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Circumstances

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:08:44 +0000

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 I at one point had a comic for you about this, but it's now so outdated that I don't think I ever even gave it to the mastermind overlord Kris for scanning and eventual rejection.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.

A near miss of loving

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:22:10 +0000

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.

Hibernating?

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:28:59 +0000

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!

Hey look it's an update!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:20:52 +0000

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 ;)

Site broke! Fixed now though.

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:52:18 +0000

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.

Mini update and sketch

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:13:48 +0000

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.

Non

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:04:17 +0000

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!

Stuff I've been doing

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:02:30 +0000

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.

Wow....sorry

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:51:52 +0000

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.

Alice +Censors

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:41:49 +0000

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!

Arrrrrrr.

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:14:32 +0000

I hope ye talked like a pirate today, 'cause it be Talk Like a Pirate Day!

So, first, I want to say, I really am working on doing something special, to fill up all these days of nothing, instead of a post every 2-3 weeks. But it's going to take some more time, to make sure it actually is going to work. So bear with me a little while longer (again -_-) .

Gurren Lagann. I just watched episode 25, and if you aren't watching this thing yet, you should have already watched it (thats how much you need to watch it). Along with episodes 24 and 25 being extremely excellent, and very Gainax, 25 has what could possibly be the most epic song in anime ever EVER. Think orchestral, but with their "fight the power" rap song they have going on, PLUS choir singing. It's amazing.

Anyways, Tokyo Game Show is this week, so here's to an announcement that actually surprises me!

Hey look, it's...that guy

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:23:04 +0000

Well, it's been a while, as usual, I feel bad that whoever's left is used to this kind of behavior by now...

Anyways I'm already kinda done with Pokemon for now, I was on it for a while since I had gotten my National Dex and the other 80% of the pokemon were available for me to catch...and then Luminous Arc and Rune Factory came out. Rune Factory is like Harvest Moon, which if you don't know is basically a farming sim, except now you can fight monsters too, and better yet tame them and make you do your farmwork. The prospect of making mutated ox-men pull my weeds is thrilling, to say the least. Luminous Arc is a tactical rpg, but it's interesting so far due to the large amounts of voice acting in the cutscense, and generally being fun, and all this fitting on the DS (oh and trpg's being my favorite genre of game, pretty much).

World's Strongest Disciple Kenichi is an anime about Kenichi, who's training at this dojo full of the strongest martial arts masters. At first this show was actually pretty bad, not so great animation, pretty cheesy, that sort of thing. But now, Kenichi is one of the better action shows on tv. This was especially true when Naruto Shippuden was bad, but since the last two weeks have been very good for Naruto (no doubt due to end of season episodes) things are evening out some.

The last thing is, I added another drawing into works. It's an older one, but I figured it was interesting as it's a picture of what I'll call "Young Pel". How young? Now now, it's not polite to ask a lady.

Sketches is getting a little neglected there huh? I'm going to have to do something about that.

Next time: The greatest anime that you've never seen, Gurren Lagann.

by the way

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:01:00 +0000

I'm not quite dead yet.

No, I haven't actually been typing anything here for like what, two months? No, really, I haven't been. I've been busy, working on my ability to do other things than work.

It's almost been a year since we really started working on this site, and it's been a year since I really thought I'd try. How do I know this? Because today is actually my birthday.

That's right, I'm now an year older, and soon enough, so will this website. I'm almost honestly surprised that the venture actually lasted more than a year and became somewhat fruitful for the great diety on my left, Kris.

This website however never went up until after October, which is why you guys missed out on some great times long ago, with the first comic I ever made...and it might explain a few things in the other comics too.

Since they are already printed, and they are still relevant, I put one of the birthday comics up just now. So enjoy. There are a few major points that are different this year compared to the comic: 1) the year is 2007, 2) I now sit in front of my computer at work instead of home, 3) I now get messages from GTalk instead of AIM.
Other than that, this year is pretty much exactly the same. Even where I only got 2 messages (except for grand-exahaulted Kuumalin, Kris, who pretty much found out it was my birthday from posting here.) and watched anime with lots of Ojeosina.

Anyway, I'm off to "celebrate" my birthday, as always.
This post isn't long. Oh well.
I should totally

Longer than I thought

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:02:40 +0000

-But for good reason. Getting active again here is proving to be tough, the least of reasons being the aftermath of moving everything from having that carpet redone. I got a job very recently, so adjusting to that has been a bit tougher than I thought, time-wise. I've also attached myself to a couple of projects, none of which I can mention just yet.

I'm trying to get myself back in the swing of things, comic-wise, but it's tough. I have a ton of pages just sitting on my hard drive waiting to be processed, it's quite daunting. Eventually though, once I get a rhythm going.

I did put up a new image though, it's the least I could do ;) . What it is and what it's for though, that'll have to wait a good while. Now that I'm back, expect updates to happen every week or so for now, at the very least a post.

Next time: Pokemon madness grips me, kenichi, and whatever else I can think up.

I'm still here but...

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:00:47 +0000

...theres been ALOT of things going on these past two weeks, preventing me from doing pretty much anything. I went to AX for the full 4 days. I enjoyed myself, but last year was better I think. Most of the merchandise in the dealer's hall was from last year, what's with that!? Also, the SOS brigade concert was sadly a failure. It wasn't the ladies fault, there was just too many technical problems and screw ups, and they tried to do things and force banter that really didn't go well.

