hkkingofshades - Tumblr blog

[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 64

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Archispirostreptus gigas - giant millipede [blender noises] ……yeah. this page has been sitting 3/4 done for like 2 months. the whole tumblr ai debacle and then just general existence really did a number on my ability to Create Stuff. I do sincerely apologize - the reality of Existing Within Capitalism With Executive Dysfunction is that, well, if I have to direct all of my motivational energy towards something, a lot of times that something has to be "functioning in the real world" and not "pouring every second of my time into something that is, ultimately, a hobby". (It's one of the reasons I wouldn't try and monetize my art even if this were my original work - I can't in good conscience take payment for something there's no guarantee I can deliver.) That being said, one of my major goals for this comic is to actually NOT abandon something for once in my life, so if you haven't seen me, it's not because I'm never updating again. Promise.

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[hkkingofshades]

Tumblr's new policy, and updates going forward

Yeah, I bet we all saw this coming, huh.

So, given tungl dot hell(tm)'s new deal with midjourney, I think pretty much all artists on tumblr are, well, not having a great time. Like deviantart, tumblr has provided a way to opt out from having your blog content scraped, but like deviantart, it's a little unclear what has already been shared before the opt-out went into place, and how much they'll actually work to stop machine trawlers from trawling opted-out blogs.

I'll put the tl;dr up front:

King of Shades will not be leaving Tumblr, but due to the new policy, I won't be posting full pages here anymore.

There's no point in taking down all the pages I've already posted. Deleting them from my page won't delete subsequent reblogs, and there's a pretty high chance that tumblr has already scraped them. (haveibeentrained.com seems to think I haven't been yet, at least. I don't think I really have a big enough following for that to happen, although I don't want to jinx it...) But I certainly won't be posting the full-size pages here anymore.

Instead, I think I'll go the Trying Human route and post a little preview of the update (possibly heavily watermarked; my computer can't run glaze/nightshade, unfortunately), so you guys will still get notifications, but you'll have to visit the ComicFury main website in order to read it. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience (although I will say that I think it's a much better reading experience over there)!

Speaking of which:

I have never and will never ask for any kind of compensation (other than your wonderful feedback, which I've just been absolutely blown away by) for doing this. Even putting legality aside, that's not why I'm here! However, if you've enjoyed this comic, ever thought that you might be willing to tip me on ko-fi if I had one, or even just want to continue having an internet that isn't entirely a corporate wasteland, I ask that you consider donating to ComicFury instead.

ComicFury is a relic of the old, good internet: it's been around for at least 15 years, and it's all hosted and managed by one guy (Kyo). Aside from his team of volunteer moderators, everything on this website is done by one person with a passion for supporting artists. I've chatted with him a little, and he's a great dude! Most of his operating costs are paid for out of pocket, and the site is currently hurting a little bit because it doesn't run ads, it doesn't have subscriptions or paywalled content, it doesn't have any corporate interference or monetization of any kind outside of his Patreon. And—perhaps most relevantly for this post:

I will cut right to the chase, we have decided not to allow AI-art based webcomics on the site. [...] As for our reasoning, there are obviously ethical concerns regarding the source images of most commonly used AI image generators (namely them just being scraped off the internet without anyones permission). But even beyond that, another concern is that due to the extremely low effort involved, webcomics of this nature could just over time completely drown out in numbers art by passionate people who put a lot of time into it , which would be a real shame. So we asked ourselves what would be better for the community, and we agreed that banning it would probably be the better thing overall.

—Kyo has been quite firm that he will not allow AI art to be posted to or scraped from any ComicFury domain. While this isn't a protection against huge web trawls or people putting someone's art in individually—there's not a lot anyone can do about that yet, even with tools like glaze and nightshade—it's a little peace of mind that the art posted there won't abruptly be sold en masse to the highest bidder.

The Patreon starts at $2/month, and Kyo has said that he doesn't mind people pledging for a short time and then dipping if they can't afford an ongoing subscription. If and only if this is something you can afford, and you want to continue seeing independent webcomics including King of Shades, please consider donating!

