Status report

Hey, how’s everybody doing? I hope not too many people are suffering from Happysad withdrawal symptoms? I know some are, but maybe that’s just because they’ve lost their place in the spotlight :-)

A month has gone by now since I published my last cartoon, and it already feels like ages ago to me. To be honest, I don’t miss Happysad that much. I do a little bit of course, but in the past weeks I’ve felt much better, more confident, since I no longer have to put myself into that Happysad state of mind on a regular basis in order to come up with ideas. It feels like there’s so much more room for activities in my brain now.

So how far have I come with this changing myself programme? Well, there have been no huge strides forward yet, but I’m making small, gradual progress, and remind myself to try and change things a little bit every day. I’m quite happy so far, but I will have to pick up the pace a bit soon. One of the things I’m considering right now is creating a whole new website, meant to promote my “regular” cartoons, the ones I actually make a bit of money with every now and then. That was actually the initial purpose of this site, but then Happysad happened and the whole thing just took another turn.

So I’m going to try again now, only seven years later :-). It’ll be something entirely new, built from scratch. Because the main target audience of those cartoons is located here in Flanders, it will most likely be in Dutch. But I’ll keep using this site to blog about stuff, post the odd drawing, and who knows what else might pop up in the future. So do stay tuned, I will – as always – be back.

Jeroen

One non-blonde

I’m quite amused with the controversy about the Happysad girl not actually being a blonde. I can perfectly understand why, but people who have paid attention could / should have known. Firstly, as Pantelis pointed out in the comments, those of you who have joined the Happysad fan group on Facebook must have seen this picture before:

But even if you’re not on Facebook, you might have spotted her charicature in the “Experiment” comic I published in November. Here’s the full picture, “published with permission”:

Direct quote: “I probably just say a lot of blonde things.”

Jeroen

Post-Happysad update

Now the Happysad series has ended, it doesn’t mean it’s gone from my life entirely. I still get reminded of it often, and sometimes in unexpected ways. Like the e-mail I recently received from a Presbyterian church in Georgia, US, with a politeĀ  request to use one of my cartoons for a seminar on Women’s Enrichment (!). Oh, the stuff my comics can be used for… :-) Of course, I didn’t object. We all know that anyone can just copy (/steal) anything from the internet, so I think it’s nice when people have the common decency to come and ask for permission. As long as my comics aren’t used for commercial purposes and proper reference is given, I don’t mind.

Today I’ve been doing a lot of Happysad post-production work too. As requested, I’ve updated the zip-files which you can download under the tab ‘The complete Happysad series’ above. I’ve also added links to the pdf-files, for those people who can’t read the iBooks that my fan Coral made. And speaking of books, I still get these questions when a real Happysad book will be made. I can now show you what that would take, thanks to my Greek fan Pantelis, who made one last summer for another “superfan”. Here are some pictures he sent me:

Pretty cool huh?

Jeroen