It's been a long time since I've updated. It's been a busy couple of months, between work, school, and various video games.

Hurricane Simeon's probably not starting anytime real soon. No one ever accused me of NOT-flakiness.

Meanwhile I'm working on something else that shouldn't take as much of my free time or be as draining. Still some graphical work but not the all-consuming work that keeping to a schedule on a comic would take.

I'm going to try to work on a short, small video game (potentially episodic but for right now it's just a single standalone concept) tentatively called Henshin! I'll only work on it about an hour a day, so it shouldn't take up too much of my time to make it....who knows how long it'll take, but since it's a fairly small project, hopefully it won't take as long as, for example, Taret Blade has.

Henshin! is an affectionate parody of the magical girl genre and anime conventions in general--hopefully it'll end up being like a shojo Gurren Lagann.

It's giving me a chance to resurrect the trio of Kaori, Shiori and Midori, though their roles and backstories will be changed to something less dumb than it was before.

So that's the status dealie at the moment.

Today I'm adding my favorites among the drawings I've done in my figure drawing class over the semester. When I was talking about my upcoming critique, a friend said he wanted to see the pictures, so I figured "why not?" Anyway, these things are way too big for my tiny scanner, so I've had to use a digital camera....you'll have to forgive the crummy lighting and resolution. I did not post directly here, because this blog is mostly used for my illustration/cartoon-y drawings, plus I'm not one hundred percent sure what Dreamhost's ToS says about artistic nudes. So instead I've got links for anyone who cares to see them. Except for the picture of Tiffany, a girl from class that I'm told is the best of the drawings I've done, all of them are nudes. So fair warning--if you don't want to see naughty bits, don't click the other links. None of them is a very naughty drawing, though.

• Drawing Class - Twisty
• Drawing Class - Resting
• Drawing Class - Pouty
• Drawing Class - Tiffany
• Drawing Class - Curled Over
• Drawing Class - Kanji Tattoo
• Drawing Class - Pensive
• Drawing Class - Thinker Pose
• Drawing Class - Finished Yet?

Okay, Ballad progress has hit a major snag.

I've had trouble finishing a particular scene in the script, and after reading through the archives of Jane Espenson's excellent blog about writing....which while aimed specifically at television, applies to a lot of different media.

Anyway, I've decided that I basically have to throw out most of what I've got now and start over from the beginning. The fact of the matter is, I wasn't sufficiently prepared before starting this thing, so this was probably inevitable. Now from my perspective, this isn't a postponement (since my workload isn't really going to change), but to anyone who would be reading it (all three of you who read my blog!), it'll probably be at least late February before the first issue is up.

And that's the state of Ballad. There are a few other things that have been on my mind lately relating to my creative projects, and I'll run through them really quickly now. Very few of you will care about the following bits, so I don't recommend reading unless you really care about my projects.

 

Firstly, I'm thinking of scrapping my veteren setting for stories, New Haven, in favor of the Kaguya setting I've used in my last few projects. At this point, there's really only one story still set on New Haven, and it could easily be adapted to Kaguya. New Haven has been my go-to setting since middle school, but the problem is that in a lot of ways, it shows. Taken as a whole, it looks like something a teenaged fan of fantasy would've come up with. Kaguya, at least, feels more like something a twenty-something would've come up with, and hopefully it's slightly more....actualized. This would not affect the Annwyn, alternate Earth, or Quantum Web settings.

I'm thinking of modernizing the Kaguya setting, at least a bit. "Vaguely medieval" fantasy is....I won't say that it's tapped out, but it is heavily saturated. Urban Fantasy is at least a little less so.

I've been thinking a bit about Taret Blade's story lately, and the nature of the Teyah. They're evolving into something between gypsies, Irish Travellers, and American colonial-period Native American cultures. I think I'm going to explore that path a little more. I introduced the Teyah as a subgroup of masterful craftsmen and users of rune magic, and that will continue to be one of their defining traits, though they will no longer be genetically gifted at it so much as practicing traditions that lend themselves well to the life of an artisan.

I'm afraid this blog post sounds way too wordy, maybe even more than I usually do. Sorry for that. Anyway, brain dumped: SAVE AND COMPILE.

Apparently the validation image for comments has been wonking out lately because I forgot to change the base directory when I implemented the new layout. D'oh. Should be working now. Good thing Ashley told me about it or I wouldn't have noticed it.

