I'm Not Good at Suspense in a New Star Buster Atom!

Almost done this first episode! Very exciting. I maybe could have made this part a little more suspenseful, but uh... whatever!

Doing this comic has been pretty good for me these last few months, both in terms of getting good practice, and keeping myself in a good mood most of the time. No clue if anybody is reading (either here or on tumblr or DA or wherever), but I hope anybody that is in enjoying so far!

A LATE UPDATE IS STILL AN UPDATE IN STARBUSTER ATOM!

Super late on this one, but that's largely due to having an absolutely awful week or so. Not gonna get into the details, but it's tough feeling like everything you own is breaking down, and you can't do anything right!

ALSO! Did you notice the way Fox's mecha arm switches hands!? I sure didn't.

The Heat is On as Star Buster Atom Continues!

Another busy week, kind of, so another last minute page. Still, one a week is better than none a week, right? I happily just wrapped up a job that was pretty demanding and time sensitive, so the stress is off for a little while at least, and next week should see a normal set of pages for the update!

I also managed to do a little bit of colored art this week, so please enjoy another cool promo piece for Star Buster! I'm really having a blast working on my digital work, and I think my recent stuff has been really moving into an interesting direction.

That's it for now!

An Explosive Turn in Star Buster Atom!

I've been really busy with work related stuff over the last week, so I had to do a short one this week, but hopefully this bodes well for next week!

It's been eight weeks of updates! Of course, some of those have been longer than others, but still, I'm pretty pleased to have two months of productivity under my belt! I think I'm nearing the end of this particular storyline, so I'm fairly excited. This will be my biggest comic undertaking since Janken, which was really only eighteen pages over the course of like, a year, and barely told anything resembling a story (although that was definitely the point).

Hope everybody is enjoying the ride so far (if in fact anyone is reading this), because I'm definitely having a good time making it.

Moral Dilemmas Abound as Star Buster Atom Lurches Onward!

Another relatively short update this week. Didn't use my time very responsibly last week, and ended up having to do this more or less last minute. Still, I'm glad I took the time to really think about what I wanted to happen in this week's pages. There's very little planning at work here, other than a vague overview of the events, and I think that's actually been a good thing, as it allows me to change and adapt the events, tweak the tone and pacing etc. as I see fit. I always liked the image of David Lynch just deciding major things on the set of Twin Peaks while filming, and so I try to keep myself open as I work. I think this works out well for me.

I did a punch of warm up type sketches of various DC heroes last week, some of which turned out quite good. I wanna do maybe one or two more, and then I'll probably post them here just to add a little color!

That's it! Seeya.

Star Buster Atom Barely Continues with a Minor Update!

Okay, so I had a pretty hectic couple weeks with freelance work, personal things, and weather disasters, so I didn't get much done in terms of the comic. That said, I didn't want to post nothing this week, so this week's scene is short, kind of a little aside. I like drawing the snack shop girl. She's a cutie, plus I like the idea that random acts of kindness can mean alot more to the recipient than you could ever expect!

Also, here's a slick color illustration I did just for fun! Maybe a cool cover or at least chapter title type thing, and the first time Adam and Stella have shown up IN FULL COLOR! WHAT!?

Okay, that's it.

Explosive Action as Star Buster Atom Continues!! Yea!

Our first go at a fight scene in this series! Finally! My intention was for this comic to be a healthy mix of action, comedy, and just plain storytelling, so I hope that's what I've done so far. I'm mostly pleased with the look of these pages, which called for me to really pull out the ol' bag of shonen tricks, something I haven't really done in years, except for maybe Janken!!, so it was kind of a treat to do.

I keep saying I have other stuff ready to post, and then I don't end up having it done to a level I'm happy with. I'm NOT good at this stuff. I did finally get a copy of Rodea the Sky Soldier, which I'm having a pretty good time with.  A little rough around the edges, but the fundamental pleasure of the flight, exploration and combat shine through with some practice. I'm playing the Wii U version first, though I've heard the Wii version is much more natural. That doesn't surprise me, but I'd rather get the most out of the Wii U version before trying out the allegedly superior Wii game.

I've been tossing around the idea of doing some less visual story telling here occassionally, so I'm playing around to see if any of my terrible ideas from the past might turn out to be good terrible ideas now. Ultimately its probably best that I just focus on Star Buster Atom in terms of narrative stuff, but who knows.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have a couple pages ready for next Monday. I actually did have all the pages ready to go yesterday, but I didn't want to cheapen the spirit of the holiday by hawking my comic all over the internet.

Electricity Abounds as Star Buster Atom Continues Again!

Moving right along!  I'm alarmingly caught up on my page backlog now, so this next week might be tough! I guess we'll see if I can make it or not!

