From 10 June 2017 to 26 July 2018, the following eight polls ran on the Gaia website. It’s time to present the results:

Poll from 10 June 2017:

I’m not surprised that Viviana received the most votes. It’s interesting to compare the new results with the same from 1 October 2013. Back then, Viviana already received 50% of all votes. Lilith had a significantly higher vote count at 27%. Ilias was at 10%, Ryn at 7%. Alissa got 4% of all votes and Sandril 2%. So not all that much has changed since then.

Poll from 10 June 2017:

Breaking All Barriers was sometimes criticized for being too slow. But overall our readers really enjoyed the chapter. The Tower in the Sky and Monster suffer a bit from their role as intermediate chapters that set up future plot lines. My personal favorite is Breaking All Barriers as well.

Poll from 10 June 2017:

San de Vertis has been in a good number of pages since the poll ran, so I guess she would receive some more votes today.

Poll from 10 June 2017:

Yeah, that’s also my personal order. Viviana also looked cute as a redhead, but blond suits her best.

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Probably not too surprising given Gaia is a high-fantasy comic with scientific elements. I’m not a big fan of comedy fantasy as well. Most comedy fantasy sucks, in every medium. Is it especially hard to write or does the genre attract the worst writers?

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Most of our readers don’t read many webcomics. 72% read 12 webcomics at most. In the poll from 1 May 2014, that number was only 60%. This is just another data point that illustrates that we have left the golden age of webcomics, for a good number of reasons:

• Bad work ethic of many webcomic creators (missed updates, endless hiatus) soured the opinion of the interested audience about the medium
• Several popular long-running webcomics have become stale since their creators ran out of ideas
• Comics are not an optimal medium for mobile viewing on the small screens of smartphones
• Increased competition from social media

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Our readers like to have a look at the comments, but few read them religiously.

Poll from 10 March 2018:

Only 16% of our readers have bought a book collection from more than one webcomic. That’s a quite low number. It’s no surprise that so many webcartoonists struggle to make a living when you look at numbers like that.

There are four new polls that appear randomly in the voting widget in the right sidebar:

• Are you male or female?
• Are you in a steady relationship?
• Since when have you been reading Gaia?
• What are your three favorite comic genres? (a specific comic is often part of several genres)

After my visits in 2016 and 2017, I also visited the Comic Con Germany in Stuttgart (site map of the main hall) last Saturday. It was once again a lot of fun. I met several German comic artists, bought comics and original artwork, and saw an enormous number of cosplayers with great costumes. In this post, you can have a look at all the photos I took with some added commentary. You can click on each photo to see a larger version of it.

While it was still quite crowded on midday and the early afternoon, there were fewer visitors compared to the last two years. According to a newspaper article there were around 40,000 visitors instead of 50,000 visitors. That led to a better experience overall because making your way through the crowded floors was often a challenge in the last years. I hope that the convention stabilizes at the current visitor number to area ratio in the future.

In the first part of my article, I want to give you an impression of several parts of the fair. In the second part, I want to show you some of the artists that were present there and the comics and artwork I bought from them. The area where independent artists showed their work was significantly increased in size this year. In the third part, I want to show some amazing cosplayers. In the last part, I want to show you some impressions from the massive LEGO area.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

On 29 April, I finally managed to beat Getting over it with Bennet Foddy in under 10 minutes! After a good number of failed attempts with clear times just above 10 minutes, I eventually achieved a time of 8 min 30 sec 836 msec which would have placed me at position #481 at speedrun.com if I had recorded the run. Since then, I haven’t played Getting over it again since I just cannot do the advanced moves that are necessary for an even better time consistently.

The not listed runs didn’t result in better clear times:

• 1st run: 3h:59m:54s
• 2nd run: 1h:00m:50s
• 3rd run: 55m:47s
• 4th run: 49m:34s
• 5th run: 24m:22s
• 6th run: 18m:06s
• 8th run: 17m:47s
• 9th run: 16m:00s
• 11th run: 15m:05s
• 12th run: 14m:30s
• 13h run: 14m:03s
• 14th run: 12m:26s
• 16th run: 11m:25s
• 18th run: 10m:37s
• 20th run: 10m:06s
• 28th run: 8m:30s:836ms

I have just uploaded slightly adjusted versions  of the following pages to make the course of action clearer:

• The Way Back Home 116: The captain Reginar now gives an order in the last panel to kill all guards under Eldor’s command to minimize the risk for his men.
• The Way Back Home 120: Alissa now only mentions Salena to follow them in a minute in the 3rd panel.
• The Way Back Home 121: The magic effect that allows the swords to cut through the elves’ armor in the 2nd and 3rd panel has been highlighted.

Yesterday, I had a really good run in Getting Over It (see my last post about the game):

• 1st run: 3h:59m:54s
• 2nd run: 1h:00m:50s
• 3rd run: 55m:47s
• 4th run: 49m:34s
• 5th run: 24m:22s
• …?
• World record, here I come! 😉