagging kind words have been much appreciated. We still hope to publish twice weekly, but we won’t set a firm schedule until settle in again. Until then, thank you and enjoy the ride…again.
