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!

Game Development Fun: Shooter Mock Up

Wild west light gun shooting mixed with intense boss fights! Think Wild Gunmen meets Mega Man, but with a bit of Zelda style overworld exploration mixed in. Basically all of my games are something with Mega Man and Zelda mixed in, now that I think about it, but I genuinely believe that those games have a ton to offer other genres. As much as I love the Zapper, most of the games that utilized it were pretty simple diversions. Sure, it took a fair amount of time to get good at Duck Hunt or Barker Bill, but once you hit that plateau, there wasn't much else to do. It was hard to really get lost in those games.

Of course, other light gun games came as the years went by. Favorites like House of the Dead and Time Crisis are basically just more dynamic Zapper games, but even those end up feeling shallow. Even on home consoles, the arcade origin of the shooting gallery genre is very apparent. I think this is owed in large part to the lack of traditional control options on the light guns of the past. While I seem to remember my Dreamcast guns having some kind of buttons and maybe even a d-pad, actually using it for a game was out of the question. It just wasn't comfortable.

Now, I am admittedly a huge Wii nerd, and though most people look down on the Wii remote's design, I've always been enamored with it, and I don't think any game managed to utilize it's core value better than Metroid: Other M. Switching between the NES style sideways orientation for platforming and exploration and the light gun style pointer orientation for first person shooting and scanning demonstrated both the versatility of the controller and a kind of economy of design that made the control set up of virtually any other modern game seem convoluted.

Taking that dynamic as inspiration, I designed this game with the Wii remote in mind. All of the fighting and shooting would be done in these first person scenes using the controller like a pointer or light gun, while exploration and adventuring would be done Zelda style with the controller held like a NES game pad. While I don't have all the details hammered out (should there be random encounters?), I think the idea of going back and forth between world exploration and intense first person combat could be pretty cool. With lots of different guns, locations, sub weapons, and bosses, I'd like to imagine this as the first fully featured light gun game.

No actual programming work on this game yet, as it is still in the EARLY early phase of planning. That said, I have actually made some for real progress on Super Bird Force as far as programming goes, but I'll share more on that in the near future. Some actual in game screenshots could be right around the corner!

Okay, that's it! Stuff from my trip to Comic Con later!

Some Bird Force Bits!

Been a while since I posted anything, and don't really have anything to show, but I have some Bird Force related stuff from a bit ago that I took a little time to finish up this weekend, and felt like showing off a bit. First off, some planes!

This is for the four main characters, although the plan is that there will be a ton more of wingmen to find and recruit, each with their own ship and weapons. I don't think I've shown these in sprite form before, so I hope this is cool! Next, some bosses!

Just three for now, based on a fly, ant, and bee (or maybe wasp) respectively. The enemies would be bug inspired planes, but the bosses would be full blown mecha monsters. Had a hard time nailing the look for the enemy mechanical designs, but I'm happy with how these turned out.

Sadly, that's about it. I'm hitting a brick wall on backgrounds, but I think I might just be tired... I'm changing my development tools around a bit, as Construct turned out to be a little too temperamental during the development of the original Bird Force last summer. I'm gonna try Multimedia Fusion this time around, so hopefully that will be a little more consistent.

And yes, development was definitely inspired by the Star Fox announcement. So cool!

Bad Habits Die Hard

Argh. After keeping up with postings here for like, almost 5 months, I broke an otherwise excellent streak. What have I been up to? Well, work. Work factored into this tremendously. After moving into a new office, which was itself exhausting, my workload increased (which I didn't think was even possible) and has been more or less non-stop since. Meanwhile, several developments lead to me returning to actively working on Nova Phase, though of course in a much slower capacity, since I can no longer spend entire days at a time drawing pages. Any of the time that was previously being spent doing Heckbringers or Weeping Pines is now being dedicated to slowly making my way through the last two issues of Nova Phase. I'll post some particularly cool panels as proof that I am in fact doing something important with my time. 

