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!

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!

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.

Saturday Morning Anime for Grown Up Kids: Ja-Ja-Ja-Janken! Continues and Serious Matters

Finally, the thrilling continuation of Ja-Ja-Ja-Janken! Maki's Counter Attack! In case you missed it here's part one.

I've had this nearly finished for about 4 months now, but was totally thrown of course by my new job. Now that I'm more accustomed to my new schedule, I wanted to finally start back into getting more content up here. I plan on doing just a bit more of Ja-Ja-Ja-Janken! Before moving on with other stuff for Saturday Morning Anime for Grown Ups, but I'm already working on other little treats for this place. Hint hint: I desperately want to start making stickers!

I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do with this place lately. My last big post happened just before I ended up finding the job I mentioned earlier, and I've spent most of my time just getting to and from work, trying to adjust to my new schedule and still find time to spend with my wife, my family, my friends, my pets, my games, and finally, my art. It's tough, honestly, to balance the things I care about, and thought I hate to say it, I have pretty much prioritized my art pretty low on the list. That probably won't be changing, but I do desperately want to continue to create on my own, so I'm trying to push myself more to be as active as I can in the time I have available.

With that all said, I'm still left with something of a mystery as to what exactly I want to do with this place. Of course, I know that I'll probably keep doing comics and random articles about nonsense (I'd like to talk about LBX models at some point in the NEAR future), but I want to have a more specific goal in mind for all of these things. I've been very into Dinosaur Dracula lately, and on some level I think I've come to start building more of a goal for Doki Doki Arcade. At its heart, I think I want Doki Doki Arcade to appeal to the kid in all of us, so that's what I'm going to shoot for from now on.

More importantly, I'm going to try to shoot for much more frequency in my posts, so hopefully if you get in the habit of coming here often, you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised with new stuff. It won't always be comics, and often won't have any art at all. I've experimented with that in the past, and the relatively positive responses to articles like Pac-Man Fever and Halloween Turtle Treats would seem to indicate that people are fairly tolerant of my frank and open discussions of my juvenile delight at small trinkets, provided that occasional photos are tossed in for reference, so expect some more of those (LBX coming soon! Maybe!)

In any case, I hope that anyone reading this is enjoying what little time they spend here at Doki Doki Arcade, because I'd like to make it a place where you could spend more of it. Not because I think that this will ever go anywhere, or because I want an audience, but because I like the idea of a place like this existing, like a run down old comic shop, or Mr. Higsby's shop from Battle Network. Maybe those two things aren't actually the same, but to me, they kinda are.

So yeah, come back soon for Bird Force Stickers, an in depth discussion of some Little Battlers Experience models, and of course, more Ja-Ja-Ja-Janken!

Saturday Morning Anime for Grown Up Kids: Ja-Ja-Ja-Janken!

Imagine, if you will, that it is 6:00 am, and you are eight years old. In your hands you hold a bowl of Lucky Charms, and a television remote. The rest of your family is either still asleep or already out of the house, and the television belongs to you for a few glorious hours. Eager with anticipation, you turn on a fuzzy network TV channel, maybe twenty three or forty eight, and witness something magical...

That's it for now. More of this, as well as probably many other comics, coming in the near future. Enjoy!