Got some new stuff for ya! Got a new drawing I did for the "works" section of the site. It's a little pic of Ran and Will from Portals. Maybe a little figurative hints there to the ever-coming book 2? Who knows. I also put up a new comic from Kly- I couldn't help but notice the Portal reference, and no that has nothing to do at all with Portals...

That's all for today, I know I said I would post more stuff last time, but it's so hard! The best I can do is say I'll try to post as often as I can :/

Oh and watch Kaiji, it looks ugly at first, but it's made of awesome and greatness ;)

Wow what a long time between posts! A ton of things happened lately, I was supposed to post about a week ago about how late things were, but the site was down! We're not really sure how long it's been down (at least I'm not sure) but it's since our hosting upgraded its version of rails (the thing the site runs on), alot of functions and stuff changed and it made our site explode. I was going to have Kly start looking at it right away, but of all things a big storm blew at his place and knocked his power (and internet!) out for days. He even made a comic about it, which you can find on the links at the top right.

All fixed up now, as you can see, I would've posted about it earlier, but we found out our admin stuff wasn't working either, since we had only fixed the part of the site you see. So a bit of work there and now we're back to normal. whew.

In all this time since my last post, what have I been up to? Well for starters I finished watching the first season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and even started up the second season (which just started). It's a great anime, so much I love about it. The characters are great, the art design with its great design sense, nice animation, funny script, and lots of little details everywhere. The plot isn't particularly deep or anything, but I don't want it to be. Great series, highly recommended. Kly's been watching some series about a flying whale or something, go figure.

I also started playing this old ps2 game, Atelier Iris 2. It's this little rpg I picked up at Anime Expo last year for 15$(with guide and soundtrack included even). It's way better than what I was expecting, it has a fun item creation system, and a nice combat system that seems pretty strongly based on Grandia's. Combat is a little easy though, since it has this magic system that kind of resets every battle. I do like the voice acting, can't remember if there was an option for the japanese voices.

I'm going to try to make a picture this week, I figure I should put up something at least, since Portals status is still on hiatus pretty much. We'll see how it goes this week.

Man I'm not the most consistent person for this kind of thing am I heh. Sorry again, things happen, I forget, that's how it goes. I'm still working on stuff for here, but it's slow going (if you didn't notice already). I put up a sketch in the sketches area, minor stuff, but it does spoil a bit of book 1 if you haven't read it yet, so beware. Hopefully I'll remember to post at least next week, if not before then.

A few days late, but better than a few weeks, eh? Recently I got a ps3, but not because I really wanted one at the moment. Actually after I bought it I didn't have a game for a few weeks, but it was a really good deal, so I figured why not, since I was going to buy it eventually anyways. I did get Skate though, and it's pretty fun. The control scheme is really wierd, but you get used to it, and then it get's really fun. The world is a giant city, more or less, but it's well designed. You can skate to where you want to go, or just click on the event and take the train there. The only thing I really don't like about it is you can only make guys. I'm grabbing Ratchet and Clank this week, the demo was really great, I'm hoping the rest of the game is too.

It's a new season of anime, and boy is it underwhelming. Last season wasn't exactly the greatest thing ever, but this is even weaker. It's not helped by Gurren Lagann and Kenichi both having ended either. So on the search for something new this season (to accompany Naruto, which has been getting much better lately) I've come across a few things of interest. First is Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. This one's only 12 episodes, and I think they've mostly all come out already in Japan, but are still coming out subbed. First, it looks great. Like really really great. Awesome visual style, and good animation. It's full of little details that you can freeze frame or rewatch and catch new things. It's also funny, which is a good thing. I've watched about 4 episodes and so far so good, so hopefully it holds up to the end.

Second is Gundam 00, which is the new Gundam series. I've only seen 1 episode, as its just started so there's only about 3-4 episodes subbed, but so far so good. It's reminiscent of Gundam Wing, but has alot of differences, like being on our real world time line instead of the Gundam timeline. I won't say for sure whether it's good or not, but I do enjoy the opening and ending song. I'll get back to you guys after I watch more of this.

Oh, if you haven't gotten the chance to play the new Zelda DS game, definitely go play it. It's some of the best fun I've had in a Zelda game in a good while.

I really really didn't expect to not post for almost a whole month! Sorry about that everyone! I've just been really busy lately with a new job and some other projects I've been using my spare time on.