On the other hand I went to the Oreskaband concert (they did a Naruto and a Bleach ending song, in case you're not sure who they are). THAT was crazy awesome, I'm so glad I went. BTW if anyone knows where I can get that shirt the staff for them was wearing, I'd be SO happy. (It's black with their giant skull logo on front, and it's a long long shirt with their name in japanese on the bottom-back in white letters)

So that was 4 days, what about the rest of the time? Well, one week I was with family I don't get to see very often (ie every few years). The other week, well, we decided to redo the carpet upstairs, so I have to empty the room, and since it's empty, we decided to repaint it as well. So that's what I've been up to. Fun stuff, huh. The good news is in about a week I'll be free again to draw stuff. The bad news is you have to wait that week. It also set my schedule for getting things done about 3 weeks back. But stay strong, hang in there, stuff will come eventually.

Progress Update

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:01:33 +0000

Remeber Portals is still on hiatus. And remember that thing about new site stuff in the meantime? It's still coming too. I do however have a new color piece for you over in works. I'm actually looking into some page designs right now for kadart, seeing what I can do. I especially want to redo the ugly "other art" page, and pretty up the comics page a bit. I'll keep you all updated as I progress on what I'm doing.

Love-love to the end.

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:44:26 +0000

This site has now reached the end of Portals book 1.
It's pretty amazing I think. Even though this is not the end of anything, it still feels like the exhaulted leader reached the end of something. And I haven't seen too many things through to the end in a while, so I think it's pretty cool that he got something that he wanted done.

Meanwhile I have my own set of concerning concernment. And as such I haven't been around to comment too much on things which randomly occur to me and make me believe I have something to comment upon. And you will probably not see me again for a while...maybe a comic or so in the next century?
What? That's too long?

I admit I haven't exactly been an explosion of activity lately and it's not like I have been working on something awesome behind the scenes in some crazy nefarious plan to take over the world which involves a giant gun the size of Texas in New Mexico capable of shooting down satellites from Major League Baseball.
I haven't. Honest.

I could tell what I have been doing for the last couple weeks, but in a way, it's a secret that's not yet ready to be sprung anywhere or at anytime soon. It hasn't even gotten my full attention yet, but I guess I'm working up to it soon, along with other things that require my parallel attention. And hopefully another milestone shall be crossed and I can have this happy feeling of accomplishment again.

Or maybe I should go level my char.
Well, I look forward to the fruits of work again.

The end of book 1, at last!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:36:25 +0000

Here it is! The last issue of book 1! Finally I've completed the first book, its about 200 pages of comic, 240 if you include covers and end panels. Sort of a mini-bonus this time, the end panel is in color, ooh. So what happens now?

Well, nothing actually.

To be more accurate, Portals is going on temporary hiatus. Kind of sudden to spring this on you guys I know, but a few things have happened, and my schedule isn't anywhere near where I want it right now. I'm not able to continue the comic at the pace I want it (which I'm sure you all figured out once we hit "every other week" status), and so I figured in-between books was a good place to take the break I need to get set up. Does this mean we'll have nothing at the site anymore?

Absolutely not the case. We'll still have sketches and works, and I believe I'll be opening up a subsection in each of those for non-Portals art. We'll also have the highly occasional Nyarbia comic still. I'm also going to use this time to make the site look a bit nicer, and maybe add a few things. I'm looking into adding a "feature articles" section to the site, but we'll see about that one still. The other thing I'm looking into is maybe a 4-panel or one page style comic, that runs on some yet-undetermined schedule that I can actually keep up with. So I'd say we have a pretty full plate despite Portals being out of commision. When can you expect Portals back? I'd say don't hold your breath for any time before August. It's a long time I know, and that depends on a few factors, but I want to make sure I'm at a place I can handle this, so I don't have to keep screwing you over with the every other week thing. I hope you guys will stick around still, I'll do my best to make sure you still like what we have coming up.

Update in about a week or so on what we're going to do exactly. See you then!

Next week is the last issue!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:13:58 +0000

Remember no issue this week, but next week is the last issue of the book! Nothing else to say, as I'm saving up for a giant post when the issue is out next week.

Who is driving site?

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 01:31:19 +0000

Bear is driving site! How can that be?

Today, and by today, I mean yesterday, and by yesterday I mean yesterday at midnight, the site went down and anyone trying to read or access the site was greeted with an application error.

That, as you might be able to see by using your non-super human powers of non x-ray vision, I have solved the fit, and everything should now be in perfect working order.

Issue 18 is up

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 29 May 2007 21:33:36 +0000

Only 1 more to go before the end of book 1! A little later than I was shooting for, but at least I made it on Tuesday like I said, right? I also plan to get up either a sketch or a work next week, so look out for that. I also have some important announcements about the site to make, but I'm saving that for when the last issue comes out, so you'll just have to wait ;) .

I know there hasn't been too much posts about what's been going on other than when I put something on the site, but that's because I can't really say what I've been doing just yet. If all goes well, I might be able to let you in on one of the things I've been working on.

