WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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5 comments
Thank you all for following Pepper&Carrot in this end of year 2016!
**Happy holidays **to all readers, contributors, translators and supporters of Pepper&Carrot!
[sources available here](https://www.peppercarrot.com/0_sources/0ther/artworks/zip/2016-12-18_holidays_by-David-Revoy.zip "sources available here" )
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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7 comments
I wrote a new page on Pepper&Carrot "sources" website to manage all the wallpaper I made.
**[[ Link here: Bonus -> Wallpapers ]](https://www.peppercarrot.com/xx/wallpapers/index.html "Bonus -> Wallpapers" )
**
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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166 comments
A direct consequence of my attending [Capitol du Libre 2016](article589/capitole-du-libre-2016-photos) was to redo Pepper&carrot and davidrevoy.com website over the last weeks. I wanted to solve something important: remove all the CDN libraries I was using. It took me long to accept the challenge. It was like cleaning the [Augean Stables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules#Fifth_Labour:_Augean_Stables) and of course it was longer and harder than I expected because I'm no Hercules... This work was full of challenges and contraints but also creativity and happy accidents. Here are my notes about it.
## What's a CDN library and why don't I want one anymore?
A CDN ( acronym for Content Delivery Network ) library is often a single line of code offered "generously" by an external service to let you link and embed a complex features, the easy way. A common example is [Google Web Fonts](https://fonts.google.com/):
Paste this line in the header of your website and 'tadaaa!', you can use the font 'Lobster' to decorate all your texts. Easy, quick, efficient and fast to load. Merci Google. So, what's the problem?
Well a big one: **Privacy** of the readers of Pepper&Carrot. In our example, users of Google Web Fonts are bound by Google's privacy policy. It allows Google to collect a large amount of data about readers: log data (e.g. browser version), location data (the IP address of your site's visitors) and more because they can track your path or history through all the websites that are also using their CDN.
... And I didn't have a CDN only for Google Web Font. I also had a CDN for Addthis (easy social-network buttons), Gravatar (easy avatars), Font-awesome (easy icons), etc... As many, many websites around!
Even if those services are not evil; use of their CDN allows them to **inject code in my webpages** and do data farming. "Data is the new oil," and all those companies thrive by gathering the most information to create virtual doubles of you and me. You can watch the conference [The Matrix, Inverted](https://vimeo.com/190855745) by Aral Balkan for more info about what this farming of data can do. For sure, they are succeeding... but only one deep thought comes to my heart: I'll not contribute to THAT. **So, let's fight!**
## First Fight: Replacing Gravatar
[Gravatar](https://en.gravatar.com/) is a well known service to provide good looking and custom avatar pictures, used by a majority of blogs out there, but if you research it, it's also possibly [one of the worst CDNs](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/44717/is-gravatar-a-privacy-risk). But how to build a solid alternative to it? In my research, I have found the open [MonsterID code](https://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2007-01/20_monsterid_as_gravatar_fallback) from Andreas Gohr. Generating pictures was a cool idea, and I quickly started my own generator. The [CAT AVATAR GENERATOR](https://www.peppercarrot.com/extras/html/2016_cat-generator/index.php?seed= "CAT AVATAR GENERATOR" ) project was born.
The main challenge with the generator was to generate only pleasant results so everyone can be happy about the resulting cat assigned to their name. I had to remove many shapes after a [first test](https://twitter.com/davidrevoy/status/803215313634525188). Some of the generated cats had vicious eyes, angry mouth, or also chicken meat in their mouth (offensive for a vegan, I guess).
Now, the code is running for all the comments of the website. Leave a comment to test it. If you want to fork the code or **download the source** *.ora files, I distribute [the sources here](https://www.peppercarrot.com/extras/html/2016_cat-generator/2016_cat-generator.zip) as Creative Commons Attribution license. [[update] Git source code is available](https://framagit.org/Deevad/cat-avatar-generator/tree/master "Git source code is available" )
## Second Fight: Replacing Google Web Font
No need to present this service further after the little paragraph I wrote about it in the introduction. I used [Google Web Fonts](https://fonts.google.com/) because my website needed to **support a big amount of languages**: _Bahasa Indonesia, Brezhoneg, Català, Čeština, Deutsch, English, Español, Français, Italiano, Magyar, Norsk, Nederlands, Polski, Português, Pусский, Ślōnskŏ gŏdka, Tiếng Việt and 日本語_ ... The fonts able to do it all are rare and I had to load a custom CSS theme sheet per language (imagine my pain having to maintain that). So I loaded a single Google Web Font per language to get specific accent support.