First things first, you should know that I am working on Portals again, but it's going REALLY slowly, so don't even bother waiting for it for now. Secondly, I am working up something else to put on here, but due to the above reasons of not posting for a long time, it's going to be a bit of a wait there too (though not nearly as long as it will be for Portals :D) Sorry!

I DID put up a new drawing in Works though. It's a pic of the Portals group if they were some fantasy adventurers, hehe.

It's pretty late here now, so I'll post more of what I've been up to later this week.

So, I haven't been paying too much attention here lately, and maybe someone out there would like to know what is going on here as there hasn't been updates for months.
To tell you the truth, very little.

I haven't ever been one to concentrate my power on blogging details to people on a regular basis, so I don't think it's much of a surprise that I haven't really been saying anything.  It's only been like, 5 months or something since I last posted anything, and I don't think anyone is missing their coffee, thinking "Now where did that darn guy go? He owes me 50 cents." I've had longer hiatuses before -- I think one of the last ones was about 5 or 6 months and then I wrotea  resolution that I was going to actually use this blog to do more bloggish things, and then I didn't.  I also said I would speak more like a pirate. Arrrr.

So while I'm not thinking about what I should write here and then not doing it like I always do and not speaking like a pirate ("Arrrr."), what am I doing? Surprisingly, it hasn't been mostly gaming this time around.  I have become so far behind in both anime watching and manga reading that it's starting to eat up the space left on my hard drive. So in fact I have been on a hardcore anime watching schedule, or at least, somewhat hardcore.  At least, more core than I am used to.  So while exhaulted overlord Kris goes on and on about his never ending ninja epics, I have been reading stories about 2 guys and 2 girls who lose all hope in life, go to school, and become super successful, and watching shows about Vampires, and Aliens, and Magicians, and um...things?

 

Tommorrow, also happens to be the US Elections for the President of the United States.  I at one point had a comic for you about this, but it's now so outdated that I don't think I ever even gave it to the mastermind overlord Kris for scanning and eventual rejection.  I wrote the joke down during the democractic primaries, and then I never did anything with it, not even draw it.  If you ask me now, the political ads nowadays are way more hilarious. Have you seen the "Maybe Obama is too awesome (the anti-christ)" ad?  I love that one. (If you've never seen it here's a link: http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Multimedia/Player.aspx?guid=4426915d-c44b-4f57-a819-582fa267e2c4 )
Now, before anyone makes some kind of insuation that I'm supporting Obama by finding McCain's negative ad hilarious, and it is, I'm not very much in support of either main party candidates, and you have to agree, if you just saw that ad without the ending part attached, it's basically a pro-Obama ad.  And the ending, with Moses thrown in there as a reference that even my religious friends can not make heads or tails of (An ad about the anti-christ, and at the end Moses, the saviour of the Hebrew slaves, splitting the waters to the white house apparently, in fact made zero sense to anyone I knew who IS religious. Besides like...really anti-semetic Christains.)

Anyway, good night.

Today's picture fiasco: Kanonsense
Perhaps I have too much time on my hands?

I don't have too much to say, but also, half of the internet is not working currently, so I feel like I have to pass the time.  I should really be writing, coding, and drawing, but instead I'd like to talk about random things on the internet as if I have something to say that might make sense to those who are reading.

At this point, I don't know whether I should go with serious subject A, serious subject B, or the randomness of me just typing random words on the keyboard, and finding out that they form a sentence which can be read and actually interpreted by one who can read English in a proper manner. The last one is usually turns out more interestingfor most people, but I also like to go about with my serious subjects every once in a while just because they are serious and I do want to talk about it, even if it's not something much.

So, I've been thinking about lots of things to write if we were ever given a chance to write our own chapter of the book that chronicles the efforts of the community of Project: Top Secret...the Klyfarthfa chapter -- has a nice ring to it, don't you think? -- would probably be full of complaints and hexes about the direction and lack of clean direction during the whole of the project.  I prefer to take a hands off approach to these kinds of things: I hate having to play people, play defensive conservative, play public relations, play politics.  Worse is how these 'group dynamics' affect decision making when the world is square and perfectly democratic.  Think back to those school body elections: rarely did you ever get people who weren't popular already into office, and as such most people treat it like an extension of a popularity contest.  The same thing can be said of the beginnings of Top Secret: people join up together, form 'voting blocks' and essentially keep the 'direction' of the game according to them and essentially keep 'those not in the cool group' from really gettting in and having ideas permeate in the community.  There's plenty of ways we've tried to relieve it, but the best way to relieve it is ultimately to call a direction and stick to it.  That means basically having someone to stick a direction and someone who can make the final call -- a director.

