“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”  –  Pablo Picasso

I was looking at other webcomics a few days ago and saw something I never noticed before on Matt Forcum’s website (Matt does a wonderful webcomic titled Robot Beach – click here to check it out). He has an audio blog on his site! I never would have thought of doing something like that. I have plans to do a podcast someday and an audio blog sounded like a perfect stepping stone. So I did the honorable thing: I contacted Matt and informed him that I was ripping off his idea (actually, I asked if he’d mind if I followed in his footsteps and he granted me his blessing).

So I got myself an account on audioboo, whipped up an icon for the link, and threw it in the left sidebar. But after I did that, I felt that the twitter icon looked rather shabby in comparison. So I decided to give it a revamp. I like it a lot more. The original one was cute but the new one is simpler and bolder.

Now I felt I was all done.

Then I took a long gander at the donation button. At first, I thought,”Crap, now I gotta change that one too.” But the idea of redoing that button didn’t sit right with me. The more I looked at it, the unhappier I felt about it’s presence. My plan was to remove it once I had some real merchandise to sell (books, T-shirts, posters). That way I could say, “There’s no reason to donate money to me and get nothing for it. If you want to show your support, go ahead and purchase something from my store.” But the reality is my ad revenue is paying well and that’s all thanks to you guys visiting the site  so, in a way, you’re already donating to the site. Plus, I figure taking down the donation button will kick my butt in gear to make some merch.

So that’s the story behind my changes to the left sidebar. Like ’em? Hate ’em? Lemme know what you guys think.