I'm also going to be at Anime Expo this year, down in Long Beach, CA. I don't have a table in artist's alley, but the plan is to be at the convention from Saturday onwards so far. I might hang out at the tables of some of the people that I do know who have one, but it won't matter as most of you wouldn't know what I look like anyways :) If you do catch me down in the artist's alley and you recognize me from the site (using voodoo magic perhaps), maybe I'll give you a free drawing if you like, hehe.

Less within contact

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 29 May 2007 10:56:41 +0000

As opposed to the man on my left side, I really am pretty much dead. Don't worry; Phoenix Warrior Rika will revive to defeat the evil bad dude...that has no name I can think of. Even Rika is kind of a "Oh, that sounds good" kind of name, so I don't think that will stick. And no, this has nothing to do with the infinite infinities definitely being infinite, unless later I just 'accidentally' merge the two, a stage that gets closer and closer in my mind every night.
Mind you, I haven't written anything down in a while. Rika might be some other name completely by the time i get home.

A major holiday going by without a comic from me? This is madness. It isn't sparta though. If you'll noticed, there hasn't been a comic from me since april, and that's completely the fault of me and the lack of other people. I've thought of a few comic ideas I can put up (if I actually drew them of course), but instead I have been using my time doing things that either I shouldn't be doing, aren't productive, or things that other people should at least help with. I don't have any real obligation to do most of the things I have been doing, except maybe to get my hard drive to back to floating above 20GB just because. I wish my commitment to a goal was always as strong as it has been for the last couple of goals; despite the lack of help, I've been making process in my own way, and producing results past my own reasonable limits.
Just imagine, if I could dedicate myself to drawing some comics like that or if I wrote a story like that. It wouldn't be really high quality stuff, but I mean, you would see pages and pages of stuff every couple of days instead of one or two things every month or so. Imagine that. It's craziness in my own mind, but if I could do that consistently, I would feel pretty good. But, then again, I'd probably burn out in a few weeks.

Well, in the end, I don't really have that much to say. I'd like to tell you about a conversation I had with someone I know...Maybe later once I get it all down.

Long week - long weekend

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:50:52 +0000

Well it's been a long week, I know I didn't post anything, but this post isn't to bring more relief in the form of content, more like to let you know I'm not dead...

I'm going to be away for this entire weekend, camping = fun?, depends, usually it does, but it means I'll be back Monday night, which for you means Tuesday comic at the earliest. I don't really have much else to say, this week I've kind of been all over the place with things I was trying to do, but can't mention at this point, so I haven't been doing lots of anime watching or things like that. I guess we'll just wait another week and see what happens. Happy Memorial Day weekend, see you all Tuesday (probably).

Infinite infinities definitely definite

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:09:20 +0000

The title does mean something, and I am at liberty to tell you about what it means, but I don't think it will mean anything to anyone else except for me, so I think I will refrain from speaking about it for now.
Just know that the number of infinities is now definitely infinity. Or more. It's just that way.

I will tell you something new did happen this week though: There is now more music in my life. I have been telling his Eminence, Kris, about something I received this weekend (from my mom, which is odd, since it was Mother's Day, and I'm supposed to give more than I receive -- sad how that works out) which provided much entertainment to me for a few hours just looking at it.
I have in my possession what seems to be the most desperate fake of an iPod I have ever seen in my life. That is, it looks like an iPod Shuffle, in size, shape and color, like many copycats do. However, this one comes in a box designed to look like an iPod Shuffle box. I mean, if you took a look at it from about 50 feet away, you might not be able to tell the difference except that there are noticeably less words on this box than the iPod.
Just looking at it makes me smile.
But, perhaps the best part is that it is a, albeit really low Memory version, MP3 player; not something that I've had the pleasure of enjoying before.
So, today, and probably it will be today only, I walked home to the background music of Metal Gear Solid 3's main theme. I think it was the most awesome walking home I've ever had. I almost thought I was sneaking around, just by listening to that music. It was pretty cool when the music changed to mimic what I was doing...and then I started changing what I was doing to the music changes.

Life + Music is awesome.

Anyway, I'll see you later. Enjoy Portals 17

Issue 17 is out!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 14 May 2007 00:16:36 +0000

This week's issue is a 12 page special! Two whole pages over the usual 10, amazing. Anyway the cover is a b/w toned version of the color work I put up earlier this week. We're getting pretty close now, only 2 more issues. Hopefully I'll have worked out what I want to do by then, with regards to the comic schedule and releases.

Expect at least another post this week, if not actual stuff. But not until after Tuesday. It's just like that.

Special Preview bonus!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sat, 12 May 2007 02:07:44 +0000

So I was putting together the cover for this week's issue, and it came out nice enough that I wanted to color it, so I did, using Copics. That came out well enough that I decided to make that a Work, and so there's a new work linked from the sidebar, go check it out. The cover will probably be the same but screentone b/w instead of color.

sorry forgot to post!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 08 May 2007 23:32:16 +0000

Haha I forgot the reminder post this week. The reminder being that we're on bi-weekly schedule and there's no comic this week. Next week is gonna be a good one, so make sure you keep an eye out for it!

My evidence is irrefutable!

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 07 May 2007 00:45:27 +0000

Clearly, at some point in time long long ago, obviously not in a galaxy far far away, there was some kind of thing I was leading up to in the last two posts over a month ago. Needful to say, I have absolutely no idea what that point was, coming back to it a month later without making a thought in that direction. I lost my original bitterness and angerness towards the thing that I was complaining towards, and as such, the thought was lost.