For the alternative, I wanted to unify all my CSS sheets into one and use a single font, and a single style sheet. But few fonts with support for all languages are available... And fewer still with a comic style. And close to none if searching for free and open ones. But not zero, two fonts were a good start: [Comic Relief](https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/comic-relief) by Jeff Davis, and [Patrick Hands](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Patrick+Hand) by Patrick Wagesreiter. The first one had support for Latin and Cyrillic and a good font structure, the second one had Latin and Latin extended to many variants including the complex Vietnamese alphabet. **I started my own fork** of Comic Relief named **ComicSpice**.
Then I started to tweak it: I wanted my font more condensed, looking less like a derivation of ComicSansMS, with all the accents and variation of Patrick Hands, low gravity for the middle bar in E, F, A, H, etc...
Thanks to [Font-Forge](https://fontforge.github.io/en-US/) and a big amount of time and sleepless nights, I managed to build ComicSpice like I wanted. It now supports many glyphs, and it's lightweight enough as a webfont. You can download ComicSpice on the [peppercarrot_fonts zip folder](https://www.peppercarrot.com/0_sources/0ther/tools/zip/).
## Final Fight: Replacing Font-awesome and Addthis
Font-awesome offers a CDN to provide a special web-font: one with many icons easy to insert. I really liked building websites with it and the project is open-source friendly. But the CDN is owned by Bootstrap/Twitter, and abusing a font to show pictures is not really semantically correct with regards to the web. Loading all of the 675 fonts-icon was frankly **overkill for my needs** of less than 40 icons.
I started to trace the icons with Inkscape SVG for the web, reusing classic symbol and easy derivative aspect from the Font-awesome icons. While I was doing this refactoring, I decided to handle the social-network icons myself and get rid of another bad CDN, [Addthis](http://www.addthis.com/), providing buttons that track, spy and analyze the content you share. I wonder how this thing got to run on 15 Millions websites... Well, never underestimate the human laziness. **Doing the 'networks' icons was long**, boring and retrieving the link and the correct way to post with their API was also painful. But it's now hard to beat my folder of 42 SVG icons for only 44KB of data!
## Conclusion: I'm free!
Now Pepper&Carrot readers are free to spend time on the website and touch all the buttons without being tracked by third party services. You can even deactivate JavaScript to browsing it; I don't use this either. So, I'm free? **Yes, no CDN libraries around on peppercarrot.com**! It's a clean website now. For sure, I'm not a developer and when I do this type of work, I do it by necessity because I prefer to draw. But I'm deeply worried about the changes into the politics of the web at the worldwide scale. Who will own our future data?... I feel it's urgent to act, to clean even if only 'in front of our door', **to do something**.
Yes, but... investing a big week into this had a big downside, the impossibility to finish episode 20 for the end of November, and so, no Pepper&Carrot money for me (I earn money only 'per finished and posted episode', not monthly). That was of course a deliberate choice, and I made a bit of Freelance artworks to not damage my bank account too much be able to produce this work, but **If you want to support my decisions** and way of doing things; [every small coin is welcome](https://www.patreon.com/davidrevoy) to help me reach my monthly budget production goal for Pepper&Carrot. Thanks to all of you who support the project!
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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3 comments
Hey, here a quick blog post with photos I grabbed [on social-network](https://twitter.com/search?f=images&vertical=default&q=%23cdl2016&src=typd "on social-network" ) about the event Capitole du Libre ( it was last week-end ). It was a big event and a busy day...To busy to take photos. I wish I had more photos; If you have interesting ones; send them to me :-)
All the tee-shirts in the shop and for the staff had [the illustration](https://www.peppercarrot.com/0_sources/0ther/misc/hi-res/2016-10-21_capitol-du-libre_teeshirt_2016_by-David-Revoy.jpg "the illustration" )
I designed on it , a good surprise when I arrived!
Yes, the one with Konqi[KDE], by [Tyson Tan](http://tysontan.deviantart.com "Tyson Tan" ) , Suzanne[Blender] by SLiD3,
Tux[Linux] by Larry Ewing, and a custom GNU!
