Max Riffner

The Parlor

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The State of the Pinups

Well, well, well – I managed to keep the Pinups section going for a year now. Before I get started on March’s pinup, I wanted to review a few things.

Since I have been tracking downloads, Miss November has been the clear winner – a staggering 473 downloads. For contrast, Miss December had 402 downloads and Miss October had 461 downloads. Now, the interesting thing about those numbers is the ongoing download trend. October and November have both been slowly adding to their count for awhile now. I expect December to do the same for another month, topping out somewhere near 500 like the other two. January appears to be following the trend also, ending its month at 208 downloads thus far. So after three months, the downloads slow down to the 500 cap level, but are consistently downloaded about 200 times a month for the first two months.

By far the most downloaded size is 800×600. Either there are a lot of people still on crappy monitors, or that’s the first link they see and click on it immediately.

Ironically, these tremendous download numbers have not translated into sales for the calendar. That’s been a bit disappointing, and I’d like to hear why that is from people, if possible. Is it the idea of a calendar? Would a book be better? Or would single prints be more up your alley? Here’s a chance to make your voice heard! I keep hearing from people that they’d like to buy something, but the one thing I’ve made is apparently not it.

Onto the artistic side, Miss November may have edged out Miss May as my personal favorite. Miss May was certainly more of a stretch for me artistically, but there is something about Miss November that trips my trigger. The most regrettable pinup is Miss October ; my ultimate goal is for people to display these on their desktops, even at their workplace (depending on your work environment, obviously). Miss October crossed a comfort line though in that respect, going for obvious sexuality than a more subtle or clever form. The most telling comment was from a friend who told me he bought the calendar but didn’t want to bring it to work because he would feel uncomfortable with Miss October in his super creative, but mostly female, workplace. Yikes!

Besides that challenge, another artistic benefit is that I feel very comfortable drawing women now. I hadn’t felt very comforatble drawing women on the fly; they would kind of end up “man-ish” if I was in a hurry. Additionally, setting time to complete a finished illustration was very rewarding as a sense of accomplishment and for keeping my skill sharp.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the experiment! Looking back on the decision to do this last year, I have to say it has been worth it, and I’m going to continue it for another year.

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