So, as far as I know, all of my previous stuff was resolved, with no complaints mentally, physically, or digitally. And so, my brain resolved to find a new dispute so I could write something here, and have some kind of magical relevance or something.
I mean, I was like expecting something to happen. But not of my own doing. Someone else is to do it for me, and I am to take credit for it.

Something did come up. I, in fact, was going to go on about a certain thing of Pareto being used as theory that a grindless MMO would never work. I had thought about it in the shower and had an Objection! moment where I had finally pulled together my irrefutable evidence, and was about to slam my desk and point my finger at the witness and shake it at them. I could never do right to Mr. Wright though. He's just too awesome. Gyakuten is awesome.

In any case, as I was about to write this beast of a theory of statistical analysis used against statistical analysis, I had a different convo with someone else, about something different. It's not exactly something I can discuss in full terms at all since the context of the subject is rather complex and I don't really want to go into it that far as to spill my guts on the subject. We were talking about essentially the inefficiency of a previous project, of which the Nayrbian comics that you know and love and hopefully actually read come from. The efficiency of that project is pretty darn close to 0, and well...he doesn't think that's very good. And of course he's right -- I have still been looking for that project to ever be redesigned into something that might've been drawn and shown to audiences. The problems are many, and go into many facets of many things, so I'm not going to say anything here.

But, one of the things is that I'm actually very excluded from most of the project stuff. I don't write, I don't draw, and I think I crack a few jokes, so my impact is very minimal on the comic. The problem is that the people who are supposed to drawing and writing kind of ran away so, in the suggestions of what I should do about it, is that I should write the story.

Truly, it's something I'm thinking sternly about. I don't write stories that often, and rarely do I ever write something super epic that still has that good comic style. For me, jokes don't mix well with plot, and when I do try something like that, they aren't terribly well received most of the time. As much as I like to write a good story sometimes, I'm told that it's not really that great, or at least not as good as I'd like it to be.

Well, until another discussive discussion shows up, I guess I will draw a comic or something.
I haven't really been doing much recently because of...stuff, and that stuff isn't done yet, so yeah.

Matta na desu.

Better late I guess

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 01 May 2007 17:51:38 +0000

It's a bit later than I thought it would be, but issue 16 is out. Only 3 issues left until the end of book 1!

I've been pretty busy this week, dealing with ALL kinds of things, from interviews to the DMV. No fun at all. Most of it is over though, which is a great relief to me.

I've been playing the new Pokemon game for a bit now, I'm not that far due to time (something like 3rd gym), but I'm prepared to call it great. It's more or less like every other version of this game, except they put in just enough variants to make in interesting. There's one section in the game where you run around with an NPC partner and all your battles in the area are double battles, which I find really cool. My biggest gripe is I can't "random battle" with a real person online - you have to do Nintendo's not-so-well-thought-out friend code stuff to play against anyone online.

Last week I watched a pretty awful Gurren Lagann episode 4. Sorry to anyone out there who saw it too. I don't know what to say other than I hope 5 really makes up for it. I've also got the 3rd Naruto movie waiting for me to watch, which I heard is not really that good, except for the fights, which I guess better be good.

Oh yeah, wasn't Heroes yesterday like the most insane thing you've ever seen? "What a twist!"

comic this week...just not now

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:58:57 +0000

busy busy. comic coming tomorrow night or Tuesday morning.

Sketch++

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:57:17 +0000

I was going to do a sketch this week, but it sorta turned into a full-blown work. So, I guess its a bonus for you guys then (nevermind the fact that there hasn't been any art for a couple of weeks....). Anyways it's another "alternate costumes" pic, kind of like the 'karate will' one. Go check it out, link on the sidebar.

No comic, but other stuff

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:17:12 +0000

Hey everyone, just a reminder that there's no comic this week. Been having somewhat of a hard week. On a completely unrelated note, I'm available for work if anyone needs any artwork :). Also, sketch this week hopefully.

So I got Super Paper Mario when it came out, and I'm on the third world. It's really awesome. Even more so given the distinct lack of "killer apps" on the system at the moment. It's a sidescrolling style Mario this time, but with some rpg elements, like levels and abilities. The key is they dont overdo it so you dont have to access the menu all the time during what's really a platformer game. The levels and situations are creative, and the art design is beautiful. Certain things I thought would be odd, like pointing the wiimote at the screen for information, turn out to not ruin the game flow. I do wish there was a single button in-game function i could do to switch characters, kind of rotate through them, but it's not too far away normally that it becomes a gripe. I can't wait to get further in the game to see what some of the later bosses are like. So far theyre really easy, but somewhat interesting in that they fight fairly differently.

I'm bringing up Brave Story now, even though it's quite old, because I just remembered about it. I actually forgot what I was going to say about it already...but anyways its got great animation, good plot, and awesome fight scenes, so go watch it.

I forgot mostly because I saw Hot Fuzz today. Hot Fuzz is a movie from the same guys who made Shaun of the Dead, which if you haven't seen it yet you should do so as soon as possible, even sooner maybe. Anyways Hot Fuzz is completely an action movie, though it's also a parody of them. Great movie for the most part, some weird pacing here and there, and the ending was cool but kind of off I think. Overall, however, it's worth seeing and I highly recommend it.

