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!

Update Dump of Ultimate Guilt!

Sooooo... I know I said I was going to be posting more, and that I was going to have more free time. One of those things turned out to be true! But I swear, I haven't been not posting because I haven't been doing stuff! I just haven't done anything finished enough to show off. Sad, but true.

So what have I been up to? Well, Mario Maker got me in the mood to hit game development again, and with a vengeance. I actually put together a little Castlevania style platformer that was shaping up nicely, but honestly that will take a very long time before it is actually done. A finished stage as a demo isn't out of the question, but even that would be a little ways off. I'll dump some of the graphics and screenshots up here in the future, but that is a story for another time. Here's a mock up of th first boss fight, just for fun!

I also did a crap load of work on Nova Phase, the 5th issue of which will probably be done this week. That means it will come out like... in February probably, but whatever. It will be good to be close to completing the series' run, and some of the art in this issue is pretty awesome. Maybe I'll post some spoilers. Maybe.

I've also been trying to take steps towards finishing some other little projects that have been sitting around. It is my genuine intention to do one more chapter of Janken before doing an Amazon e-book or something of the whole thing. The cover is done, and the "last" chapter is thumbnailed, with a few pages even penciled, but that's it on that. Here's a look at the updated cover and logo.

A lot of my down time has been spent basically practicing my digital work, including lots of inking and sketching. Some of these turned out pretty cool, so I'm posting them here for fun!

This one was a concept design for a comic my old collaborator on Heckbringers was thinking of doing called Dragonomics. Not much to say about that yet, but could be seeing more of this little rascal in the future. He's up to some other stuff, which I will post about a little later this week.

Anyone who follows my blog knows I come back to this guy every now and then. I'm working on a small project involving him that is going really well so far, but I want to have a bit more of it done before I post it here.

Another one that comes and goes pretty frequently! I don't remember why we stopped working on this game, but I love the designs from it and I'm trying to find some place to use them here. Ideally something that wasn't a full blown comic, but I guess we'll see.

I've got some other stuff brewing, but this is the major stuff. I'm also finally biting the bullet and sitting down to remake and ultimately finish the original Bird Force in a more reliable program. There were was supposed to be a pretty involved story, and a handful of characters that never made it into the version I posted here because I was terrified Construct would collapse and I'd lose what I actually had done. I'm working in Multimedia Fusion to program a definitive version of the game with all the features I initially imagined. It's going well considering its literally been one afternoon of work. Hopefully more on that in the near future!

Okay! That's it! I'll probably be posting another small comic later this week!

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.

Tumblr Halloween Fun: Monster Collection!

I know I'm a horrible slacker that hasn't posted here in forever, but I promise I'm a busy guy. Kind of. Whatever.

Anyway, I have actually been using the Doki Doki Arcade tumblr an awful lot lately. As I mentioned long ago, the tumblr is basically a sketch dump where I post cool doodles from my notebook, the kind of thing that mostly gets lost forever. If you dig my art at all, and want to see the stuff that eventually becomes the nonsense I normally post here or on Deviantart, then definitely check it out. Especially because I am actually doing a thing. A cool thing. Yes.

Whether out of some misguided desire to extend the Halloween season at every opportunity, or out of a recent madness involving playing way too much Fossil Fighters, I've been drawing ALOT of monsters lately. Initially it was just a fun way to warm up, but as I was driving to work this week, I had an idea; what if there was a monster battle game that played off of ACTUAL monsters as its theme? Sure, Venusaur or Metal War Greymon are kind of monsterous, but they're not exactly scary. I'm talking like, horror movie creatures done up like adorably collectible little imps. With that in mind, I started doing a daily doodle, every day a different monster, leading up to Halloween. No clue what I'm gonna do when I'm all done, since I should end up with like 60 distinct little nightmares to play with, but stickers or cards are definitely possibilities.

I'm gonna post the first three here right now, because I just can't post anything without a picture or two, but definitely check out http://jmatchead.tumblr.com/ to see more as the days go by.

 First up is an adorable Frankenstein's monster style creature. Part Android 8 from Dragon Ball, part Viktor from Dark Stalkers, I love his everything, but his mismatched arms and electric power are definitely his strong points.