With work going nuts and Nova Phase back in my life, I don't have a ton of time for other projects for the time being. I took the month of May to more or less focus on establishing some kind of regularity to working on the comic, but now I want to try to spend some time back here, though that may not take the form of any major art or comics for a little while. Maybe I'll stick with little features, or more stickers for the time being. 

Head over to the tumblr to see some poorly photographed drawings of Daredevil and WWE Superstar Brock Lesnar.

Heckbringers Action Continues With Intense Vomit Action!

Another page in a timely manner! It's kinda funny that when I was doing Basurake, I didn't think doing a weekly color comic was really feasible, but now that I'm working a full time job, I'm somehow finding the time. Funny how things work out! Speaking of, I keep saying I'm gonna post Basurake. That will happen someday, just need to figure out whether I want to do it page by page, or in bunches, or what.

Anyway, this alley scene is just about over! And the two principle characters are about to actually interact! Who would have thought this would have taken months to do! Hilarious. Neither character has a name yet, of course, but hopefully in the near future that will change as well. Not next week, because I already scripted that page. That's right! I started actually scripting these! Hooray.

I think I need to get the dvds of Home Movies. Its crazy how much you miss something once its off Netflix. God what a good show.

Last topic! Anybody notice that there's barely any anime for kids anymore? What the hell? Kaito Joker or whatever should get a Saturday morning localization. 4KIDS! WHERE ARE YOU!?

Okay, that's enough. Dinoswords stuff soon, probably. What? Shh.

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!

Splatoon Will Probably Be Better Without Voicechat

So I've been pretty excited about Nintendo's bizarre third person shooter, Splatoon, since it was unveiled at e3 last year. It's a novel take on the third person shooter format, in that it focuses on territory control over just simple combat, in addition to a slick art style and all ages appeal.

It's also been plagued by complaints at almost every step of its development. Initially people were upset at the lack of basic deathmatch, despite the fact that deathmatch gameplay would both undermine the key innovation at the heart of the game, and be redundant, since you can get that experience in almost every other third person shooter on the market. Dumb.

The newest controversy has surrounded Nintendo's decision not to include online voice chat in the game, with some people going as far as to have their entire purchase decision based purely on the lack or presence of this single feature. People seem to think that Nintendo is refusing to get on board with a feature that has become standard, and therefore a necessity, because they are old fashioned and out of touch.

First of all, these same kinds of complaints have been happening forever for Nintendo. Whether it was their decision not to switch to CD with the n64, or their decision not to focus on online connectivity with the Gamecube, Nintendo has long had to battle against the perception that they are the old heads of the industry. Mind you, neither of the above decisions were objectively bad; both consoles still had tons of excellent games, many of which provided experiences that were totally unavailable on other consoles. But subjectively, people's expectations were betrayed. Subjectivity is the issue here.

I think we live in an age where the individual opinion is perceived as being more important than ever before, but it seems that this has caused people to lose perspective altogether. The line between subjective judgment and objective truth has been blurred to the point where I don't think most people even try to discern the difference. I understand that true objectivity is nearly impossible, but I think you can get pretty damn close if you keep an open mind and look at things from a distance.

Subjectively, any set of arbitrary expectations can be used as a standard for judgment, but that's irrational and self centered. We've come to view games purely in the context of how they conform to our own, largely arbitrary, preferences, as opposed to independent pieces of art, to be experienced and learned from. Nobody cares what creators have to say, unless they are spilling details on DLC.

At the end of the day, we're faced with a pretty simple choice. Do we want to be pleased and entertained, or do we want to explore and experience? If all we want is the gratification of our expectations, then all we'll get is banal redundancy. Splatoon might not have the exact feature set of any other third person shooter, but that's because it isn't supposed to be any other third person shooter. It's a different approach, and in a world full of copycats and me-toos, we ought to relish those differences.

Soap box speech over.