Next week - Pokemon, no time for console games, and a new comic, finally!

After long delay, Issue 15 is here!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:39:25 +0000

Finally it comes, issue 15 is out. We're reaching the climax soon, hopefully it all works out. This week expect a sketch too, I owe you all at least that much for the two weeks of nearly nothing.

Been watching more new anime lately, just saw the second episode of Hayate the Combat Butler. The manga was hilarious, but it was one of those mangas where if they made an anime you'd expect it would be a low budget, cheap laughs kind of thing (see Kage Kara Mamoru). Not so with Hayate, as it turns out. First, there's nice animation, which once you look at who made this, is expected. It's mainly a company that does animation in-betweens from the looks of it, but the worked on Blood+, GitS: Stand Alone Complex, and Mushishi, among others, and all of which have great animation.

Second there's the comedy. It's a really funny anime, and the second episode is funnier than the first, so things are looking good. The narrator character is hilarious, the characters occasionally break the 4th wall (but do it right), and Santa is awesome(You'll see when you watch...). There's only two episodes out right now, so things could go south still, especially the animation quality, but right now things are looking great.

Another anime I've started watching is Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. This one's gonna be special, I know it, 'cause it's made by Gainax. Other than the of-course-awesome animation, it has awesome character designs and ridiculous robots, as well as crazy action. It's also funny, so it's got everything I like. It's even already starting to show signs of that deep character moments that Gainax seems to like doing, where everything goes from hilarious to serious and deep in a moment. The other crazy part is I heard this is going to be 26 episodes, which is just insane if you've seen the first two. This thing can still go anywhere, quality wise. If it keeps up then they either have mad tricks or mad budget, either way this whole thing is mad and you should watch it.

Update on Nodame Cantabile, it's gotten better since the first episode, as one would hope. In fact, out of all the shows I've been watching, it's been the most consistently good. That is to say, the level of comedy and animation quality and plot I expect from the show is consistent every time, in a positive way. I'm very happy with it, and I hope it continues through the rest of the season.

Finally there's this Korean animation, some of you might have heard of it, called "Aachi and Ssipak". I haven't actually seen all of it, but I have seen one of the main action scenes. Despite what the title is, this actually has some of the most ridiculous action animation you'll see. I won't link to the clip I saw, because I'd rather have seen the whole movie first, and so I'd rather you do the same. So, go find it somehow, and watch it.

Later, sketch, maybe some color art, DS games, Mario, and a belated talk about Brave Story.

Failure to comply

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:15:52 +0000

Turns out I won't have things ready this week, they just weren't, well, ready. Next week will definitely be a comic though, it's almost done now, but I want to post it just next week instead of late this week. Also very important, because of the way things are going right now, the comic schedule will be every other week until further notice. Still Mondays, just every other Monday for now. I'll still do my best to give some art as much as I can though. I also want to do something with this site, but I'm not sure what yet. Anyways I'm real sorry about the delays, I'll try not to do it so often so don't beat me up over it okay?

Delay Buster'ed

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:28:47 +0000

Comic update gonna be a little late, expect it late night Monday, or before noon Tuesday. Also more about what's going on this week when update gets posted.

Evident Lack of Control

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:00:17 +0000

This will be a first for anyone who bothers to read; this is a second post in a single week, truly a sight to see, possibly to forsee, and brought to you by the mighty powers of randomization of topics and lack of sleep.
Also, by being lazy and not lazy at the same time. So in fact, this post is being brought to you by a contradiction. Your universe is exploding at this very moment, please hang on to the nearest piece of reason. Make sure to assist anyone reading this with you as we spiral out of control.

Let me explain this to you before we continue. Two days ago, the post below told you of wonderous happenings coming later that day, which consisted of some kind of magic occuring because you were reading something that I somehow displayed to you magically and I you were magically happy, thus magically completing the magic circle that magically magically appeared by magically magical powers. Magic.
Such a magical thing did not occur. The last part of that day was for some reason (and no raisin) spent in the discussion of things with myself, whilest doing nothing for hours at a time, and otherwise being lazy. That's not to say that the comic didn't exist, alas, it existed much before any discussion about it arose, and I delayed it's release by being lazy. And then when I said that it shall be coming, again I delayed the release by being lazy, and so an entire day past of being lazy, me barely even thinking that I needed to put a comic.

Yesterday, the comic did go up, as you will see in lovely bar to the right, thanks to the grand exhaulter overlord to my left, and as such, I should've edited my message to show that I cared. But this also did not happen, because I was being lazy last night as well, despite the lack of sleep. I did know that the comic was up and I didn't do anything. I had planned to edit the original message and so save everyone a lot of reading and me a lot of typing, but it turns out that I'm too lazy.
So instead I wrote all of this. Kind of a weird way for someone who's been so lazy to finally end up writing something, huh?

Anyway, I figure that I should at some point continue where I left off on the last post...it has something to do with journeying and MMOs and how much nothing has changed and really will continue to completely not change....or some kind of thing like that, I really forgot.
I think I probably ran off topic somewhere. I do that you know.