( photo: [@dascritch](https://twitter.com/dascritch/status/799929392520691712 "@dascritch" ) on Twitter )
Yes, it's a lot of tee-shirt ; Here is all the staff of Capitole du Libre. Super team!
( Photo: Adrien Anduze, on [Capitole du Libre](https://twitter.com/capitoledulibre/status/800982652748759041 "Capitole du Libre" ) Twitter account )
A part of the friendly [RGBa](http://rgba.fr/ "RGBa" ) team (an indie collective of CG artists based in Toulouse) members with the T-shirts .
( from left to right: [Julien Duroure](https://twitter.com/julienduroure "Julien Duroure" ) , [Henri Hebeisen](https://twitter.com/HenriHebeisen "Henri Hebeisen" ) , [Kevin Nguyen](https://twitter.com/CPau3D "Kevin Nguyen" ) , [Joel Bernis](https://twitter.com/bjo_31 "Joel Bernis" ) )
After the Pepper&Carrot conference, we had a meeting/open-talk about publishing.
On stage: [Bookynette](https://twitter.com/bookynette "Bookynette" ), [Yann Kervran](https://framasphere.org/people/ebda32103cfd013250b62a0000053625 "Yann Kervran" ), me, [Neil Jomunsi](http://page42.org "Neil Jomunsi" ) and [Sandra Guigonis](https://twitter.com/peuplela "Sandra Guigonis" ) .
(photo: [Framasoft](https://twitter.com/framasoft/status/800022515770855424 "Framasoft" ) on Twitter )
Our host ( on left ) for guiding the questions and giving microphone during the meeting was [Pouhiou ](https://twitter.com/Pouhiou "Pouhiou" )
After the talk, I'm meeting [Calimaq](https://scinfolex.com/2016/08/30/pepper-et-carrot-une-bande-dessinee-open-source-publiee-chez-glenat/ "Calimaq" ) ( on right, author of a "famous" Pepper&Carrot [blog post](https://scinfolex.com/2016/08/30/pepper-et-carrot-une-bande-dessinee-open-source-publiee-chez-glenat/ "blog post" )
with over 150 comments on it). It was good to meet him. I also had the visit of the friendly
[Cédric Gémy](http://www.cgemy.com/ "Cédric Gémy" ) and [Elisa de Castro Guerra](http://www.yemanjalisa.net/ "Elisa de Castro Guerra" ) ( center of picture, [FLOSS manual](https://flossmanuals.net/ "FLOSS manual" ) ).
[Neil Jomunsi](http://page42.org "Neil Jomunsi" ) tries to photo-bomb this acrobatic selfie with the [sign of the horns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_of_the_horns "sign of the horns" ).
I drew many autographs; I started at 14h30 and finished at 22h00, I almost missed my train.
I had many interesting talks during autographs.
Many thanks for all who waited ( sometime hours ) to get a drawing.
( photo : [VDagrain on Twitter](https://twitter.com/v_dagrain/status/801176288673206273 "VDagrain on Twitter" ) )
( photo : [VDagrain on Twitter](https://twitter.com/v_dagrain/status/801176288673206273 "VDagrain on Twitter" ) )
All official conferences were recorded, I'll do an update when the videos will be available!
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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7 comments
Hi, here is a remake (remake happened twice, in 2016 and in 2022) of an artwork originaly named 'Ladybug' because Carrot was holding a Ladybug on the tip of his paw. It was firstly published here in December 2015. I offered the 2015 remake for the German publisher Popcom and they used this version for their cover, but I always felt bugged by the pose/anatomy of Pepper on the artwork. So, in 2021 while making the artbook and then redesigning the website, I decided to remove the artwork from the official 'artworks' gallery.
In May 2022, I took back the file, and tried to fix it a bit to make it better...
**Previous versions:**
- [November 2016](data/images/artworks/2015-12-29_lady-bug_second-cover_by-David-Revoy.jpg)
- [December 2015](data/images/artworks/2015-12-29_ladybug_cover.jpg)
**Sources:**
Krita *.kra layered [source file here](https://www.peppercarrot.com/xx/viewer/artworks__2015-12-29_landscape-cover-for-the-website_by-David-Revoy.html "source file here" ).
