For anyone registered on the site, if you log in, you’ll see you have a new option on the right hand side of the screen. It says “Your personal link:” and there will be a link there with a bit of extra on the tail end of the URL. That is your personal referral link. If you copy and pasta that somewhere (like your facebook, tumblr, twitter, on your forums where you frequent, personal website, etc), and people click it, you will earn “coins”, which you can spend like cash in the store. So you can earn free downloads from the store, just by spreading Shifters love around. Currently its 15 referrals for 1 coin to spend in the store. Each page has a unique personal URL, so you can use it to refer people to specific pages you want to share, or the newest page, or just the main page if you want. Its up to you and the situation in which you use it.

The plugin is a beta, it may have some weirdness associated with it. So if you do run into any bugs, please let me know. Also, if you have any suggestions on how to make it better, or things you’d like to see in the store, please let me know too.

If you’d like to see a video of how this is supposed to work, there is one here.

So go ahead and give it a try!

New Store – Earn Coins, Get Rewards! is a post from: Shifters Online

Some people were complaining there wasn’t enough Shifters. And we agree, but because both Mysti (the colorist) and I have bills and such to pay, we normally have to take paying commissions, work, or do other income generating activities. This leaves us with only enough time currently to make one page a week.

BUT with your help, that could change.

For every $50 USD we recieve in donations, we will add ONE additional page to the scheduled pages for the following month. SO this means that if we get say $100 in donations for September, in October we will put out two extra pages. The reason for this is so that we can plan our time. Often we are booked months in advance for commissions or extra work (I teach classes for example in addition to my full time job, never mind whatever paying commissions or graphic design freelance I have, and after they start I have to plan around them.)

The idea is that because Shifters is providing that income we need to make ends meet, we won’t have to keep burdening ourselves with work that ISN’T Shifters related. You guys get more pages, and we get to keep a roof over our heads. Its win-win.

As the donations trickle in, every time we hit a +1 page milestone the donation meter will tick up. This helps show how many bonus pages will be scheduled for next month. If donations for a month do not reach enough for a page, the money will go into a special side account for Shifters related activities, such as merchandise development/purchasing, advertising, con fees, website hosting, etc. This will help tremendously in getting the word out about Shifters being back, and bring more people to the site, which will hopefully help everything along.

Currently we have our donations set up to be accepted through Paypal. However if you want to donate and do not want to use paypal, drop me a line at shadowsmyst (at) gmail dot com and we can work out some alternate form of payment.

How the donation meter works is a post from: Shifters Online

First, I’m ready to give you all a solid date when things will resume.

June 6, 2011

There will be some new splash art and a site design refresh forthcoming as we head towards the faithful day for the return to the world of Shade City. I’m currently only planning for a once a week schedule as I will be still updating Brymstone at the same time and its pretty friggen hard to do two comics at once. But I’ve got a lot of other things swishing about in my head too in terms of goodies and awesomeness, so there’s lots to look forward to. I’m also hopefully going to get some IRL and online help.

Here’s where you guys all come in.

Over the years, I’ve taken a lot of flack and abuse for Shifters. I need your help to erase all the bad energy/feelings out and replace it with positive enthusiasm. When you guys are excited, I get excited. When I get excited, I produce more art, which of course translates into more stuff like comic pages and wallpapers. Right now I need a bit of a cheering squad and a group of fans who can help me stay on track. People who I can bounce ideas around with, give me some good feedback when I need it, who are going to be as dedicated to getting Shifters back as I am, not just for themselves, but for everyone who’s ever loved Shifters for the last decade.

And in exchange for YOUR efforts keeping my ass motivated, I’m going to give you something very special. Not only personal access to me, but also early access to the new site and the new material. You’ll get a chance to see stuff before anyone else, because I want your feedback, I NEED your feedback. I don’t want just “Yes men” either, I want people who LOVE shifters, but who can also be objective. This is going to be a very exclusive group, but I think is going to be WELL worth it. If you can bring some skills to me as well, that also gives you an edge. If you can offer something to help me out (say programing/web skills, promotional skills, merchandising/business skills, art skills, etc) Even better, because the more I can focus and help I can get, the quicker and better things will be.

So here’s how this is going to work.

Much like in the Comic, I’m going to create a ‘Circle’. There are 12 seats on the circle. So there will be twelve people selected from the contest I’m about to announce here.

To be eligible to participate, you must do the following:

1) You must be registered on the site AND the forums. Please make sure you register with the same username. I haven’t yet figured out how to join them, so you have to register for both.

2) You must post an introduction to yourself on the forums.

3) Post in the contest forum, in the correct thread a post detailing the following:

• How you found Shifters and how long you’ve been a fan
• What Shifters means to you and how much you love it
• Why you want to help bring it back
• What you would do to help me stay on track
• What you would do to help the community at large
• Why would you make the best choice for  a seat at the Circle

I will read through the entries, and select members for the Circle who will be contacted via the forum and email. Further instructions will be given at that time.

