07/27: On Costumes
I blame a missed Thursday update and a late Monday update completely on League of Legends. Not as a simple, addictive game that encourages skirting duties, but as a malevolent, machiavellian construct that exists solely to dissuade me from performing my sworn duties.
Besides that, I've just been working, drawing, and keeping up with MS Paint Adventures.
I'll post something more when I have something of material to say.
07/19: Phobias
A return of the hidden frame. I will try to hold myself back from overusing it.
The creature pictured was actually made for the characters I play in Imperium Nova. You can see more about the exhaustively detailed biology and culture on it's wiki page.
If you don't want to fritter away you're time on pointless things, then this isn't the blog for you. But if reading made up alien cultures isn't for you, then you can always check out a new comic discovery: The Toilet Genie. It's a decidedly less disgusting and infinitely more beautiful comic than it's moniker would otherwise suggest, and the archive is fairly short if you prefer comics that you can keep up with, and not have to worry about days long archive binges. FYI it's about a dog that's turned into a human, so if you can't stand that idea, it's probably not going to win you over.
07/15: Tolerance
I've been roped into League of Legends recently, the game that developed out of the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients. The game is completely free to play - they make all of their money from premium content that only allows players unlock a specific character all the time, rather than be limited to the pool of the week, as well as bonus content like character skins. The game was addicting before they made it ten times better.
07/12: Running Late
Between actively participating in several Roleplaying Games, what's become an unhealthy addiction to Advance Wars, and trying to work on concepts for a graphic novel, I haven't had time to read any new comics. I've barely found time to catch up on any of the couple hundred that I have already.
I think someone stole my laptop from the back of my car while I was still learning about my automatic locks. It was free, but it was still a laptop. Now if I'm doing a roleplay on IRC and I have to go to the bathroom I have to take a break. It's a real drag.
I'm thinking of looking into some tablet PC's. I don't really want a laptop gaming rig. It would be nice to be able to draw form a laptop but I honestly can't afford a second main computer. So that leaves just using it for internet browsing and PDF reading, so a tablet is the way to go. I doubt that I'll be getting an IPad because I simple am too cheap to buy an overpriced feature whore of a machine.
07/10
Here you are, a colored Revenant Seal instead of two Out of Contexts.
Not much else to say. Not feeling too well after donating a triple unit of platelettes this morning on 6 hours of sleep.
07/02: Out of Context Adventures
I finally caught back up to MSPA, after literally an entire day of reading - split over 2 days so I could fit some work and sleep in there. The increasingly outrageous scope of MSPA continues to astound me.
I doubt you'd like to hear what I thought of Mad Max after seeing it for the first time, or hear news about how the ordeal involved in getting my car's passenger side mirror progress, so I'll leave you with a short post.
06/29: Odd One Out
Spent most of today working on The Revenant Seal, but was not even close to finishing coloring as the deadline for the comic approached. On the bright side, it gave me enough practice using the Pencil tool instead of the Brush tool in photoshop that when I went to do this comic I could color it in with just the Paintbucket tool, making the production time on this strip tiny (I already had the script done).
It feels lazy doing this art style, but I think these chibi comics are better than my normal ones. At least if I have less time to do them.
06/25
Depending on your perspective it was either good or bad that I wasn't in the mood for another OOC today and decided to start work on another The Revenant Seal strip. They are quite a bit longer, and I usually put alot more work into the color, so you just get lineart today. Come monday, I'll either have this one colored or I'll get a new journal comic up.
Spent today trying to catch up on the latest MSPaint Adventures. I am continually surprised at how well the artist manages to tie the story up considering it's audience driven.
06/21: Godwin's Law
I bought a new car. Well a 'new' car. My old one was an 07 Toyota Corolla. I bought it with 24k miles on it - it had just shy of 50k when it was wrecked during the trip.
I wanted another corolla, so I went shopping - it came down to an 09 Corolla with 35k miles for 12,700 or an 06 with 84k miles for 10,000. I opted for the 06 because I wound up bargaining the guy down several thousand dollars. I only realized after the fact that I had bargained him down from an outrageous price to a reasonable price. I probably should have gone for the 09. It's not a huge deal, since it was an S model, so it's nice and sporty looking and has most of the features that the 09 does - but I'll probably wind up paying alot more maintenance in the next few years, and the warrant isn't going to last nearly as long.
It still runs and looks great though, so I'm still happy with it. We'll see if I'm still happy next year when the transmission explodes or something.
Where did I find Shrub Monkeys? It was in the same recommended webcomic list that I found Para-10 and Happle Tea. Ah well. It's another journal webcomic, this one illustrated significantly better than my own (not that it's saying much). It's pretty hit and miss at the beginning, but it's really polished now. Other than that, there's not much to say.
I do like finding webcomics by women. See, while I love the idea of equality of the sexes, logically I'm constantly reevaluating whether something that I want to be true actually is true. I mean, there have been multiple studies talking about how certain sexes excel at this, certain sexes excel at that... one at logic, the other at multitasking. There is no end of comedians who love talking about how manipulative and double speaking women are while men are all simple-minded bear drinkers who love football. When I find a webcomic like Shrub Monkeys or Dar or Awkward Zombie, it reinforces my beliefs that women don't fit easily into stereotypes, sometimes even actively dislike them, and can be just as quirkey and weird as I am.
/rant
06/18: Product Placement
It's late. Wasted the afternoon watching the Laker game (lost 2 bucks on a betting pool) and then watching old episodes of Burn Notice. I do not guarantee the quality of the above comic.
06/14: Addendum
Still wrangling with my insurance company over my car. They think it's a total loss, which is actually good. Were they to try to repair it, I would be paying 30% of the cost, in addition to my deductible because of some stupid policy they have about preferred body shops and since my car is still in Texas. FYI, if you have Anchor General for a car insurance company, leave. Quickly.