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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2 comments
[Singpolyma](https://singpolyma.net/ "Singpolyma" ) creates and sells greeting cards on his website [Libremas](https://libremas.singpolyma.net/ "Libremas" ) with artworks from the commons. You'll find on his page a full collection of Pepper&Carrot cards to customize with your own text. You'll find also artworks of Nina Paley, Piti Yindee and Caminandes from the Blender Institute. Revenue above expenses goes to support the original artists; thanks for this project Singpolyma!
**Link: **
★ Sources of the illustrations in use: [Holidays 2015](https://www.peppercarrot.com/0_sources/0ther/artworks/hi-res/2015-12-24_hollidays_by-David-Revoy.jpg "Holidays 2015" ) and [Panel 1 from episode 5](https://www.peppercarrot.com/0_sources/ep05_Special-holiday-episode/hi-res/gfx-only/gfx_Pepper-and-Carrot_by-David-Revoy_E05P01.jpg "panel 1 from episode 5" )
★ Website:
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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3 comments
[Maria Vyazova](https://www.facebook.com/marie.vyazova "Maria Vyazova" ) and [Ekaterina Zubareva](https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001042301830 "Ekaterina Zubareva" ) sent me a beautiful present: photos of their amazing cosplay session of Pepper and Carrot. It was a dream on my [to-do dream list](https://www.peppercarrot.com/static7/author "to-do dream list" ) ! I'm so happy to see this photos. Thanks again Maria and Ekaterina!
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-01_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-02_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-03_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-04_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-06_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-07_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-08_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-09_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
[](data/images/cosplay/2016-11-18_peppercarrot-cosplay-10_by_maria-vyazova_and_ekaterina-zubareva.jpg "click to enlarge" )
Thanks again !
**Status of other dreams :**
☑ be supported by 500 patreons
☑ Receive a photo of a red cat named Carrot
☐ Give a talk in a Japanese comic convention about Pepper&Carrot
☐ Play with a gamepad to a Pepper&Carrot video-game
☐ Get a gallery of 100 fan-arts
☑ Get a Wikipedia page
**☑** **Receive a photo of a Pepper cosplay**
☐ Reach episode 100
If you want to watch more cosplay and cool photos, or want to ask question, visit Maria's and Ekaterina's Facebook pages:
★ Maria Vyazova: [https://www.facebook.com/marie.vyazova](https://www.facebook.com/marie.vyazova)
★ Ekaterina Zubareva: [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001042301830](https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001042301830)
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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11 comments
This cover was painted from scratch with Krita. Here is a little gallery of making-of, and work-in-progress pictures.
## Digital sketch
All started with this digital sketch done over a deformed perspective grid and composition guidelines for a vertical book cover.
## Mapping the house of Pepper
To make this shot from the interior of the house of Pepper, I also had to map her house, and make it consistent across the episodes. Episode 14 received a little update to be sure the comic would match the new map of the house.
## Process:
As you can see in the gif animation under; it was a long and incremental work of speedpainting and then detail with paint-over. But this process was probably the most flexible to keep a control on the render and ambiance of the global artwork.
## Testing variations around the theme:
The theme changed a lot during the painting. I wanted to find something funny that communicate instantly the comedy theme of Pepper&Carrot. A big thanks to C.Maloney and Valvin on [our IRC channel](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23pepper%26carrot "our IRC channel" ) for the feedbacks all along the process.
_First Joke rejected: Cayenne was asking Thyme and Cumin what happen to her broomstick. The clue was subtle the pink ribbon was in the paw of Carrot._
_Second Joke: Similar to first one, a bit more dynamic, with scissor to try to make the message more obvious... but it wasn't working._
_Joke C : the good old 'Kaboom' explosion gag. But hard to make a relation between the potion
and the explosion. Also, explosion are too aggressive for a pranks... But the final version is just a variation around this theme._
That's all. Thanks for reading this article!
You can see the final artwork [in full resolution here](article356/peppercarrot-cover-for-the-second-book).
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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12 comments
A post that list all the update of this website, but also Pepper&Carrot. I'll update this post at each important website update.
## Version 2.4
**[ November 2016 ]** General cleaning
* Blog sidebar is now better : display fan-art, last comments, etc...
* Homepage was too heavy with 20 episodes thubmnails image to load : they are now moved to a dedicated 'webcomics' new page.
* Homepage now display the latest 6 blog posts.
* New Diaspora icons on the top.
* New cover with "second cover" artwork.
* Smarphone support improved.
