Planescape: Metamorphosis - A Planescape Webcomic
Ladies and Gentlemen, Primes and Planars, it is my pleasure to announce the official opening of Planescape: Metamorphosis.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com
I am still looking for shorter URL ideas (unfortunately someone's using psmm.com), so if you have any thoughts, please pitch them.
Meanwhile, you can jump to the first page here
Updates will come every Monday and Thursday, US Central time. If you like, you can follow me on Twitter to catch the updates. Either way, I'll continue posting my update notices here. I'll be making a DrunkDuck account soon enough, so keep an eye out for the future updates!
Comic updated!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=186
Thanks for the suggestion. It is a good thought. Mostly I wanted to tell people so that they could know I'm not making this up out of nowhere. But I think you're right, it'll sound better if it's not a little note.
Nothing says it can't be mentioned in the blog section for the update. Personally I like artist notes - just not in the artwork.
Shit... I saw the thumbs of the upcoming pages in DeviantArt...
I think Archdukechocula and Clueless are right. I also would remove the use of onomatopoeia, but this is something about personal tastes... I was going to criticize the pace of the story (I like slower) but since you are publishing it in a web I think it's OK, probably better to tell something than adding transitional drawings (which is also a lot of work for just 1 author).
I like how it is going the story. I've posted it in the RPG association forum I belong, hope someone would like to follow.
Updated!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=188
@inkoia: The story pace will actually slow down a touch after the prologue. I just want to breeze through the prologue so I can get to the actual story. The comic is going to spend the vast majority of its time on the Multiverse so I'm anxious to get to that point 
@Clueless: I just noticed, thank you for the frontpage pimpage! And thank you for the retweets!
Updated, Prologue Page 11http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=191This is being posted early on purpose because I'll be at Otakon over the weekend. I also won't be back until Monday night, so Monday's postmight be a little delayed. If I get a chance to post before I leave Baltimore, I'll make sure to get it up.
I'm loving your webcomic. Very well drawn.
Interesting! Nice that you have a lizard protagonist too.
Updated! http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=193
@Azure: Thanks 
@Zimrazim: Thanks! I decided I wanted to go rather off the beaten track with the protagonist so I did something more unusual for a D&D-style setup.
The Prologue is now complete! See the final page at the link below!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=199
Stay tuned for Chapter 1's kickoff later this week!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=204Sorry for posting this so late in the day! Had a problem with my mouse and had to wait until after work to get a new one 
All is better now, so have your page!The next two pages may be a bit delayed. I am going on vacation (again) and while I anticipate some drawing time, I’ll be away from a reliable scanner source and I may not be able to complete my roughs online. I’ll do my best, though!That is a star chart on the wall, and a few books in the shelves. But mostly the star chart! And I am pleased that I pulled off a room scene that looks passable :DThanks for reading!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=207
Updated! Shoudl be back on schedule tomorrow!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=211
Chapter 1, Page 4 is up and ready!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=213
Chapter 1, Page 5 is up!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=216
Chapter 6 is up!
I know it's still early in the comic, but I am really interested to hear what you planars think about the comic so far -- especially how I handle introducing Qul (and the reader) to the setting. You guys can give me a lot of feedback that an average reader might not be able to. The next few pages will give a very general overview of Sigil, so please let me know what your thoughts are.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=218
Chapter 1, Page 7, this time with a view of Sigil's "sky!"
Also, Wolfgang Baur recently started following my Twitter feeds, so I'm rather excited!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=220
Chapter 1, Page 8 is up!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=222
Chapter 1, Page 9!
(Admittedly, I got a little bit lazy with this one)
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=224
Updated!
I'm working on a few minor character redesigns and will probably come up with some bigtime reference sheets. I tend to forget some of the details and moreover I've noticed my characters are rather too symmetrical so I plan to introduce some asymmetry to really make the characters pop out a little more.
I'm also working on assembling some pre-made gradient swatches so I can make some better colors in less time, so stay tuned.
Also, like I mentioned before, I'd still like feedback from you all on the comic, especially with regards to how I handle the planar aspects: introducing Qul to the Multiverse, a little bit of Sigil, etc.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=227
Updated yesterday, but here's the link in case you missed it!
Thanks to Clueless for the bar idea.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=230
Introducing a few new characters!
http://is.gd/3g47Z Chapter 1, Page 14! With a little bit of insight into some of the other touts K'zink bangs around with.
Once again, please let me know what you think. I'm getting very little feedback on the whole, so I don't know if most of my visitors are regulars who enjoy the comic or people just checking it out and deciding it's not worth their time. I'd really like to know what people like and don't like so I can consider future pages and chapters.