 Next up, a frantic Wolf Man style creature. Inspired mostly by the original Universal Lon Chaney Jr. look of just a hairy guy, but also has shades of the wolf guy from Shining Force.

I wanted to subvert all of the mystique that vampires have accrued over the years and make this guy goofy as hell.

Can you imagine catching these guys and having them battle for you? That Frankenstein, which I am now realizing should definitely be named Frankenstrong, would have some absolutely sick attacks.

Anyway, definitely check out http://jmatchead.tumblr.com/ for more monsters! Tomorrow may just be a mummy!

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.

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!

SURPRISE! NEW HECKBRINGERS PAGE!

Got it together this week! For whatever reason, this page took me a long time to conceptualize, but I'm happy with the results. Other than this taking kind of forever to move along, I think it's turning out pretty well so far. I'm having some trouble keeping Gubba remotely on model, but I do seem to enjoy his look more and more each time I draw him, so I guess that's a good thing. Next time, maybe we'll actually get to see that axe do something! Maybe.

Of course, I still have another strip of Weeping Pines to post some time this week, which I hope I will be able to keep up with. It's a story I've had on the back burner for a while now, a little over a year, but I habe no idea whether it will be any good. I hope it will.

In other news! I have finally sat down to play one of the many Dreamcast games I bought online over the summer, so look forward to hearing about my experience with Blue Stinger in the near future! I also may soon have something to show off of a new game project, which is a collaboration with a buddy of minem with whom I also do a podcast, which I will soon link to. Busy!

A Slight Change of Plans and Weeping Pines

Okay. So I wasn't able to get a page of Heckbringers together for today. I am sorry. I have no excuse, other than an unhealthy obsession with watching Twin Peaks with the wife and playing Blue Stinger. More on both of those later.

However! I had often mentioned my desire to add a third comic into the rotation here, and though I had actually been a little conflicted about posting what I had come up with, I think this would be an excellent time to test the waters for another new feature. As I said in the past, this next comic would be of  a completely different format than anything else I've done. I hope you like it.

That's it. Heckbingers again very soon. I promise.

Saturday Morning Anime for Grown Up Kids: JA-JA-JA-JANKEN! CONCLUDES!

Well, I said I was gonna wrap up JANKEN!, so here it is. Just in case you can't remember the complex narrative so far, here's chapter 248 and 249. Some talking afterward, but for now, enjoy!

Oh, suspense! If Twin Peaks taught me anything, it was to never resolve anything! To be honest, I already know exactly what the next chapter would be, but I planned this as a three chapter series, so that's how I'm gonna keep it for now.

This has been a pretty fun experiment, and it's hard to believe it has taken as long as it has. I first posted JANKEN! On here back in September, and it's already almost April. That's an awfully long time for 18 pages to happen, but I suppose  that's just the nature of doing this stuff in your spare time. I'm happy that this last chapter managed to come out only two months or so after the last one, which is considerably better than the five months it took to get the second chapter out. The idea of putting out something like this monthly isn't COMPLETELY inconceivable to me at this point, though I don't know if that will be happening any time soon.

Of course, since I spent extra time prepping this, I neglected to have a page of Heckbringers ready. I know that's a bummer, as I haven't exactly been plotting that comic at a breakneck pace, but I do promise that it is going somewhere. I have a lot of plans for the world of Heckbringers, and once I get it off the ground a little bit, I think that will start to show. For now though, we wait until next week.

In terms of what's next for JANKEN!? I'm not totally sure. I do really like the characters and premise. My plan is to, in the near future, compile the 18 pages I have already completed, toss in some bonus material like character profiles and summaries of the 247 chapters leading up to the arbitrary starting point I chose, and a fancy color cover illustration for a little mini collected edition through Amazon. Might even toss in an exclusive chapter. We'll see if I have time.

Moving forward, I think that will probably be the plan in terms of ongoing comics. That is to say, I might use DokiDoki Arcade as a place to accumulate content for personal compilations. If I keep up a weekly schedule on Heckbringers, by this time next year I'll have a pretty sizable amount of pages, so being able to get all that collected in one place might be a compelling proposition, if it all turns out good of course.

