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!

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!

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.

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.

Ninja Turtles Erasers and Halloween Treats

There's something intensely satisfying about acquiring pleasant little doodads, and I was recently treated to a few awesome discoveries at my local Target. It's been quite a while since my K'nex Pac-Man and Mario obsession, and with nothing but Halo and Call of Duty in the Mega Bloks blind bag bins (a somewhat alarming sign of the times, I think), I have largely been without trinkets to waste my money on. This all changed a few days ago, when I accompanied my wife for a stroll around our local Target monolith. Her intention was to purchase some command strips to hang up Zelda posters we framed and then shoved in a corner three months ago, but, as always, I was patrolling the isles for something to scratch my itch, and by the time we were at the check out, I had found three things that tickled my fancy.

The first, and perhaps most satisfying, was a box of Halloween themed Little Debbie brownies. LD brownies were the highlight of my lunch experience between grades 1 and probably 9, so I have a soft spot for the greazy little things. The Halloween theme, however, is what made these truly impossible to pass up. Each brownie is cut into a crude pumpkin shape, sort of an oblong hexagon, with orange frosting, flavored a bit like candy corn, and a spooooooky jack-o-lantern face. The fact that they were on sale for around a dollar or so was nice as well.

Armed with my box of tasty treats, I continued to troll the store for further satisfaction. I stumbled upon a sale on eShop cards, which basically amounts to free money, and was for several minutes engaged in a tumultuous inner conflict. Buy one, get a second 25% off... not exactly irresistible... Even with a 50 dollar card, you're only getting around 12.50 free, and dropping 87.50 on a casual trip to Target, exclusively set aside for future digital purchases, seemed unseemly. I eventually settled on two ten dollar cards, but only because they also came with AR cards for the 3ds application Photos with Mario. I love AR cards (I have as many of the Kid Icarus cards as I could get my hands on), so getting a couple bucks was a nice incentive. I got a Goomba, and Princess Peach. That was all they had.

Now, I had planned for this to be the extent of my purchase, but felt compelled to check out the impulse purchase wall by the registers, where they usually keep trading cards, whether they be Yugioh, Pokemon, Magic, or My Little Pony, baseball cards, and other little collectible junk. My eyes fell upon a blind bag looking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles package, a tie in to the decent Nick cartoon and not the Michael Bay monstrosity, and had my curiosity sparked. On closer inspection, the product claimed to be a puzzle eraser, a term I had never heard before and didn't really know what to make of. Still, the package contents felt substantial, and it was cheap enough that I was comfortable taking a risk, around a buck or so. I wasn't sure what I was getting, exactly, but I was optimistic.

I want to take a moment to just say that I have vastly under appreciated the development of eraser design and construction, as what I ended up with was surprisingly bad ass. It's basically a miniature figure that you assemble from a few pieces, constructed of rubbery eraser stuff, and the final product is pretty impressive. The figure is made up of a lower body (hips and legs), two pieces (front and back) that meet with the lower body to form the shell, two arms that plug in fairly sturdily, a weird little nub of a head, and a bandanna that is almost impossible to get on to the head piece, and that has hilariously dead googly eyes painted on.Once finished, the figure stands maybe 3-3.5 inches tall, and comes with a little weapon made of hard plastic. I had purchased Donatello, or Don-chan as we affectionately call him in my household, partially because I liked him as a kid and partially because his was the front most bag on the rack. I later coerced a friend into getting me Raphael, who, although less cooperative in the standing process, is pretty decent as well.

I really like these figures, for a few reasons. The sculpt and construction is surprisingly good, and considering these things are supposed to be erasers, they actually work pretty well as straight up toys, whether you mean to play with them or just stand them around your desk (I do a little of both). They are also super cheap, which is another major factor in their appeal. As a grown man, I find it pretty hard to justify toy purchases, which is why I tend to gravitate towards figures of the small and cheap variety. I would never drop the cash to have a full set of Turtles figures for desk display, as they're simply to expensive. These little guys are great, though, as I can cheaply get a satisfying set of the whole gang for less than the cost of a single, full fledged Turtle figure, without sacrificing too much in terms of detail or sheer coolness, as these are several billion steps ahead of the also small and cheap Lego Turtle figures in that department.

I don't know how well they work as erasers though.