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.

Some Bird Force Nonsense!

Bird Force, my awesome game idea that I can never seem to finish, has been an enduring shadow over my thoughts for almost two years now. Although I may not have the time just now to focus on bringing this vision to life, I thought I'd at least share a little art and keep the dream alive!

I'm also just trying to draw as much as possible these days, for both practice and personal satisfaction. For how much I love Bird Force, I've produced surprisingly little art related to it, and my recent Star Buster art has been coming along so well I thought I'd branch out a little. The composition is a little more ambitious than the previous digital stuff I've been doing, and I'm honestly not great at drawing birds, so this was a fun project. I literally hated the way it looked until the minute it was finished, so I guess it can be cool to see how something can come together.

Uh... that's it I guess? More Star Buster next week!

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?

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!

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!