Well that's enough of that for today.  Let's talk about me writing a story. I really think that while it would be possible to expand upon the story later, and there's plenty to do with some of the characters that probably won't have a lot of screen time, but I don't think the main storyline is gonna actually be all that long...which is sad for me because the universe that it represents is actually pretty cool.

At some point you'll be seeing something about it. Sometime. Yes.

Another 6 months or so passed, without me talking about anything.  Not that anyone actually cares that much, but somethings happen and somethings don't happen and then I want to talk about them but then I don't make enough of an effort to make posts about my life everyday or every hour or every minute like I'm supposed to do on a blog because that's what blogs are for since they are supposed to be a log of your life that is store surreptitiously on the web for whatever reason that you want it to be stored on the web and then read by whoever happens to be searching for terms you put into your post like "awesome" or "oppossum" or even "awesome oppossum" which I'm pretty sure won't actually get any hits here but who cares really.

Short sentences.  Can't live without them.

Anyway, there's lots I threaten to talk about over the course of a day, sure.  I wanted to talk about the little things that happened to me over the week and give them the exaggeration they really needed wanted.  But, as it should, life makes you forget about all the little things and allows you to return to whatever big thing you feel like is harming your chances at a true amount of success.
Like, not being a good artist or not being able to post on a blog everyday like you are supposed to or not having people give you money or not being able to get a full heart for every character or not getting every picarat in the game or not abusing a pretty interesting game mechanic to play a song everyone else hates.

Anyway, as often is the case with my own blogging posts, I often come to the conclusion that everything will be fixed by watching something else later.  For the second in the list, the one about not being able to post, I can at least starve off that desire for another 3 month spin, thanks to the lovely eroge turned anime School Days, which if you haven't watched yet, you should, so you can call Makoto a jerk and blame Makoto for things that go wrong in the world.  Because, he's such a jerk.  And I hate him.

Anyway, the real beef of the anime is in it's ending, which takes a surprising turn and [*GIANT SPOILER TAG*] teaches everyone an important life lesson [/*GIANT SPOILER TAG*] about love.  If you haven't seen the ending of the show, you are probably missing out on it, a little bit.  It's pretty darn hard to watch the first time you see it, and I averted my eyes when I watched it, but I think I quickly got over it.  I must congratulate the director, or the storyboarder or someone on ending an eroge anime on what must be one of the worst endings in the game.  It's quite romantic, really.  It's certainly a better choice than an ending where everyone ends up ubiquitously happy, regardless of his choice or inability to choose.  Particularly when it repeats, over and over again, like a never-ending...you know.

Anyway, I think that's enough linkage.
See if you can pick out today's comic!

Suzuku! 

What? A holiday goes by without me making a post about nonsense?
Nonsense!

Why, here's your post right here, ready indeed to tell you all about things that you don't need to know if you wish to make sense of your life that exists in the non-nonsensical world of non-nonsense.  It's quirkiness and inability to reason wish to entertain and please the reader while making sure that it tells you as little as possible as it possibly can about things that might actually happen in the more non-nonsensical world that you might actually live in.  In fact, it's main job is to distract you while it steals the loose change from your change pocket from your wallet from your purse from your bag from your backpack from your soul.  Quite a devious thing, this post is.

Please don't look that way; the post is just simply trying to survive in this harsh consumerated holiday season where going to the supermarket -- hell, even the non-super market -- is a cold, cold trip through non-ice, and non-snow, only so that it can open the door of the market, to find that it has enough loose change to only buy pity, not even a smile.  This is when it pulls out its credit card and finds out that Visa really is everywhere you want to be -- because it was only dreaming that it was there at the market and found out it had collapsed in the cold, cold depths of its own well-heated room, underneath some blankets.
And then it starved to death.  Why else was it supposed to go to the market?

But, here it is, starved but still living, just trying to remove that penny from your change pocket, just so it might be able to pretend you dropped your change and give it back to you if you notice that it's all gone later.  You decided to take a look, in a book, along a reading rainbow, and you saw that poor post, who just stole all the change from your wallet collapse from undernourishment, and so you decided to open up your wallet and throw change at it; only to realize that it had collapsed under the weight of the change in your wallet already, since in the non-nonsensical world, the weight of a penny is about 1 gram, and the post only had the strength left to hold 1 ounce.
And then it starved to death.