The Patreon is here. There's not much in the way of reward tiers, especially if you're not a member, but I posit that the real reward is being able to read free webcomics done by real humans as labors of love, without being advertised to or sold as the product. And also maybe the friends we made along the way. Or something.

Once again, there is no pressure, and no shame if you're not willing or able to give money. But if you've ever thought you might be willing to tip me for what I do, consider passing it along to the guy who makes it possible instead.

Thank you for your time!

P.S. Page 64 is coming, I promise! Recent developments kind of kneecapped my motivation for making online art 🙃

[hkkingofshades]

Hoooooooooly shit this is fantastic!!!! The effort that was put into this... The music & sfx and everything... Thank you so much, I'm so so so flattered and impressed 😭

Read the original comic!

Don't waste this chance…

Hornet: Me Hollow Knight, Pale King: @phoenixvitae Ghost: @mimikiplovesgaming

Art @hkkingofshades

[hkkingofshades]

Note: Possibly no update Wednesday?

I'm not behind, but my area is expecting a large storm and is prone to frequent mudslides. There's thus a very high chance we lose power in the next 48 hours, which means no internet, which obviously means I won't be able to post. If I post early I will be behind, so if you don't see me on Wednesday, just assume that I'm in my house whining like a little baby at being minorly-to-moderately inconvenienced by the weather.

Thanks in advance for your understanding!

[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 63

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 62

Sorry for the delay, folks! this page gave me a LOT of trouble for some reason & ended up taking nearly 2 weeks to finish. p sure you can also pinpoint the exact moment I gave up on the backgrounds, lol. these guys are less heavily based on their irl references since only one of them will ever show up outside of flashbacks (and we never see Hegemol outside of his armor, so there's not much to work with… based on the shape he might be a scarab/dung beetle like Ogrim? but who knows…). That being said: - Isma: Pseudophyllus titan (giant false leaf katydid) - Ogrim: Scarabaeus sacer (sacred scarab) - Ze'mer: Lepisma saccharinum (silverfish) - Dryya: Libellula lydia (whitetail dragonfly)

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[hkkingofshades]

Note: No page this week (but I'm still here!)

Because of [waves hand] The Agonies a few weeks ago, when I finally got back the spoons to start working again, I just immediately started posting, which means I never had a chance to rebuild any kind of buffer. Which in turn means that when I get a little overambitious with a page and go over my usual rhythm, there's... not much I can do about it. Ack.

Page 62 will probably be finished by the end of today, but if I hold off on posting it until next week, that gives me the time to get at least most of a page ahead, so that's what I'm going to do.

Sorry for the delay - Just wanted to let everyone know I haven't vanished again (:

[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 61

I had SO much fun with this page. did you guys miss seeing Hollow as much as I've missed drawing them? now, because I love them so much, we're gonna put them in the blender for a couple of pages. oops.

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 60

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 58-59

click through to the source for fullview! Charaxes phaeus - Demon Emperor (bilateral gynandromorph) If you're ok with irl bugs, search up their caterpillars too! the caterpillars of the Charaxini tribe (nawabs, rajahs, and pashas) are commonly called "dragon headed caterpillars" because of their distinctive (and awfully familiar-looking) horns. they're also all sexually dimorphic, and I really didn't want to implicitly gender Ghost one way or the other by their markings, so I ended up just literally splitting the difference down the middle. I figured this was a safe enough compromise so now their gender is "yeah lol" (Hollow's remains "no thank you")

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 57

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 56

if bullying the god doesn't work, you can always try an appeal to emotion that they were specifically designed not to have…?

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 55

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 54

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I started out to write a comic about Ghost and ended up writing a comic about Hornet bullying every god she meets. at least it's in character?

...this page was meant to go up in. uh. august. I updated on the main site but not here, started grad school, and lost all will to live! left that program and my motivation is creeping sheepishly back, so page 55 will be up next week. thank yall so much for your patience (':

[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 53

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 52

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[hkkingofshades]

King of Shades - 51

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I'M SO GODDAMN SORRY YALL. Life Happened and i just was not able to get any pages in 😭 my ability to stick to a schedule is notoriously terrible but I promise that I am still working on the comic and haven't abandoned it!