In the mean time, though, I hope anybody reading enjoyed the ride on JANKEN! while it lasted. It was a fun experiment for me personally, and I'm very satisfied to have, for the first time in many years, carried an idea out to completion,at least as far as my vision is concerned, since JANKEN! could theoretically go on forever. It has been quite some time since I actually finished a comic of my own creation, so I feel very accomplished, as silly as that may sound.

That's it for now! I might have a write up on what seems to be a game nobody I have talked to knows about but that I am very much enjoying, so look forward to another sloppy article posted from my Wii U! Hint hint: the game is Lone Survivor.

HECKBRINGERS PAGE 004! TECHNICALLY ON SCHEDULE!

Okay. So I got real real sick this weekend. Had this page inked LAST Sunday, but that didn't stop me from ALMOST being late with this one. It is late. But it's technically still Tuesday, and here it is. Four weeks in a row! That's practically a big deal. I think at this point, I might even start actually scripting these! Wouldn't that be fun!

It's a lot of fun to draw Gubba. He's like, part frog, part dragon, part Bowser, and he really is a satisfying figure. I hope this color scheme isn't getting too old just yet. I'm trying to slowly add some little nuances here and there, and at some point maybe the entire city won't be red. But probably not.

JA-JA-JA-JANKEN!! is for real almost done. I think I have two pages left. After that, I think Nova Phase will be the main focus for me, although I'll definitely keep doing a weekly Heckbringers. Hopefully I'll post something else this week, maybe an article about something. We shall see!

HECKBRINGERS AGAIN! Three Weeks in a Row!

So on the plus side, I have actually managed to keep up a solid weekly schedule for three consecutive weeks. If you are someone that has followed my work in the past, I think you will agree that is something of a shock. On the other hand, I haven't posted much else in between, and the whole point was to be delivering more smaller chunks of content. I guess technically I'm still doing that, and one post a week is still better than one every few months, but I want to do better.

That said, I have a fair amount of material in the pipeline, so to speak, including another new comic in an entirely different format, designed to be a serialized micro-comic, of sorts, and of course the next chapter of JANKEN!, which I have slacked off on a little bit. I will do better.

As far as HECKBRINGERS goes, I am pleased with the product so far. I'm experimenting with a different process, which I think will be my go to procedure for works done in color, which I think everyone tends to enjoy a bit more. The story is moving a long nicely, and it's refreshing to work in a weekly format again.

Speaking of, I have plans to leverage my somewhat sizable  body of previous work, most of which is no longer available anywhere, to help fill in content around here when I am busy. Be excited!

MORE HECKBRINGERS: A Second Page!

I bet you thought I wasn't gonna post another page of this! I bet you figured I NEVER follow up when I say I'm gonna post more of something. Well, normally you'd be right, but I'm turning over a new leaf around here. Thus, I present, the next page of Heckbringers!

I'd also like to point out that this even came in a timely fashion! I think I can probably swing one page a week of this comic. Should also have JANKEN! done for next week, which would be cool. After that, in addition to trying to rotate one more comic in (as a substitute while JANKEN! goes on a hiatus) I'm also going to be trying to finish the next issue of Nova Phase, which some might remember is the comic that I illustrate, published by Slave Labor Graphics. The 4th issue came out online a month ago, and the second paperback edition, collecting issues 3 and 4, just became available on Amazon recently! I'll post an official promo thing tomorrow, but for now feel free to go look for it!

Of course, what that next comic is going to be is still up in the air. There are a lot of choices, even if I only look at ides that I've already mentioned here, but for all I know I might feel like doing something totally new. Who knows!? Either way, it will follow a similar format to JANKEN!, in that it will be six pages and black and white. I'm also contemplating adding one more format into the rotation, perhaps an even smaller one, Bazooka Joe style or something. If I could somehow give you guys gum through the internet, I would.

I still have another big announcement waiting in the wings, but I'm so busy I haven't really had a chance to make the most of it. It involves games and is exciting, maybe.