Gordon McAlpin's Blog: Updates from Multiplex: Deleted Scenes, page 10

Updated Multiplex Store

I’m in the process of rebuilding the Multiplex Store. It’s still a little plain, but that will be an ongoing process. Anyway, I think everything works correctly.

There are a few nice things about the new design: a more streamlined checkout page, a responsive design, so that if you’re on a phone, it should fit your screen. (My developer Jelly and I are working on a responsive redesign for the regular Multiplex website, too, but that’s a few months off. Mostly him, at this point.)

In the interest of testing things out, I need some customers!

Here is a coupon for $1.99 off any eBook with any purchase. So you can buy a book and get a free eBook, or buy one eBook and get a second one for free, or just get $1.99 off one of the eBook sets, whatever.

Because an account is required for eBook purchases, you will need to be logged in, so if you don’t already have an account, you’ll need to create one. At checkout, enter the code newstore and it’ll take $1.99 off your total.

If you run into any issues, please leave a comment here or shoot me an e-mail!

 

Interview with Pipedream Comics

This has been up for a couple of days, but I recently spoke with Alex Thomas of Pipedream Comics (“the ultimate guide to the world of digital comics”) about Multiplex — not just the webcomic, but also Multiplex for iPhone and iPod touch, the eBooks, and more.

It’s a pretty long interview (five pages!), but if whether you’re just a fan of the comic or interested in digital comics as a Big Idea, you’re pretty likely to learn something new about Multiplex in it.

Trailer Watch: Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster

Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi star in the “true story” (exaggerated and/or largely fabricated) of Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man, the man best known today as the dude who trained Bruce Lee.

It came out in China back in January, and it’s finally schedule to hit American theaters this August. Check it out:

A few Multiplex iPhone app tips and tricks

As I announced last Friday, Multiplex for iPhone and iPod touch is now available in the iOS App Store! Version 2.0 has been completely rebuilt with a great new interface, so for the 10% of Multiplex readers who visit the site on iOS devices, I highly encourage you to try out the app. I use it on my iPad mini, and while there is a laundry list of features we need to add to the app (including, obviously, an iPad-specific interface), I’m really proud of what we’ve built so far.

Version 2.0 is such a big upgrade over the previous version that I wanted to get it into your hands with relatively few new features beyond the interface. There are many more features to come — but I honestly think it’s already the best webcomic reader app I’ve seen. This totally custom experience is the reason I wanted to build an app just for Multiplex rather than see it shoehorned into some one-size-fits-none interface with a dozen other comics.

We’ve tried to make the app as intuitive as possible, as touch-based interfaces should be, but there are a few subtle features you may not know about. None of these are essential, of course, but

• Want to jump around the app a little more quickly? Long press (tap and hold) the Info button at the bottom left of the strip view to pull up an action sheet taking you to the strip’s current chapter or book page — or to the Home screen.

• Want to view all your bookmarks a little more quickly? Sure, you can get to the Bookmarks menu from the Home screen, but you can also directly from the strip view by long pressing (tapping and holding) on the bookmark icon in the title bar.

• Going on an archive dive? Hide the interface while reading strips by simply tapping on the image.

• Lastly, I wanted to acknowledge that there is one known issue with the new app so far. On very rare occasions, the Notes from the Manager for a strip may not load. We’re trying to get to the bottom of this, but when this happens, you can tap on the view three times to force it to reload the contents and that always fixes it.

Enjoy! And please remember to rate or review the app if you like it. (And if there’s anything you don’t love about it, please send us feedback!) Helping get it in on as many devices as possible justifies our continued development of the app.

 

Multiplex for iOS version 2.0 is here!

Multiplex for iPhone and iPod touch is now available in the iOS App Store! Version 2.0 is completely rebuilt with a great new interface! Dive into the archives, browse the Cast bios, and read the Notes from the Manager blog posts, all from the comfort of your iPhone or iPod touch!

If you love Multiplex and have an iOS device, please please please download the app and leave a review (ideally a positive one!) or head over to the Multiplex app page here at the website if you have any questions, comments, or feedback. Daniel Farrelly (a.k.a. the programmer) and I already have some exciting plans for version 2.1 and beyond, and your feedback is very important!

Thanks are due to our beta testing team: LynxAenslade, Jay Beane, Andy Edelheit, Scott Grandt, Jacob Hitze, Aaron Khoo, Kaylee LaMonde, Jay Malone, Adam Payne, Kevin Rubin, Melissa Savage, Alexandra Smith, Frank Sugino, Tom Spendlove, and Rob Wilson.

iPad Users: While the app is currently built for iPhone and iPod touch, it will run great on your iPad, too — strip images look crisp, even when the app is pixel-doubled. I use on my iPad mini, myself, and it’s my favorite way to re-read the strip. A universal app update is planned for a future release, however!