If you win I will need to get an AIM account from you, so please make sure you have one, or are willing to get one. Also please make sure you register with a legitimate email address so I can get a hold of you if you win.

The contest will only run until MARCH 11! So make sure you get your entry done!

Further details are available in the contest thread in the forums.

“The Plan” is a post from: Shifters Online

Shifters is a world of the future, as much as it might have not seemed it in the past, it really is. The original concept was to set it in a ‘cyberpunk’ future, and the Redux really is going to push that concept. The type of music that inspires the mood of the Shifters universe is the sort of music that has that futuristic edge. Techno, House, progressive, trance, industrial rock, and some various remixes and mashups that in particular have the ‘feel’ I’m going for. There are several anime title songs that have the right sort of edge, typically from anime which have the same kind of genre. When I’m working on Shifters, this is the sort of music I load up on my iTunes playlist.

A sample of this is something like this:

This would be Sharam – Be the Change

Another song that always bring’s Shifters to my head is one of the songs from the anime Bubblegum Crisis 2040, the opening song Y’know.

This one is a wicked tune, and the words themselves resound to many concepts I have in my head for Shifters. I avidly listen to this one, particularly creative remixes of it. This is Ernesto vs Bastian – The Darkside of the Moon

Of course, this all factored in when I got a chance to actually work with a mucisian to some mutual benefit to create an actual Shifters theme song. Yes, you heard me, Shifters does have an actual theme song and its awesome. The score is original, created and performed by D. John Hitchcock, who is a part of the band Cyrios. If you are wondering who did their awesome logo, that would be me. You can also check out their facebook page.

The track is called “New Moon” and is completely unrelated to the sparkly vampire drivel by she who shall not be named. It was out there before they released that tripe on the world as a movie. Sadly I can’t imbed this one, BUT you can listen to it on his myspace page. And yes, that is REAL guitar in there. He plays that shit. Awesomeness, no? If you enjoy it, you should drop him a line and tell him how much he rocks.

Eventually I’d like to produce a short music video to go with the music, BUT sadly my animation skills are kinda lame, so it will take a while for me to do something animated, but we’ll see what else I can come up with.

So here is where you guys get to participate. Post a comment here or in the forums about what song YOU think speaks/feels most about Shifters to you. I would like to put together a playlist of shifters songs, not just the ones I feel speak about Shifters, but also that YOU, the fans, think speaks about it.

Once I collect all the feedback, I will create a list as best I can on playlist.com and imbed it here so people can listen to all the Shifters music. If you are already on playlist.com, my profile is here.

Oh, and a by the by, if you’d like your comments to show up immediately the best way is to register for an account. I have enabled registrations on the blog, so if you want to register for an account here you can.

Shifters Music – Inspiring Mood is a post from: Shifters Online

Now don’t panic, don’t wet yourself with excitement, I’m just doing a little housekeeping/dusting here, working on the website and such. As to WHY I’m working on the website, well… a few reasons actually.

First is that seeing that people still come here and are still so anticipating the return of Shifters touches me, really it does, so I figure, if I’m not releasing the pages, I should at least do something. This format lets me do a little more sort of art blogging and updating you people on progress behind the scenes. I kind of realize that it helps to have SOME sort of idea of what’s going on, even if you aren’t seeing pages that I’m alive and the site isn’t completely dead. Even if you aren’t getting what you want exactly, seeing progress is still gives more hope than a parked website with no updates for like 2 years.

In addition to posting sketches and such, I’ll be pointing out some of the new features of the site as I get them added. I’ve just added a gallery, for example and I’m still populating it.  I also have some other stuff to add as well as creating a new section for what the Shifters world was originally intended for… roleplaying.

That’s right kiddies, the world of Shifters was originally a roleplaying environment that I was working on based on some of my favorite things. Cyberpunk, magic, werewolfs, vampires, conspiracies, dark futures, etc, with its whole rich mythology and city. I’m still working on aspects of it, but this lets me post stuff about the world that might not be readily avaliable apparent in the comic, but also stuff that’s been developing over time from the RP in the forums and stuff I’ve done tabletop with my group over the years. I originally had my own system for Shifters, but I might adapt it to D20, or GURPS, or a few different templates depending on demand. I sort of had dreams of one day sticking it all in a dead tree format book for the die hard tabletop gamers such as myself. Something truly awesome about getting together with friends and rolling dice, raiding corp head quarters, and blowing shit up.

SO, this website will live, and it will be the only one with siginficant updates, so if you have the old keenspace/comicgen site in your bookmarks, replace it with this site.  If you are vigilant and attentive, you may even get to see sneak previews of the new pages. I have a Ustream channel and I have used it to show people sneak peeks of the new pages, but people have to show up and ask. I’m also working on a new supporter site, that a few select hardcore fans are testing at the moment, when I’m satisfied the bugs are worked out, I’ll tell you folks more.

For now, you can comment on the blog, but if you really want to interact and engage, please use the forums.

AH! What happened to this page?? is a post from: Shifters Online