I don't make New Years resolutions, unless you count "stay the course." I'm already pretty great, so why would I want to change myself? Okay, really it's just because they're silly, but whatever.

But the New Year is a time of change, after all, and new beginnings. So I'm announcing the beginning of a new project. I'm starting to work on a comic again. This time around, it's going to be Ballad, which is more of a dramatic adventure story than a comedy. Which is not to say that I intend to make it heavy and dreary and lacking in humor, just that humor's not going to be the focus. Like an Aaron Sorkin thing, although I can't lay claim to writing talent like that.

So anyway, I'll be releasing batches of pages at a time. I haven't finalized my schedule yet (I need to figure out how long it takes me to finish a chapter first), but I'm shooting for monthly updates of something comparable to a chapter of serialized manga. Probably between 20 and 40 pages, give or take.

Hopefully this will fare better than my last one. I'll probably be updating the site's layout soon, if only the front page, to easily highlight the comic, but hopefully still have my sketchbook/blog on the front page.

As of right now, I have written the script for about five of the pages, which means the script is about 1/5th done. I've got a treatment up and know where the story's going, it's just a matter of writing things down and figuring out how to tell the story visually (since comic book scripts include descriptions of the action as well as the number of panels in each page) in a fair amount of detail. I might be done with the script for Chapter 1 tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday. I might start working on drawings before I finish the script, though.

Come to think of it, maybe I should have some sort of progress indicator on the front page, too. Though those things are pretty unreliable.

So lately I've been thinking that when I draw my own characters, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's wrong with their hair or their faces or their clothing....when I still haven't even mastered some of the basics of drawing, like arranging poses, showing depth, or making dynamic images....or even working at a decent speed. So I'm thinking maybe I should make an effort to do some drawings of characters that already have defined models to keep these issues from the forefront of my mind.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm thinking of trying to do a lot more fanart in the future. But I'm not used to doing fanart really, so I'm having trouble thinking of the sorts of things to do. So if any of you have any suggestions, please either leave them in the comments here, or else contact me in your usual way.

I'm going to run out of Wind-related song titles before long.

Hurricane Simeon Progress Report

I made a little progress today in terms of fixing quite a few bugs. Unfortunately I've made myself a bunch more. Oh well. On the bright side, I've made some sprite-related progress.

So a bit of progress, then. The engine's really beginning to take shape, so my mood is good at any rate.

I've been playing around in a newly acquired copy of Corel Painter, and I might put up some new Simeon concept art tonight. But maybe not. Whatever.

Another Hurricane Simeon Progress Report!!!

Today I have fixed both jumping and slopes to where they're working about how I want them to, in terms of positioning and all. Animation still isn't done, and there's still some balancing that needs to be done in terms of how fast the jump goes and sprite offsets and things, but it's shaping up quite nicely.

I also implemented a neato Debugging Console. I've added the script to the RMXP section of my site.

My next step, after the fine tuning, will be to start trying to finish up the Simeon sprite, and then I've got to start making attacks work. Then comes enemies and NPCs. -_- Ughh. That part's going to be tough. But I must succeed!

Today we at Shiningbeam bring you the first ever Hurricane Simeon Progress Report. Hopefully this'll become a regular fixture of the site (and eventually, Taret Blade progress reports as well)....we'll see. After all, you've all seen my previous success with ongoing projects

So here goes: I've gotten slopes for the platforming engine working fairly well now. Simeon walks up slopes and goes down slopes and for the first time ever, doesn't fall through the floor for no reason! So things are really shaping up. Now I've got to get jumping working, which ought not to be that difficult....though for some reason or another, I can't get the "launch" animation to trigger correctly. Maybe later this week.

And of course you saw (or I hope you saw....no one commented on it, so I'm not sure) my new designs for Maria and Alyson. I didn't hear a response, so I'm not sure whether or not I should base my sprites on those drawings yet. Oh well.

Okay, I suppose at this point I may as well admit to myself that Wanderlust isn't working at the moment. So it's on indefinite hiatus, though I suppose that should've been obvious. I'll leave up the archive and maybe pick it back up again at some point in the future....just not right now.

In other news, everyone needs to remember that Tuesday is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Mark your calenders.

Sorry. We'll just count this as the "Took a Week Off For the First Week of School" week, and the next episode will run on Labor Day. Probably.