I wanna post something more substantial text wise later this week, but we'll see if I find the time.

Impending Conflict in this week's Star Buster Atom!

15 pages! Not bad considering it has been only a month or so! And that's four weeks in a row without missing an update! Go me!

I also finished working on another itty bitty thing I wanna post later this week, but I'll try to space things out. Maybe a general update on what I'm doing tomorrow or Wednesday!

Star Buster Atom Continues Against All Odds!

Here it is! The comic THEY don't WANT you to see! Just kidding! Enjoy!

Human bonding over salty consumables, surely the keystone of social order. Consider the very real fact that every week I am statistically less likely to keep posting new pages, and yet I continue. Let's see if I can make this magic happen for a whole month!

Are Mondays a good day to post this? I thought it might be nice to have something fun to read at the beginning of the work week, but maybe a mid-week pick me up would be more fun? That will be a convenient excuse when I can't make next Monday's deadline, don't you think?

STAR BUSTER ATOM Continues! Indoor Scenes Occur!

This scene is just a bit shorter than the last, but there's probably more actual text, so whatever. I'm shooting for around 3 or 4 pages per scene, but we'll see how things develop.

I'm staying pretty busy with freelance work this month, but the holidays are always a little hectic I suppose. I've also spent probably too much time playing Xenoblade X, which is an absolutely gigantic game. I have a pretty strict code about not bothering to fight anything that isn't a legit threat, so most of the side missions aren't really of interest to me, which I guess makes levelling up a little harder, but whatever. I also downloaded Metabots for GBA over the weekend, which is a surprisingly hard RPG considering its target demographic. I've never played a Medabots game before, though I always watched the show, and I'm glad its available on Virtual Console. I hope this means Natsume might consider bringing one of the many 3ds Medabots games to North America! We'll see I guess.

I'm trying to see if there is any other type of content I can post here during the week. I'd rather not do another comic, since I don't want to get distracted from Star Buster, but there has to be some other kind of weird content I can put together, narratively driven or not. I'll experiment and see what happens! Maybe some kind of weird RPG type thing... hmmm... I have an idea... actually... anyway! That's all for now!

NEW COMIC! STAR BUSTER ATOM!

I deeply regret how little I have posted here lately. While it's true that I'm spending alot of time doing freelance work to pay the bills, it was definitely my intention to increase the frequency of my posting here on Doki Doki. As of last year I was doing pretty well with content, but that sadly slipped away from me. I very much want to change that and get back to using Doki Doki Arcade.

With that in mind, I spent several weeks preparing a new ongoing feature. Learning some lessons from Heckbringers (which I definitely want to revisit someday), I've changed the structure here to be somewhere between Janken and Heckbringers. Slightly shorter chapters, slightly more frequently!

This is a story I have been kicking around and working on in various forms for a very long time, so please enjoy this first scene!

The plan is to post a new scene every Monday, and I have at least 3 weeks ready to go, so I think I'll be able to keep up with this. I don't want to say too much about this yet, but make sure to check back in the future for more!

More Weeping Pines! And Some Site News...

Working on several things to post here over the course of October, but for now, enjoy another page of Weeping Pines! This poor kid may not be prepared for what's in store for him.

Not a good start to his adventure... is this comic terribly paced? Could be, But I'm working on it.

Anyway, made a big decision this week. After a year on the job, I decided to leave my current employer to pursue personal projects, and return to freelance work. I've found myself absolutely overflowing with ideas over the last twelve months, but left without any time to really execute any of them. Although I learned a great deal on the job, the truth is that I desperately want more creative fulfillment out of my work, and I just didn't feel like I was going anywhere.

What does this mean? Well, I'll probably be posting here much more frequently. Although most of my time will initially be spent finishing Nova Phase (finally), eventually I want to really focus on my own comics and games, even if only to bolster my body of work so as to make getting more interesting jobs easier. I have a fair amount of goofy stuff to post here for October, including some game related stuff, some stickers, and some more comics. Should be a fun month!

I'll also probably be hitting deviantart again to drum up some more traffic on my work, so keep an eye out there too, I guess.

Also, I got Mario Maker! My levels are probably too hard, but I try to make genuinely thoughtful little puzzles in them, so maybe I'll post the codes up here this week.

Okay, that's all for now!

An Unexpected Return! October is the Season for Horror Comics!

Well, I WAS actually posting on the tumblr pretty frequently as of two weeks ago. I even had drawn a bunch of monsters and managed to keep up with the whole daily monster thing for a while. Of course that kind of consistency couldn't be allowed to continue. The universe just had to intervene and make sure that any endeavor of mine had to be interrupted ASAP, so as to prevent it from getting any kind of traction. In this case, the universe took the form of an ill conceived update for the tumblr app that resulted in tumblr simply shutting down everytime  I try to post a picture. Oh well.

