Rogues of Clwyd Rhan

Author notes

Evolution

Reinderdijkhuis

on Sept. 19, 2009

It is with great regret that I have to announce that this is the final update in the Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan Remaster project.

The work involved now claims much more of my free time than I had ever counted on, at a time when I have less free time than ever. Worse than that, the work is neither profitable nor creative nor enjoyable. Nor does it contribute to my life goals which involve getting married and emigrating to the US in the next 8 months. It has become pure drudgery that makes my weekends as stressful as my working week. As grateful as I am for all the readership and the comments that I've got here on Drunk Duck, the negatives outweigh the positives by a wide margin.

It was different when it started. Back in 2007 when I had the idea of putting the comics on Drunk Duck as a daily-updating series, I was single, staying put and still working as a full-time cartoonist, though I was already thinking of getting out. Also, many of the comics I was going to republish were ready to go. Now, I work 40 hours a week at a high-stress office job, and my spare time is mostly claimed by the things I need to keep my sanity after work: running, talking to my fiancee, doing new art and preparing for the big move. I need to keep the amount of time not spent on these things to an absolute minimum, and taking time off from these things for a saturday morning composed at best of mindless Photoshop work, or at worst, re-scanning large batches of seven year old art followed by mindless photoshop work and repetitive, unpaid desktop publishing work, is insane and invariably makes me very unhappy. It also has the effect of keeping me mentally trapped in the work I did seven years ago instead of thinking about new work.

So I'm throwing in the towel. The only thing that kept me going these past few months is the idea that this project was the last webcomics-related thing I do that still updates at all, and quitting it would be a form of defeat.

Well, I admit defeat. I have not wanted to do this since the last time I came back from the United States, and today, having to go back to the scanner again to correct a mistake made when I re-scanned this batch two weeks ago (when I almost quit) made me lose my temper so badly that I simply had to face the fact that I shouldn't be spending my time on this anymore. This, as a great artist said just before he died, is it.

If you want to continue following ROCR, you can do so by reading the un-remastered comic on the main site. They're all there, and the comic that follows the one above is right here: Comic for July 10, 2002. It happens to be pretty hideous but the ones after that are pretty good again.
Update: As of November 5, 2010, the comic for July 7, 2002 has been replaced by a redrawn version and is no longer hideous. This should also bring us closer to resuming the remaster program.

I'll see you over there! Thanks everyone!