I've just sent in the first of my designs for the FLCL T-shirt contest I mentioned earlier. It's a really simple one. I'd post it, but I'm going to wait for a reply from Synch-Point on whether or not I'm allowed to. So I might post it in a bit, if they're cool with it.

Sorry I missed the last two Wanderlust updates. I flaked out on Sunday, though I actually got two good hours of work in on Tuesday....just enough to finish half of Wednesday's comic. I'm getting into bad habits, I know. I'm considering various ideas for speeding up my production / tuning up my work ethic, but we'll see how well those work out, huh? Anyway, the comic should go up tomorrow, as I've already got half of it done, so should only need two hours today.

I was checking my old entries and realized I had not explicitly stated the update schedule of Wanderlust.

Presently, it's going to be Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays....though until I set up a "delay" script in PHP, that means that the strips will be posted late the day before....so it's more like Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. This is by way of saying I'll work on them Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. This is a temporary schedule, and we'll see how school (and any jobs I might find) affect the schedule.

I was just checking in to let you know that I didn't miss any updates yet....though I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

Okay, so at the moment here are my plans regarding the site:

As for the sporadic sketchbook updates, I'm thinking of entering this FLCL T-Shirt Design Contest, and so there's a chance I'll be uploading some sketches for that soon.

School starts back on Monday. I'm free on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and most of Friday for the time being. It's possible I'll have to change that during drop/add, though.

That's about it for now. Look for an update to Wanderlust tomorrow.

Okay, and with that Wanderlust has begun. I decided against screentones in the end. Resizing them was a real bugger, and keeping track of which Screentone applied to which material/object/whatever was also annoying. And in the end I wouldn't have been saving much time over coloring the comics. So I'm going to be running it as lineart for now, maybe with color episodes once a week, or on special occasions, depending.

I know I just posted today's drawing, but I realized I forgot to mention anything about Wanderlust, even though there's been some developments in that area.

I've come up with a couple of scripts that I like, and I'm pretty happy with the current design of Prynn. I've also done a design of Alex in my Moleskeine which I'm not quite as happy with. But the scripts are coming together.

I still need to figure out a drawing style to use. That is to say, whether or not to color, use screentones, "ink" virtually, or just sort of shade with pencil like Megatokyo does. I also need to figure out a schedule, though it's possible I could just work out the schedule as I make the episodes....and figure out what kind of schedule I can handle by doing.

At any rate, if anyone actually reads this blog, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Use the comment space if you want to respond, or contact me through whatever means you usually do.

I've been messing with the site's back end and stylesheets a bit. Combined a few pages (the "Sketchbook," "Blog," and "Reviews" categories can all be reached in the "Archive" page now), I've added an RPG Maker XP section (which is just a script viewer for now, but will eventually track my progress on Simeon and Taret Blade, as well as offer downloads of said projects when they're done), and just generally screwed the whole thing out of whack.

My spam blacklist isn't working out too well, though, it seems. I think I'm going to end up having to switch to one of those noisy-image "type the word" thingies. -_- It's more trouble for anyone leaving a comment, though, so I'm wary of doing that just yet.

All right, that's it for tonight. I'm going to bed. Hopefully I'll have a new picture at some point in the future.

I've updated my comments engine so that it should be working again, and implemented Wikimedia's Spam Blacklist into the code. So now it should only throw out your comment if you reference one of the domains listed in said blacklist, and it'll warn you if you've done so.

That's all for now. I might try to get up a drawing tonight, I dunno.

Though I haven't added any new entries in a while, I've actually been working on the site. I've been building up a nice Ruby on Rails backbone to the blog architecture here. That really doesn't do anything for you, but it means a lot to me.

It's coming around pretty well, albeit slowly. I'm making this post from within my Ruby framework, actually, so that's nice.

As for the sketchbook, rest assured I am working on it. I've got an idea for a composition, actually, and have done some preliminary sketches in my moleskine. I'll see about having something of it up before the end of tomorrow.

Style Week begins this week! Style Week is a week-long(obviously) celebration wherein young artists or art students play with different styles than they normally do, assuming they stick to a single style primarily. It's designed to foster experimentation and help one to improve one's skills.

Style Week is an official national holiday that I just made up a few minutes ago, and as such, should be taken very seriously by everyone.