Now that I've gotten that little bit of ludicrous self pity out of the way, on to more important things. Today I resolved to sit down and do something to post here, which I haven't done in a very long time. I had a few options in terms of what to work on, I suppose, but what with the Halloween season right around the corner, I thought it would be most appropriate to get a a new page of my barely started venture into horror comics! Without further prattle, I present a new page of Weeping Pines:

Can you tell how much I love drawing that face? Can you? I seriously considered jumping to a different scene altogether after the car crash, but screw that. More nightmare face guy. Or girl, maybe. Hard to tell.

In other news, I'm interested in trying to make some episodic game content for this place. Working on a Halloween themed mini-RPG, sort of like a western take on Yokai Watch, in a way. I'll post some of the assets later. Hopefully before Halloween. Maybe...

Also! Did some pencil work for a potential comic, partially for fun and partially to help build a better portfolio for that kind of thing. Who wouldn't want to read a mainstream comic penciled by yours truly? Don't answer that. Anyway, I might post some of that later too.

Okay, that's it! Maybe more Weeping Pines this week.

A Little Ja-Ja-Ja-Janken Update!

I know that I wrapped up Janken a VERY long time ago at this point. Things are busy. That said, I go crazy if I don't work on something fun for myself, so I spent a little time putting this together tonight. I need to fix up some mistakes in the dialogue, and I really would like to do an epilogue or something to give a little closure to the story, and maybe a summary of the events of the hundreds of chapters I skipped to get to this conflict. Could be fun. Need time.

Recently wrapped up a project that had been on the back burner for a little while, but it could be some time before I ever have anything worth showing off on that front, as it is a collaboration and my contribution is pretty much over. I'll see if I can post anything related, as some of the concept art and stuff is just plain cool.

Also! I went to San Diego Comic Con to sign stuff and help sell Nova Phase to people! I met lots of really cool people, some of whom even bought stuff from me! If you came and saw me, thanks! I hope you enjoy your book! And if you're one of the people that just asked me to draw them Steven Universe for free, I hope you enjoy your drawing of Steven Universe!

Oh, and on a much less important but still potentially cool note, I have actually been posting stuff to the Doki Doki Arcade tumblr with some regularity lately. Mostly marker doodles of super heroes, so nothing super exciting, but take a look if you want to see a hastily thrown together illustration of the X-Men that screams "I grew up in the 90's".

http://jmatchead.tumblr.com/

That's it!

IS THIS THE END OF WEEPING PINES!? No.

The End! Just kidding, there's gonna be more, but that's the end of this first scene.I'm sure things won't get MUCH weirder from here on. Also a joke, things are gonna get super weird for a little while.

Been keeping pretty busy lately, and have been pretty happy with what I've been getting done. I posted my first sketch on to tumblr, and more are gonna be popping up over the next few days, so keep an eye out there.

Watched like 2 hours of Digimon Fusion on Netflix today, partially to get myself into a solid Saturday morning cartoon mindset while working on Heckbringers, and partially just out of nostalgia for a time when random anime just showed up on tv all the time. Anybody remember Mon Colle Knights? What the hell was that all about? Anyway, man, some of the designs in Fusion are absolutely insane. There's this weird, old timey toy robot looking guy, I think his name was Stereomon? He's ridiculous looking, and anytime any other digimon fuses with him, his innate boxiness influences the look of the resulting fusion way more than it probably should, so anybody he fuses into looks ridiculous as well. Its surprisingly charming.

Started playing Pokemon Rumble World, and I have to say it is quite fun. Pokemon Rumble was never particularly deep, but the experience is a pleasant one, and its FREE, which is cool. Pokemon Shuffle is also surprisingly fun, like a less bullshitty version of Puzzles and Dragons. I've been a sucker for all of the free 3ds games so far, and now I'm starting to miss Rusty's Real Deal Baseball and Steel Diver Sub Wars. God I love my 3ds.

Okay, I think that's enough of an insight into how I wasted a lot of time THIS week. In terms of being productive, I finally sat down to work on Nova Phase issue 5, which is gonna be slow going, but I'm glad I finally got the ball rolling. First 6 or 7 pages are drafted, so I'll probably start trying to get some work done on the final art. I'll post previews of stuff as it happens.

Also, I'm penciling a comic for my brother, and while I can't say much about it right now, I think it's gonna kick ass. I'll probably post some concept art and such later, though I don't know where the comic itself will go. I'll share more details once I have them.