My original point had something to do with what game design seems to be trying to feed people recently, something to the point of taking any kind of game and trying to put it to the theme of massively multiplayer onliness. MMOs have slightly been expanded from their genre as people search for magical ways to make their favorite genre and game style into a MMO, and diverge away from the standardness of faking a different style in a RPG or faking the massiveness in Arena style play, or faking the multiplayer by making it pretty much just you doing stuff without any real interaction. In dropping the roots to try and fly away on its own, some designs achieve some interesting apps, and break walls...and stuff. (Though I must say, in the world of MMOs that I know of, no one has really ever broken stride.)

Dropping your roots can be dangerous though, and I see it in people's eyes when they dream of the design of their dreams. I see it in my own eyes when I really think about something and I happen to be staring into a reflective surface. The dangerous thing about dropping your roots is leaving something good behind. I dont know about you all out there, but when I think of MMOs, one of the first qualifications is persistence. The world itself does not necessarily have to be persistent; arena games know that well enough and take advantage of it by offering streamlined playing through instancing and direct connections. Arena games are some of the few MMOs that can still be played over 56k, which is to their advantage. What persistence am I talking about? Character persistence. Now character persistence is a little bit more grand of a concept than avatar persistence. Avatar persistence means you look the same no matter where you go; that's something most games achieve in some regard, but it's not exactly something so necessary. Character persistence (to me anyway) means that whatever you are, whatever you become, and whatever you do, it'll stay with you. And it's not like win ratio or just pure stats; you need to keep your fine tuning, your little things that you've done to your character. Your character is your story, albeit a pretty bland story, but your past doesn't rewrite ever, and your previous story, abilities, and such aren't immediately thrown out once your somewhere else.

It seems that more and more, there are ideas where a large portion of it seems to be throwing you out into randomness, where your previous incarnation no longer matters and only what is ahead is any consolation to your previous onsalught.

In any case, this ends here. It has gone on far too long after all.
And should you ask, no, I didn't get to what I wanted to talk about.

Journeys and mmoology

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:33:02 +0000

I'm putting myself under a lot of pressure this week, knowing very well that the reason for it isn't all that significant, or even a realistic concern I should have, yet I felt the need for my brain to go into 'academic survival mode', which is slightly different from normal 'survival mode', in that there is no need to struggle to stay alive. In fact, academic survival mode seems to be something towards the opposite end of the spectrum, like those Japanese workers who (used to) work so hard that they would literally die after working so hard. I think somewhere along the way I am trying to do something so difficult that not even a caveman could do it. Or a psychiatrist for that matter.
And my reward is calculated at approximately slim-to-none multiplied by the chance that one could actually travel back and forth in time simultaneously multiplied by the off-chance that I'll have drawn something by the end of the week.
Oh crap, that last one is a 1, isn't it. Damn.

As per the grand-exhalted-master-to-the-left's words, I do have something for you, just give me until after it's dark out to put it up. Somehow you'll either have a good time enjoying it or a hard time understanding it, or some kind of superposition of both. It's like a Schroedinger's cat problem that isn't about a cat in a box connected to an absolute death device. Basically you'll only know what state you'll end up in if you attempt to read the thing and entangle yourself with my not-so-brilliant sense of humor. And I'm sure you'll love that, like flies like being stuck in spider's webs.
I wonder if flies get stuck in Spider-man's webs.

Now, let's move on to a furtherance topic: journeying. And not just any journeying, it's a journey through a landscape that's populated by people who look like you, who don't look quite like you,and who are the female counterparts of you and your male dopplegangers, while the landscape itself is filled with trees, grass paths and well place mountains and mountain ranges that have only a few well-placed mountain passes for one to go between and go to a different area of the world. It's a place of great beauty, if you've spend $900 on a graphical device which stimulates the neurons in your optical nerves through techniques that cause you to believe that this journey is far more realistic than you ever would've thought. It's place filled with people who, except for looking like you, have all the similar qualities of being an actual humanoid creature who cares and socializes with others, and requires food and sleep to live.

I think I'll stop there since I'm sure you've gotten the point already; journeying isn't what it used t' be in mmo-town. Actually, I can't say that it has ever been what I thought it would ever be. The thought that you can create a completely unique character in any MMO is pretty much non-existent. There are some who come close, and I think we'd ought to emulate things like City of Heroes with it's giant number of character creation choices before the game even begins (many of them inconsequential to anything but having a story), but you are bound to run into a clone, or some fully existing character at some point, and not always by random chance.
Our generation's imagination seems to be entirely intertwined with source: that's to say that a good deal of what we think is imaginative is simply a play-on or a copy-of or a spin-on of something already in existence. That's not to say this a necessarily a bad thing, and it's also not to say that there's necessarily an alternative; I'm sure most people imagine things like that. The problem is that we have too much source now, and in some ways we promote this kind of thing by deciding on the limits of popularity in many new ways that provide instant communication in the world.
There are less ways for people to take chances because you may just find yourself scrutinized the next day, even if your chance-taking was a successful inquiry.

Once again, I've gone off-topic too long so I think I'll stop here. I'll be putting something up at some point so watch for it.

Ok I got nothin'

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 00:54:09 +0000

So, no comic this week. No three in a row, third time's a charm thing going on. No worries though, this one was pretty much planned. There was a lot of things to take care of this week all of a sudden, and I already knew I wouldn't have an issue ready. I didn't even have time to post about it, as you can see.

