BRINSON: Early update today! Hope y’all had a nice, restful Labor Day. (Well, for you guys in the US anyway. For those readers elsewhere in the world — congratulations on getting through Monday?)

Things continue to get more dangerous for Diva and her friends! I think Diva finally has a solid plan here, too. When a chaotic fire-wielding Norse God has no qualms with picking on a twelve year old girl, running is a perfectly acceptable solution.

Today’s incentive by Cassandra is an awesome roller derby Diva — I must admit I’m jealous having never thought of it as sport so perfectly suited for Diva.

NEW INCENTIVE FOR MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6th.

PETE: I got the page to Brinson too late today, so I get to have fun with ComicPress. This battle is getting heated. Diva is going to find herself in the hot seat. Loki’s got her feet to the fire. It’s an explosive situation. I’ll stop now. I feel sorry for the janitor. He’s going to be cleaning up for a while.

Being Labor Day, the last great hurrah of summer, Cassandra thought Diva and Michelle would enjoy the beach one last time.

NEW VOTING INCENTIVE UP FOR TODAY, WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 1ST! SEE BELOW.

BRINSON: AND BOOM. This isn’t how I thumbnailed this page; this is WAY BETTER. My favorite part of this page is the debris from Virgil’s office — for some reason, seeing the painting from above his mantle flying toward the lockers cracks me up. (Also, Cerby, but that’s sort of a given.)

I guess this is the good thing about not drawing this anymore: I get to be surprised like you guys! :D

JOE: Greetings Diva Fans. Except of course for HAI’s expert inking, this is the update that’s 100% Joe C produced. I started this page as an incentive to run along with the page following it, but as things developed we realized that this was an important moment in the story that deserved it’s place in ED history, which is why Pete ultimately decided to publish it here.

Ahhh, the hardest decision a girl can make. Let’s hope Diva chooses wisely. Another great take on Diva by Cassandra.

NEW INCENTIVE FOR MONDAY. SEE BELOW!

BRINSON: … Oh man. So I actually came thisclose to updating about three hours ago, had everything all written up nice and neat, and wouldn’t you know it — I fumbled with the mouse and closed the window. GO ME.

Anywho! Can y’all believe we’re 30 pages in already? I feel like a lot has happened in this issue, but that it’s all gone by in the blink of an eye. And now we’re back to the OTHER characters — remember them? :3 It’s nice to see the hallowed halls of St. Swithern’s again, too. (And I’m sure HWAC and Joe are happy to be gone from Virgil’s office. As much as I had fun stuffing that place full of relics, it was a great big pain in the butt to draw.)

It’s magic, but whose? Cassandra and Michelle have been working on an act, so abracadabra…

Sorry. Technical issues made this morning a problem. Brinson says we’ll be up after lunch. In the meantime, new incentive art. Our favorite trickster is at it again!

New voting incentive for today, Wednesday. See below.

BRINSON: This is a page I’ve been looking forward to. I’ve think this begs for a punny byline — stuff is really heating up! Joe and HAC are on fire! — but, um, I prefer you guys not wanting to reach through the internet and throttle me.

I’m really happy with the toning and lighting on this page. I know Joe took a bit of a leap with it, and I think it came out really nice. It feels more painterly than the cel-shading I was doing. :D

PETE: I would like to introduce Cassandra W. to everyone. We just made it official last night. She will be joining team Diva to help with incentive sketches and a few surprises in the near future. She is a SCAD grad (hmmmmm, sounds familiar) in sequential arts of all things (I’m getting a sense of Deja Vu). She is really looking forward to working with us and we are very excited to see what she comes up with. I hope you will all give her a warm welcome. In the meantime, enjoy this sketch from her. She is still getting into the swing of things, but when I saw this render of Diva, I had a feeling she would fit in well here.

NEW INCENTIVE IS UP FOR MONDAY, SEE BELOW,

PETE: My first attempt at updating!
We are going to start a new schedule today. We will try to update at 10am on update days. This includes voting incentives. I am shooting for some consistency for our readers. Hopefully by September we will be on a THREE DAY A WEEK update schedule! Keep your fingers crossed… Gimme some time with this comic press thing and I promise I’ll get better.

JOE: Hi Diva Fans. Brinson’s busy today so Pete and I are handling the update. Well the plot thickens again, and Virgil finally comes out of the closet. You know, there are times I discover things even I didn’t know are there. Today for example, I noticed as Diva clutched the Wand and said Virgil’s name, he came crashing out of the closet. Coincidence? Even I don’t know because I wasn’t thinking at the time I wrote this whether or not the Wand was responsible for Virgil’s appearance. Weird.

Or maybe I should’ve just taken credit for the subtle mastery with which I weave visual and literary themes. Yeah, I definitely should have done that ;-).

Then again Brinson thumb-nailed these pages so it could have been her doing.

NEW INCENTIVE ART:

Early post today. Here is a new incentive drawn by none other than Joe. He was watching a movie with his kids when he got the idea for this one. Hope you enjoy.