That's it for now. New Heckbringers on Tuesday!

Heckbringers and Tumblr Plans

A late posting tonight, which is a shame considering this page was done yesterday. Planned to come straight home and post this, but ended up having to make a last minute dinner, so I got a little side tracked. Still, this makes seven weeks of pages! Sort of exciting to have stuck with it, even if in seven weeks (more like 9 since there was one week where I posted Janken and one week where I posted Weeping Pines instead) not too much has happened. This introductory scene felt much shorter in my head, to be honest, but it'll soon be wrapped up, and we'll be moving right along to some scenes that, believe it or not, take place outside of an alley. It only just dawned on me that 9 weeks in, only one character has a name, and it's the bad guy. Weird. Oh well!

In other news! I've decided to finally start  utilizing the long dormant Doki Doki Arcade tumblr account. I had initially planned to just post whatever I did here, but now I think I'll be using it as more of a sketch dump, just posting the less finished doodles that I do time to time, that either turn into pages of something, or go forgotten forever. I'm gonna try to put stuff up there occasionally, if no other reason than to chronicle some otherwise lost pieces of doodly goodness, and because I always do my best design work in the margins of notebooks.

I have been watching an insane amount of Home Movies lately. I'm not sure what it is about that show, but I can't ever see any given episode enough times. I think the absolutely aimless and somewhat compulsive creative endeavors of the kids resonate with me in a powerful way, and between that shows assertion that they make their movies for no one and that no one should watch their movies, Greg Universe's 180 turn from dreams of rock stardom to pursue Rose-Quartz, and many conversations with my brother, I'm increasingly coming to balk at the idea of audience altogether. In this age of internet horror, I'm not even sure I want anybody looking at my work, but creating and sharing is fun and cathartic, and the minute it isn't I'm just gonna stop.

If you haven't already, you can find the DokiDokiArcade tumblr at jmatchead.tumblr.com. There isn't too much up there yet, but whatever.

I think either this week or next I'm gonna start posting pages of my last major web comic, Basurake, partly because I think I was way better at writing weekly content then, partly because I think it would be cool to post more often here, and partly because I just miss it.

The Nightmare Begins in a new Weeping Pines!

Sort of a brief read today, but boy am I happy with the way that last panel turned out. I'd like to have done a more detailed job with the trees in the background, but I suppose they are suitably abstract.

I think the first scene is moving along nicely. It can be frustrating working on even one comic that is still in the infancy of its introduction, and I'm just about going nuts having two going at once, but I want to make sure I give both the chance to grow up organically, and not rush into anything. I hope that's working out!

I'm having a lot of trouble producing the other types of features lately, and I'm not totally sure why. I have a piece written about both Blue Stinger and the 1990 TMNT film (two different pieces, btw), but haven't pulled the trigger on either. Maybe it's good that I'm focusing more on comics.

Finally, Steven Universe. Man, its so damn good. It just keeps getting better. I love it.

Genius Dialogue in New Page of Heckbringers!

Hey, that's what you get when you don't ever write a script, right? My process on this comic is completely backwards and probably a terrible idea, but whatever. Working out so far!

Confession time. When I started doing Heckbringers as a feature here, I literally thought about it zero seconds. I had the characters and setting and what not from an older project, and figured it would be an easy way to get a color feature going on here. Then, of course, I started actually doing the comic, and after a few weeks I came to a startling discovery.

I had absolutely no idea where I was going with it.

This was tough, because it threw some real bumps into the whole weekly feature thing. I was lucky to have Weeping Pines in the wings anyway, and I'm glad it encouraged me to get it out there, but I seriously feared I would have to give up on Heckbringers before I even made it to the first fight scene (probably not a good way to measure the progress of a comic, but whatever).

Maybe there is something stimulating about the rushing of water, or maybe isolation really does lead to self discovery, but I think I tend to do some of my best thinking in the shower, and sure enough, without any explanation or warning, I suddenly had a rush of ideas. They came slowly at first, but one thing very naturally led to another, and before I knew it, I had the entire story outlined. Not just the first chapter either, but like, the entire arc of the whole series. So there I was, with a sweeping post apocalyptic epic fully formed in my brain, butt-naked and dripping wet. Hot.

Not really sure why, but I thought it'd be fun to get that insight into my creative process. Sorry! Weeping Pines on Friday!

Going Deeper into Weeping Pines

Weeping Pines continues on! I don't know if Fridays will be be Weeping Pines day or anything, but here is the second strip. Ominous shadows!

It's probably pretty lame to go out and say this, but I actually have a pretty big plan for this comic. I hope I get to explore it more.

No time for significantly more talking! Maybe later!