Also, to any of you Spelljammer fans out there (I'm looking at you, Loki), bonus points if you recognize K'zink's weapons hanging at his hips.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=238
Updated! Time to get the ball rolling some. Maybe a little overdue
Once again, I'd love to hear what you all think.
I'm enjoying it. I don't have any specific commentary on what you're doing, so I sadly cannot be of any aid there. But I know from some of my own work that knowing someone else cares about what you do can help a lot, so I wanted to let you know.
Thanks, Bob I really appreciate it!
I'm still reading it and still think it's great. The art style is evocative and the story continues to be compelling. If you want a more involved comment I will give it gladly, but suffice to say I like what you are doing and hope you continue.
Thank you! I am always open to more involved comments I don't know how many readers outside of Planewalker are actually Planescape fans, so it's hard to get a sense of what planars think sometimes. I know things have been kind of slow and I'd love to be able to update 3 or more days a week, but I simply don't have that kind of time.
Now that I've been updating regularly for over a month, here are a few stats for that month that I've pulled off of Google Analytics for anyone that's interested. I really like seeing these little tidbits because it's something I frequently wonder about whenever I visit a website.
The past month I have had:
Visitor Statistics
- 1,851 visits from 967 unique visitors for a total of 7,438 page views. That makes an average of 4.02 page views per visitor. Each visitor spends an average of 1 minute, 45 seconds on the site.
- Average 59.71 visits per day. The day with the most visits over the past 30 days was yesterday, at 100 visits. The day with the least was Sunday, August 23, with 33 visits. Over the past month, I have had a 45% increase in new visitors.
- Unfortunately, my Bounce Rate is 63.48%. I'm not really sure how to reduce that without moving the latest page off the index. That's something I don't want to do because I think potential readers should see the latest page immediately.
Visitor Locations
- By far, most of my visitors (1,047 out of 1,851) come from the United States. Canada is second place with 149 visitors and Sweden is third with 90. The remaining places on the top 10 with the most visitors are in order: Germany (78), United Kingdom (62), Australia (61), Poland (55), France (44), Italy (37), and Russia (31).
- I have gotten visitors from all over the world, including a few from Turkey (12), Colombia (9), the Philippines (3), and Israel (2)
Browsers
The following browsers are most used when visiting my comic:
- Firefox (62.56%)
- Internet Explorer (18.21%)
- Safari (6.75%)
- Google Chrome (6.59%)
- Opera (4.65%)
Visitor Retention/Loyalty
- 845 visitors visited the site one time last month. However, I have a fair amount of loyalty since 166 visitors visited 9-14 times, 199 visitors visited 15-25 times, and 154 visitors visited 26-50 times.
- Most (66.56%) visitors stay on the site for 10 seconds or less and most (63.48%) never look past the front page.
Where visitors come from
I'm not sure if this is entirely accurate since "planescapemetamorphosis.com" is a parked domain that runs over my regular domain. If you go to www.kaitoukage.net you also get the comic site. Google Analytics is told to look at kaitoukage.net, so I have a *lot* of referrals directly from planescapemetamorphosis.com and they may be skewing the numbers. If someone more familiar with domain parking and Analytics could help me figure out the numbers, I'd be very appreciative. I haven't used Analytics much before this comic because I haven't had a "real" website up. Anyway, here are some numbers for your enjoyment.
- Most visitors find out about the comic from Planewalker. I have gotten 450 visits from the links posted here during the last 30 days. Thank you all very much for the support since I started!
- Myth Weavers is second behind "planescapemetamorphosis.com" referrals. 98 visitors over the past month have come from Myth Weavers. Not bad considering I have only recently started advertising there.
- Twitter advertising comes next with 82 visitors. I think this number might be falsely reported because of the referrals (I have 445 visits from direct links and 445 more from planescapemetamorphosis.com referrals and I'm pretty sure more people come from Twitter)
- LiveJournal brings in a fair number of visitors, though I can't tell from this chart if it's people looking at my site from their friends pages or if I'm being linked. The numbers are not all lumped together, but taken as a whole, I probably have 80-100 visitors from LiveJournal sites. I can see that Bob the Efreet is among those who have visited from LiveJournal, so thanks, Bob! I think I may start crossposting updates to the Planescape community and a couple D&D communities.
- Facebook and deviantART bring in a small amount of visitors. Somewhere along the line I got added to the D&D wiki at dnd.wikia.com and I've received 8 visitors from that link. I wonder if the wikipedia entry for Planescape has me listed? If not, maybe I should add myself. There's another comic that calls itself Planescape (though after a glance through it I haven't seen very much that's Planescape about it), so who knows. Fortunately, a Bing search for "planescape webcomic" has me listed as the top three hits
Thank you all for your support so far. After really digging through my Analytics report, I know that the fans and readers are out there, even if you're quiet sometimes. I really appreciate you guys reading and standing behind me with this effort and I will do my best to keep this going and not let you down.