I hope you are happy with your turkeys and your tofurkeys and your stuffing your mouths of everything and stuff.  I just realized that I haven't posted THAT comic yet, so I'll see what I can do later today...if I remember.  The grander exhaulteder capitainer of making things moreer, Kris, is gone for like, a day or two, off living it up somewhere and having fun, or not since I don't know if he'd rather be with his many consoles and machines.  I'm not officially on celebratory mode until Saturday, because really, no one has time to celebrate on a weekday, even if it was a holiday.

Now to disappear. Suzuku!

Hey everybody, it's a me, again back from another 2 month disappearance.   To be honest I was hoping to get some kind of drawing done and give it to you guys for your amusement, but for some reason it never occurred to me over the last few weekends to actually finish it.  And there, it sits on my desktop, its soul still, but barely, intact, waiting for the people to be places into the field of vision, the word balloons dangling in the air, waiting to fall and crush the speakers.

And surprisingly that was NOT a digression.  Usually I've hit one by now...you know, like this one, where I'm talking about digressions when I should be telling you how much lazier I am than the average bear during hibernation.  And it's fall too where I should be getting ready for the harvest festival and stuff...or at least stuffing my face with honey so I can survive the long torturous winter with no turkey, no presents, and no champagne.  And probably no special chocolate.  I also can't beat Yu Gi Oh because not all of the cards have been released yet...and I bet they are going to force me to take all the fricking exams...those things are hard man.  I don't remember crap, I just remember how to win.  And I'm missing like 25 cards in the entire game.

If that wasn't enough of a digression for you, you'll enjoy the rest of this piece. If you were fine with that amount of digression, then you will have to wait until I or the diety of Portals, Kris, decides to put something up for you to look at.  I mean, we have plans, but that which must be done is being done at the moment.  Hell, I might never get around to actually completing that comic.  You migt be waiting for a donkey to complete a horse race. A really stubborn donkey. With no presents.

Anyway, today's thoughts come from a recent reading of Gakuen Alice manga.  I've mentioned before that the anime was really good.  The apparent satisfactory level of drama, comedy, love and little grls was reached, not to mention that the story was actually really good for a show about a school mostly featuring elementary school students, even with special powers.  Of course, the anime ends in one of those really happy ways, but, while lots of things have been solved, a lot of kinks in the system still exist, and not all of it comes together in the end.  It results in a sort of satisfactory ending, despite it being one of those "To Be Continued" things that won't actually be continued since the main plot was resolved and all is peaceful in Hyrule Japan the National Foundation for Alice Institution.

Some disturbance in the force came when I started reading the manga and started noticing the little things that were taken out of the anime. I don't think all of them were censoring for the sake of the children -- some of them seem more about future localization issues -- but it is rather interesting to see what was taken out of the story, and in fact created a much more cheerful story overall.  This is nothing to, say, trying to turn Shadowstar Narutaru into a show for kids...

For instance, and this is definitely because of indecency, in the anime, Natsume and Ruka definitely get a peek at  poor Mikan's polka-dot panties, starting the lovely cycle of hate that characterizes the first arc of the book.  In the manga though, not only do we see Ruka actually peeking at her dots (in sort of surprise too), Natsume and Ruka actually manage to get her panties off of her before running from the two teachers.  That's definitely not in the anime.

Much more of Gakuen Alice's totalitarian nature is toned down in the anime.  They don't talk a lot about the black cat mask Natsume wears at the beginning in the anime, but you learn just how much of a punishment it is in the manga.  The anime glances over Tsubasa's star on his face where as the manga tells you all about punishment marks and how much of a troublemaker Tsubasa actually is.
Remember those letters from Mikan to her Grandfather that Narumi doesn't send in the anime? In the manga, they burn them. Not kidding.  And her grandfather is much more pale and sickly when he finds out about where Mikan has gone.

Other notable changes include Narumi no longer bleeding from the head all the time, the use of fictional rabbit currency instead of yen (yeah, they use yen in the manga), a larger pronounced difference between the star levels, and much much more noticeable scorn from staff for having the nullification Alice.

I don't know which one I like better: the manga certainly seems darker and more moody than the anime, but that might be because the anime was so overly cheerful (and the manga is just a normal level of cheerness).  I think I need more happyness then.

Suzuku!