We do have some things coming this week to kind of make up for it, maybe. I finally got the little green website theme up, not much there though. Really its just like the gray and red themes, a palette swap if you will. I will have a sketch up tomorrow though, and maybe something more later in the week. Kly will definitely have something for you this week as well.

Issue 14 Now Playing

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:58:48 +0000

Wow two weeks in a row! Amazing! I hope I'm not spoiling you all by attempting to update on something resembling an actual schedule...

We're quickly approaching the end of book 1, and I'm still deciding what to do. Most likely there will be a significant break in between. It's still a little ways off so we'll see how it turns out.

I finally have time to watch anime again, and so I've been watching Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou. It's a pretty ridiculous action series, and by ridiculous I'm referring to the quality. The animation and art are top notch every episode, and the fighting hasn't been a let down at all. I was (and kind of still am) expecting it to go downhill soon, as I have bad memories of a certain other series *looks at Tenjou Tenge* but every episode so far proves me wrong. I'm happy about this of course, I'd love for the entire series to rock all the way through, but we're only on episode six, so there's a lot that remains to be seen.

Speaking of anime that's too early to tell, Naruto is on pretty thin ice here with me. I don't want to turn all of you who don't watch the subbed version off to it already, but I'm watching this expecting a certain level of quality - at least on par with "pre-filler" Naruto. What I've seen so far, 5 episodes, isn't exactly filling me with hope. Sure episode 1 and 2 we're wonderful, especially that scenes-to-come section in the beginning of episode 1, but those scenes aren't here yet, and won't be for a very long time. The animation quality has already begun to drop off, though honestly pre-filler Naruto gets like that often, it's just that now it's harder for them to get away with it. Scenes have been extended with an amazing amount of filler, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. And perhaps most annoyingly at the moment, is that they're basically on a bi-weekly schedule. Every episode preview it's no Naruto next week, with some excuse or another (you'd think I was running it or something <<). I don't care if there's one hour specials every 2 episodes or something, they've had like 2 years to prep this thing, 2 years of really really crap Naruto to come back and redeem themselves, and right now, it just doesn't hold up. I haven't given up hope yet, because its only episode 5 after all, and there's some real good stuff (in the manga at least) that will be happening in Naruto by mid or end season or so, so there's still things to look forward to, but right now my opinion isn't exactly high. I really hope it turns around though, because Naruto is pretty much the only series I watch regularly and without fail, and will make time to see it if need be. Shame to let that go if it comes down to it.

Over the mountain

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:44:55 +0000

I'm finally done with the near insurmountable....mountain that is finals. No picnic, but the relief when they're over is like no other. Now that they're through I can get some things on this site done that I've been meaning to for a while. In the meantime I put up a sketch, this time of Vern. He's kind of a little younger looking here, maybe it's him in the workshop a couple of years ago or something.

Enjoying my break now, I started watching this show called "The Whitest Kids U Know" on Fuse. Don't worry if you don't know what station Fuse is, most people don't (it's some music channel around the mtv/vh1 area if you cable/satellite), but the show is hilarious. It's a sketch comedy show, not like SNL or MAD TV, but more like Kids in the Hall. Coincidentally, they're both Canadian, as far as I know (and also coincidentally you probably haven't heard of this show either). It's seriously funny, and I find the humor has this vague touch of Monty Python to it, in the style of sketches and type of jokes (but more modernized and usually more crass). I should also mention that it's not really for kids, but if you're not like 10 or something it's funny stuff.

So anyways, next week most likely I'll have some kind of site update (probably just another template color thing, while I figure out what else I want to make). Green anyone?

It's pronounced like 'Khan'

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:18:52 +0000

As in Genghis Khan, or KHAAAAAAANNN!! That's how you say Ran's name, fyi.

Issue 13 is now up, and things are looking good for next week's issue to come out, actually making this a weekly comic for once. Not much else to say right now, I have one last final on Tuesday, so I'll probably celebrate by putting up something either that day or the following day.

Quick sketch up

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:42:03 +0000

I don't really have anything to say with this post, other than I made a quick sketch and put it up. Kind of a wasted post really, but we don't really have an rss feed for the art updates yet, so just a necessary evil for now I guess.

Self-Consciousness and precure

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:45:35 +0000

Before I forget, for all the pi-ous, happy pi day. Be sure to grab your pi" of the pie (which is not very much on an 8" pie). If your local mathematics clubs or math department doesn't at least mention pi day, then it's not really a math department.

(Edit: It turns out the words I'm looking for is self-conciousness and that self-concious is not the same thing, keep that in mind; I don't think it changes the meaning all that much).
To begin, let me all take you back to one post ago.
I think somewhere in the middle I told you something about being self-conscious, I don't really remember, as long as you know what the heck I'm talking about. Then I got to thinking, self-conscious, in a way, does mean the same thing as being self-aware. Self-awareness makes us humans able to realize the fact that we know something as opposed to just simply knowing something and not being able to question that which we know. You've probably heard this term somewhere near where people discuss things like Artificial Intelligence and robots who will eventually kill all the humans on the planet, right after we've destroyed 95% of the planet and now rely on the robots to restore the planet to more healthy conditions, because only robots can survive the 300 year time jump without a time-machine like that...ne, Robo?