WEDNESDAY’S BREAKING NEWS FROM PETE: Joe and I have decided to post new voting incentives every day this week. Some of it will be Joe’s, some will be never before seen fan art, Brinson has said she’ll toss us one once in a while and, who knows, maybe even I’ll draw one every now and then. Vote daily this week if you want to see them all.

Super early update today! I wanted to avoid all the issues I had with uploading at work last week. >.>b

So here we have it! Hollywoodartchick’s first page! (With toning courtesy of Joe!) One of the big things we were shooting for was the transition to be as seamless as possible, and I think HAC has hit all the right notes here. :D Thanks for sticking around last week while we worked out the kinks — things should be back to normal, now.

Joe: I took the news that Brinson would no longer be drawing Evil Diva very hard. Working with her has been a joy and she will never be truly replaced, only succeeded. However, on the subject of succeeding, please welcome HollywoodArtChick (Holly) whose first page has surpassed our wildest expectations.

Pete: Jeez, it’s quiet in my office. Everybody phones in their order now. Sigh.

NEW INCENTIVE FOR WEDNESDAY! Today’s incentive was, again, provided by Cassandra W., one of our most talented fans.

Well hello hello! As you can see from the above image, the next page is under construction — as much as to be expected, really, as Pete/Joe/Hollywoodartchick are all working hard to make the transition as seamless as possible. ^^ I’m pretty sure they’re shooting to get back on track with page twenty-seven on Tuesday, which will be awesome!

I’ll be posting the new incentive (Hollywoodartchick’s first pass at Diva when she initially contacted us, always cool to see) when I get home, probably evening PST. I’ve been having some trouble connecting to the server here at work, so even though I have the file, I can’t upload it. D’oh!

… Aaand here it is! Our new artist’s first go on Diva. She’s quite good with expressions. :D

THURSDAY EDIT 1:15 PST: Looks like today’s update will be a bit late, too. Joe’s still working on the toning, and I’m having trouble on my end getting the new incentive to upload to the server. I may end up doing it at home. Sorry!

First of all, sorry for the late update! I actually am not drowning in work just yet, but I figured I should probably not spend my second day at my new job working on an update. Once I’m settled in? Maaaaybe. ;) (Oh, who am I kidding? This is but a reprieve before the proper pwnage begins.)

I am really, REALLY sorry for not answering more comments this weekend. I think I spent half of my waking hours folded up in the backseat of my Mini, and the other half shopping like a madwoman for my sister’s wedding and my new apartment. Inbetween all that I managed to eat some pretty yummy meals and spend some quality time with my family, but it didn’t leave much time for interneting. Sorry!

May I reiterate my thank you though from my last post? Because THANK YOU. Seriously, you guys, this was a hard decision to make, and thank you all for making this transition a little easier on my conscience. I’m really glad Pete is letting me stay on so I can continue to interact with y’all. ♥

That said, our new artist is ready to roll! I’m not sure if she’ll be ready to post on Thursday — we may end up pushing the next update to Friday, or postponing til Tuesday — but Pete has delivered all the materials to her so we should be seeing her pages soon. I’m pretty psyched! Here’s a little intro:

Hollywoodartchick grew up in Central Illinois, graduated with a BFA in Art History and Political Science from the University of IL, and subsequently attended the MFA program at UCLA School of Film and Television’s Animation Workshop. She has worked as an animation artist at The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Rugrats, Dragon Tales, Mission Hill, The Oblongs, Dilbert, and an assortment of animated projects for CD-Rom, Mobile, and Online. Her hopes for her contributions to Evil Diva center around continuing the strong story-telling aspect of the designs and layouts.

This is my last page, but I feel like I’m leaving Diva in good hands.

Today’s incentive is the last of the turnarounds, this time the Bartleby siblings. It was nice to draw Angela in her regular clothes one last time. ^^

TUESDAY EDIT: TODAY’S UPDATE MAY BE PUSHED BACK AS LATE AS NIGHT PST. SORRY, NEW JOB AND ALL THAT.

First of all, thank you guys so much for being SO understanding about my departure. I haven’t been able to reply at all yet, but I am planning to respond to as many comments as I can in the next few days — on top of all the job-related craziness, my mother is visiting from Florida and we’re working out plans for my sister’s wedding, so these last couple of days have been a blur. ^^;;

Pete and I have found a new artist to take the reigns for pencils, and I hope we’ll be able to introduce her to y’all on Monday Tuesday. (HAI will stay on for inks and flats, which is awesome, because we love HAI.) I’ve also thumbnailed out the rest of the issue for her, so I can finally give y’all a solid idea of how much remains — we still have a good twenty or so pages to go, so there’s plenty of excitement to come.

Hope you guys have a great weekend! And thank you again for all your support and kind words.

Today’s incentive is another set of turnarounds, this time for Michelle and Virgil.