NEW IN VERSION 2.0: Completely rebuilt interface! Retina graphics! Support for 4″ displays on iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th generation)! Multiple bookmarks! Book and Chapter cover images! Notes from the Manager blog posts! AS BEFORE, THE MULTIPLEX APP IS FREE AND COMPLETELY AD-FREE.

Multiplex for iPhone and iPod touch has been submitted to the App Store!

I’m incredibly pleased to announce that version 2.0 of Multiplex for iPhone and iPod touch has been submitted to the App Store for approval. With any luck, it will be available next week! In the meantime, you can always check out the Multiplex app page for more details (or to get the current 1.0 version, to see how they compare when the new one arrives).

Thanks to all our beta testers for contributing their time and opinions while we developed this new version of the app: LynxAenslade, Jay Beane, Andy Edelheit, Scott Grandt, Jacob Hitze, Aaron Khoo, Kaylee LaMonde, Jay Malone, Adam Payne, Kevin Rubin, Melissa Savage, Alexandra Smith, Frank Sugino, Tom Spendlove, and Rob Wilson.

Affiliate link woes (bye, Amazon; hello, Apple)

Those of you who used my Amazon affiliate link (which used to be below this blog post) will notice that it has disappeared. Effective today, Amazon has cancelled the affiliate program for Minnesotans (and several other states) where legislation has been passed declaring that bloggers who use affiliates constitute a “physical presence” in Minnesota and therefore sales tax must be collected for any internet sales.

Now, I’m all for making companies pay their due taxes, but this law is stupid. I am not an Amazon employee. No amount of logical contortions can make the idea that me drawing a comic strip in my apartment constitutes a physical presence for Amazon.com in this state. That is just plain absurd, and so I’ll miss my $50 or whatever a month I got from it, but I understand why they did it.

Thanks, however, to everybody who did use those links (especially around the holidays!). As a poor grad student, they were a nice something extra.

I’ve added Apple App Store/iTunes links to try them out for the time being. If you buy stuff through them, click through those links, and I get a kickback at no cost to you.

The Multiplex iPhone app is looking for beta testers.

The next version of the Multiplex iOS app is almost here!

Daniel Farrelly and I have been working hard on a complete rebuild of the Multiplex iPhone app. (Him more than me, really.) It should be more stable than the existing app and the revamped user interface is — I think — pretty sweet. There isn’t a whole lot in the way of new features, but this 2.0 version is laying the groundwork for some sweet new features in the versions to come, including an iPad specific interface (in a universal app, of course), an integrated Chapter eBook store and reader, and more!

The app itself will be free — and ad-free, as well — but we need some volunteer beta testers with iOS devices of all kinds — iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches — to help iron out some of the kinks in the interface, find bugs, and so on. If you have some time to poke around the app and rummage through the archives with this beta version, please fill out the survey linked below to let us know what kind of device(s) you have! We can only handle about twenty people, so if we get more interest than that, we’ll need to choose from the “applicants” (based on your devices and iOS versions, as well as any relevant knowledge or experience you have). Even if we can’t use you for this version, your time is greatly appreciated, and perhaps we’ll be able to use you in a future testing round!

Please click here to fill out the survey/“application” to be a beta tester!

Book 2 Update and a bonus comic from Book 3

Multiplex: There and Back Again (Book 2) is being proofread, and I’m doing other technical stuff, getting the files ready for print. I’m also waiting to hear back from my distributor about various things before deciding on a final print run. Once I have the print run determined, I can settle on a printer and figure out when the book will be available — hopefully late summer or early fall, but… we’ll see. I’ll let you know as soon as I do!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m frustrated that the book is running late. I had hoped that the new content would have been done at the end of the summer, so my “free time” during the school year could be used to do the various rewards, and I could get a Book 3 Kickstarter going for the summer. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and I intend to finish everything related to the Book 2 Kickstarter project before launch a Book 3 Kickstarter project — but I still hope to get the next book started much, much sooner — so that I can get it out in under a year.

I shouldn’t need as much time with Book 3, because it will have fewer bonus comics than Books 1 and 2 did — roughly 20. Books 1 & 2 had about 30 bonus strips, plus Book 1’s Prequel story. Anyway, last weekend, I ended up taking a look at what Book 3 will entail and got sidetracked with thinking about what I would do in the bonus comics for the first chapter in Book 3 (a.k.a. Chapter 11). Aaaaand since I was enjoying myself, I decided to do this strip, despite having other things I should be working on (like graduate school stuff)…

Anyway, the strip below is set prior to Multiplex #217, making it the first strip in the book.

 

 The Hollywood Pitch

Multiplex: There and Back Again final cover

I finally broke through my artist’s block on the Book 2 cover, and so aside from some corrections and technical mumbo-jumbo left, Multiplex: There and Back Again is DONE. Finally.

I’ll keep you posted when I have a better idea of when it will be published and available, but I’m hoping sometime this summer or early fall — things with the distributor take a little longer than if I were just self-publishing, unfortunately.

Thanks are due to my friend Gene Ha for some invaluable suggestions on this cover concept!