Been awhile since I've done some webcomic news. I found Para-10 off of a random list of webcomics from another webcomic (which was more mediocre). I'm a sucker for experimental art styles and nature walks (it reminds me a bit of my Gray Matters comics, in fact) so I fell in love with it. When I found out that it was actually a reboot of an older strip, I fell in love with that one too. Para-10 follows Pavaline after she's separated from her brother during a storm. We find out about all the supernatural aspects of her world as she does. There are aspects of both strips that I like better than the other, but both are worth checking out.
06:11: A Tale of Two Cons
I trust this monster update makes up for the lack of updates for the past couple of weeks. I'm rushing to finish this up, I'll have a better update come monday.
05/27: Hijinks Elude
I am linked to many things on many occasions - and when someone links me a website that is full of nothing but large swaths of text, there's never really an incentive for me to set aside a large amount of time to check it out. This is still the case for Clarke's World, a sci-fi story web-azine (is that a word?) that sits on my bookmarks tab, unclicked, with only webcomics about fantasy battles and pornographic robots to accompany it. I haven't checked out the pornographic robot comic yet, so I can't vouch for it's quality. Don't judge me for having it in my bookmarks when you can more easily judge me by pornographic comics that I have actually read and really like.
I seem to have lost track of things there. My point was, long ago I was linked to a wiki for the SCP Foundation. Confronted with a giant wall of text in the midst of a social gathering of actual people, I was disinclined to check it out. When linked again, months later, from a friend in IRC I was in a more receptive mood for large blocks of text (seeing as how I was in the middle of communicating in a text only medium with several dozen people). I was immediately drawn in by an elaborate, detailed archive of an organizations experience with a vending machine that dispenses a large variety of different liquids, be they coffee, liquified bread, or distilled medical knowledge. Unfortunately, this fairly long and intriguing article was actually only a minor, comical part of a much larger mythos. A mythos that has stolen perhaps 15 hours from me in two days. A mythos which I have taken perhaps a large bit of, but, like an iceberg, remains 99% uneaten.
In some part of the world, that metaphor makes sense.
05/25: Bobby and Ozzie
Awhile back, I watched an anime called Bokurano, billed as a giant-robot-anime deconstruction. I was warned ahead of time that the anime was an afront to the manga that it was based on, but I heeded not these warnings. By the end, I felt it was an interesting series, with an interesting concept that more or less was paced too slowly and had a poor, thoughtless ending. I recently started reading the manga though, and I am amazed at how different they are - entire characters are unrecognizeable between the two mediums, and I realize just how little of the manga translated to the screen.
05/21: On Mary Sues
Both of these characters (Aurora by me, and Grimfist by someone else) are in a message board game I'm playing in where every character is a Mary Sue. One of the difficulties in writing in a single continuity where there are multiple sues is that many of the defining traits of the Mary Sue - namely their ability to bend other character's opinions, or the entire world and plot, in their favor can't apply. You start using things like unexplainable superpowers, unnecessarily tragic backstories without consequences, and gratuitously beautiful/badass looks.
Well, it's late, and I have more Advanced Wars to play.
05/17: Improv Comics
Happle Tea is mediocre through most of it's archive, but has a few gems - particularly the latest ones. Happle Tea plays with mythology and religion of various cultures. The non-sequitive, non continuous comic follows Lil K as he talks to a handful of recurring characters and a much larger collection of mythological or historical beasts and figures. It's a pleasure to see how the art progresses, as well as the writing.
05/13: New Frontier
I have more detailed portraits of the elf and the dwarf on my Deviant Art page. If my use of a free social networking site drives you to an unquenchable rage, rest assured that I use it infrequently.
Went through my bookmarked webcomics and didn't find anything of note. Butternut Squash, while illustrated fairly adeptly, is fairly juvenile. Despite a fairly long archive, the strip has not managed to move beyond it's simple pretence of it's author avatar character not being able to get any sex. Most of the other characters are sharing this experience with protagonist. Those that aren't have comical relationships with women that don't have faces.
I actually read No Pink Ponies before, which explained why the strip was so familiar when I went back and started reading it again from my bookmarks. It's made by the artist of Marry Me, which remains a very solid graphic novel (that can be read in it's entirety online for free). NPP is quite a bit more squishy. The main character Jess is a female geek who has a crush on a comic book staffer. Her character does not get more complicated than this. Around Jess are a plethora of two dimensional characters. It hasn't updated since 2008 so I guess it doesn't matter either way.
While I was complaining of mediocrity, someone linked me Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. It has very few comics, since it started just this past february and only updates about twice a month, but it is fantastic. One of the few cases of a Video Game comic that isn't just a PA clone.
05/11: Imma Tired
I've been getting headaches fairly often now. They get better if I take my glasses off. I've been suggested that I have my prescription checked, but I'd say it's more likely that I just haven't been getting enough sleep.
Supernormal Step is a fun comic. It's not particularly funny, so it makes up for it for having very solid art, characters, story and world. It's something I should probably look into doing (*cough* The Revenant Seal *cough*) instead of working on a mediocre journal comic. Maybe when I'm confident that I can keep up a schedule on a more ambitious project I'll start updating it again.
Oh, I'm falling off topic. Supernormal Step follows Fiona, a woman who was dropped into a parallel dimension where geography and history are similar to her own native earth, but everything else - including technology, magic, and the presence of strange magical creatuers - is different. In a world where there are no guns, but relatively nonlethal magic is abundant, superheroes are common. The 'super heroes are common' angle reminds me of a tamer Plan B, but manages it's own feel.
I could go on, but, as mentioned earlier, lack of sleep. See you thursday.