Chapter 1, Page 16!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=241
Also attached is a bonus mockup of K'zink's apartment, which you can see at my sketchblog here:
Chapter 1, Page 17
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=243
A little hint to where I'm going in the next scene.
I just want to take a moment to drop a note saying thank you all for the support! Metamorphosis broke 100 hits in one day yesterday and I'm really excited about it! I hope this trend continues upward -- I'm up over 12% total visits for the past month!
Anyway, all of you here are a big part of my fan base and I really appreciate the support you've thrown behind me. Thank you and I'll keep on writing!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=248
Chapter 1, Page 18!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=253
Now we see a glimpse of the Night Market. I would like to have done better on the first and second panels but time is of the essence and I have to force myself to stop or I won't finish.
I'll draw a custom 100x100 pixel icon for the first person that correctly lists all four fiends shown in the bottom panels. See below for examples of the icons I'm working on for Metamorphosis.
Also, I have a question for those that follow the Planescape LJ community. Do you think I should post my updates there or do you think most people that go to that community also come here?
Looks like a night hag, bulezau, canoloth... and I'm guessing the last one is a cambion or marquis cambion.
Good job! I'll send you a PM momentarily.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=255
Here's some banter between K'zink and Drake!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=258
Chapter 1, Page 21
People trying to get killed.
Bonus points if you recognize K'zink's faction.
He sounds a bit like a Sensate from that quote. Although I think it also says that on his info page, so maybe that's where I'm getting it.
Cheater But yeah, he's a Sensate.
Drake's faction should be revealed 2 or 3 pages from now.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=261
Chapter 1, Page 22!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=264
Chapter 1, Page 23 is up and ready!
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=269
Chapter 1, Page 24!
We're heading toward the climax and resolution of Chapter 1. Once this chapter's done, I will take a break to finish the semester and finish scripting Chapter 2.
Bonus points if you successfully guess Drake's faction from the above.
I'd guess Guvner. He seems a little too indifferent to be Harmonium.
Whoops, I thought I responded here.
You would guess correctly! Drake is a Guvner.
The topic of factions will be addressed more in the next chapter.
This kind of makes me wonder if you're really good at hinting factions, I'm really good at guessing them, or some combination of the two.
Next chapter we get to see Qul introduced to the factions to see which he likes best, eh?
Well, I tried to drop a hint without being blatant, so probably a combination of both. Most people that knew Planescape before reading were able to guess Guvner. I'm glad that came across because I didn't want Drake to seem like a Hardhead.
I haven't decided if Qul will actually join a faction. However, since the factions are a major part of the setting and three of the main characters are faction-affiliated, I figured it's worth a chapter or three dedicated to it. Most of my chapters that take place in Sigil will involve the factions directly. There are 15 factions and only three are consistently represented, but I'd like to give all or most of them at least some treatment.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=283
Chapter 1, Page 25 is up. I left some author's notes on the comic site regarding a few of the things I did or attempted to do in this page.
http://www.planescapemetamorphosis.com/?p=286 Chapter 1, Page 26!
Since I'm nearing the end of my first chapter, I want to do something special and draw a wallpaper-style picture featuring one of the four main characters that appeared in Chapter 1.
To that end, I'd like to run a little poll to see which one readers want to see drawn most. So please vote on which character you want to see. You can post your vote in this thread or just PM it to me if you want to keep it confidential. The options are Qul, K'zink, Drake, and Lasc. I'll tally the votes, and the character that gets the wallpaper in the end will be a surprise
Also, I have started an Etsy shop where I'll be selling prints of my Metamorphosis (and other) drawings. There isn't a whole lot up there but the going rate is $5 for the print + $5 shipping. If you order multiple prints, though, the shipping per print goes down significantly. It's cheaper to get prints from Etsy than deviantART.
If there's another drawing you're interested in receiving prints of, let me know and we can work out a deal. I accept PayPal, so we can figure something out if you just want an individual print.
Very well done.
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Someday, Yanek, none of this will be yours.
The comic, the opening narrative and the artwork are all awesome. I will definitely be reading it regularly.
If you are receptive to it, I would like to give one small suggestion. Dump the author's note entirely (unless this is an early version of course). The narrative works on its own. I say let the story do the talking. Either explain it as part of the narrative, or leave it unexplained entirely. People can put the pieces together on their own. Just my opinion. The comic looks like it will be great. Keep it up!