* New rounded font for Japanese.
## Version 2.3
**[ Jully 2016 ]** Refactoring of the fan-art and fan-fiction part of the website :
* I split both of them from the blog and refactored the 'contribute' page.
## Version 2.2
**[ June 2016 ]** Refactoring of the source page:
* Read [this article](article575/14-things-i-did-this-month "this article" ) for more informations.
## Version 2.1
**[ May 2016 ]** All the indicators ( Spam in comments, slow 'sources' page, unsupported php 5.x by the host ) were positive to force me to update the website. Now the website use the new PluXml 5.5 with Php7 on a faster host. I tried as much as I could to not change the theme. But here is what's new:
* New navigation feature (previous/next/last/first) on the top of the webcomic pages
* New link at the end for going to the 'sources' of the active episode
* New end-link for following/supporting/sharing
* Totally refactored 'sources' with many more features.
## Version 2.0
**[ May 2015 ]** Google launched a campaign pro-Mobile-Friendly, considered as a '[Mobilegeddon](http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-mobile-friendly-update "Mobilegeddon" )' by the press ( Mobile + Armageddon ). Any website non-mobile-friendly would suffer of bad ranking. I didn't wanted this handicap for Pepper&Carrot ( and for my portfolio too ). My previous website was using old HTML+CSS, and used pixel and a fixed layout for many elements. Many many commits and a total rewrite were the only solution to migrate the previous homemade theme to html5, Css3 and use a Css framework as [PluCss](http://plucss.pluxml.org/index.php "PluCss" ). On the way, I decided to not do just a portage, but enhance the website a bit. I merged the homepage with 'webcomics' for a faster access. I also changed all webcomic covers ( 7 comic x around 12 language , manual edit ) to get translated title appearing in the homepage. I also removed the tag line "The Open Webcomic by David Revoy" as I'm more and more open to call it "The Pepper&Carrot project".
Each buttons are now easier and bigger to press ( to suit it to the tablet and mobile user ). I plan to decorate the website a bit more ( custom graphism, new cover ) on the last part of 2015.
## Version 1.2
**[ Feb 2015 ]** Version 1.2 : multilingual support.
.
## Version 1.0
**[ Jan 2015 ]** Pepper&Carrot has a own dedicated website, the look was the same than the screenshot above, without the multilingual toolbar.
## Version 0.0
**[ July 2014 ]** Pepper&Carrot was a category under my portfolio, with a dedicated theming.
[Waybackmachine link](https://web.archive.org/web/20140913164921/http://www.davidrevoy.com/static3/pepper-and-carrot "Waybackmachine link" )
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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no comments
Here is a new artwork: a little scene inside Pepper's house, revealing how much Pepper like to make prank with her funny potions; even on Cayenne (on left). The Krita *.kra sources files are available (as usual), check the Sources of Pepper&Carrot website [here](https://www.peppercarrot.com/static6/sources&page=artworks "Artworks" ) to find everything. This artwork is licensed under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0" ). You'll also find an additional version: the vertical one designed for vertical book cover.
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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16 comments
This personal artwork is a bit different to my other artworks but it was a concept I had in mind since a long time: to represent "GNU/Linux" in a portrait. On left, you can see [Richard Stallman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman "Richard Stallman" ) -the funder of the GNU Project and the free software movement- and on right you can see [Linus Torvalds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds "Linus Torvald" ) -creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel-. Both portrait are overlaid with the GNU license on left, and kernel code on right. They both are my personal heroes and big inspiration. I hope one day I'll be able to meet them.
**License:** [Creative Commons Attribution](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Creative Commons Attribution" ) (CC-By)
**Software:** Krita, Inkscape and Gmic.
**Other version:** [2396x1578px landscape here](data/images/wallpapers/2016-11-14_gnu-linux_wallpaper.png "wallpaper hi resolution" ),[ 3508x4060 portrait here.](http://orig10.deviantart.net/f371/f/2016/318/2/e/gnu_linux_portrait_by_deevad-daoe7p8.png "high-resolution for print here" )**
Work in progress of the painting:**
**(**because I received often the same question about this artwork: is this a derivation of photos or a painting done from scratch? Now you have a proof it was painted from scratch. Here are the [original photos I used as references ](data/images/blog/2016/11/2017-01-23_screenshot_023140_net.jpg) on my second monitor while painting.)