Anyway, why do robots always tend to go berserk right after they figure out that they know that they know things? I think it's an oddity. Even if we logically should be wiped out, if they are really self-aware, then they shouldn't contend to simply use their logic and be done with it. A self-aware being would use logic to consider their logic before doing something drastic. What we have going berserk is a bunch of robots using their logical instincts, which we programmed into them yesterday to totally go berserk on us because we are totally illogical as a species. In any case, we would probably eventually be ruled out as a surviving species anyway because, you know, we just destroyed 95% of the planet, and the robots probably aren't too happy about the mess they have to clean up on aisles 7 through 98.

In any case, self-aware robots are one thing, but would a self-aware robot eventually be self-aware enough to be self-conscious? Would a robot eventually be as shy as any boy or girl, would they become paranoid against all their logic? (Remember that song Paranoid Android by Radiohead?) Would their eventually be a robot like HMX-12? Well...no, I suppose the last one would be too hopeful. Only someone like Hideki or Hideyoshi could make something like that. Not that they would.
Anyway, I have no reasoning for this line of questioning other than to mention that self-aware is a lot like self-conscious. Go write a book about it sometime.

Now, after all that techno-psycho-babble, I bring you my second thoughts on pseudo-sucking things that may or may not be sucking back. Today's bounty is that known by the shortened-by-one-syllable-in-english name, precure, also known as, Pretty Cure, (and fully by Futari wa Pretty Cure). Now keep in mind that Pretty Cure has spawned children in recent times, and I haven't caught the more recent incarnations of the show, so maybe, my thoughts don't totally coincide with yours. Even then, my thoughts probably don't coincide with yours anyway.

Here's the deal: Pretty Cure is one of those Fighting Mahou Shoujo shows. I make this distinction of fighting because most of the time, in magical girl shows, you see a bunch of magic been thrown around and they fly through the sky shooting at each other like airplanes in WW1 with no targeting and bombs that are actually thrown out of the plane by the guy in the back (the 'bombardier')...and sometimes you just see them standing around, posing and talking and then using some special move that kills everything.
That's not to say that there aren't plenty of things that are within the realms: they certainly still use sure-kill moves as often as every episode, sometimes many times in one episode; there's still like some random moral that is tossed around in every episode, be it friendship or being yourself, or gathering confidence or something; they still play a transformation sequence every episode; they utter lots of lines that one would never say normally; they call themselves by their 'special' names when transformed (at least 90% of the time); they have cute mascot animals that they use to transform; I'm sure there's more I'm missing here.
But I guarantee you don't see too much fighting like this in these kind of shows. Heck, the animation for their fight scenes is pretty damn good in Pretty Cure, one of the higher forms of animation in recent times. And they actually fight. I mean, they are throwing punches and kicks in rapid succession, doing spin moves in the air that Dhalsim would be jealous of. You know why they have frills on their battle costumes? Air Control, bitch. (That's my reasoning, by the way, not theirs.) The fighting alone would give this show the edge over many.
The show features some nice plot points and details as well: besides the classic "the evil people aren't really evil" thing, there is also the fact that there is no "Handsome guy" who comes and saves them every once in a while, weilding some kind of object that somewhere means beauty that is of destined relationship to one of the girls. The two girls have to transform together to becomes their alter ego forms, and they also use attacks that only work if they are in proximity, something the bad guys actually took advantage of once or twice. The girls have realistic recoil on their attacks, and no one becomes sporadically overpowered (not even the baddies). There is lots of punnage in the dialogue and the ending songs are good (they remix classical music...totally awesome for me). The morals that they throw around in the show very rarely actually affect the fighting scenes (like, the evil people won't be specifically targeting that one moral that episode to prove a point).
I mean, it's not like there's nothing wrong with the show. There are problems with some of it being a bit too dumb sometimes, but I mean, it is for little girls after all. Give them a break. If you can't handle shows that are made with little girls in mind, I advise you to stay away from this one probably. This one I will say is a choker. So choke it down, and enjoy.

Oh, by the way, thanks to pi day, I really don't feel like making sure I make something for St. Patrick's (which is also coming soon). So, if you were expecting something then (and even I was expecting it--I have a mini-joke ready) you can go blame the mathematicians. You know you want to.

Oh that's right

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:07:29 +0000

It just occured to me that I haven't posted this week yet. Remember there's no comic this week. I was going to post Sunday night but the site was moving extremely slow, as it tends to around 1am or so. Anyways I'm posting now, with a final exam tommorow as well as the day after, and a project due on Friday. That's why there's no comic btw.

This weekend I did find time in the morning to go watch 300 though. If you haven't seen it, you must see it. It's extremely extremely violent though, so don't take little kids or whatever. Other than that, there's no choice, there's no excuse, this movie is too full of awesome to not go through your eyeballs into your brain.

I've put up some more artwork on my deviantArt page, unrelated to Portals. I'll probably have a couple of other things up there by the end of the week too. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll have something to put on here as well.

Now it's back to studying while ignoring that whirring sound my head is making (akin to hard drive failure).

Issue 12 and reminder

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:32:01 +0000

This post is late, but Issue 12 of Portals is now up since this morning, check the update flag. Also a reminder that there will not be a comic next week as it turns out. Project due dates just run that way.

I bought this hard drive a few weeks ago, I still havent installed it. It just sits on the floor, in its box next to my computer. I really should put it in, as I'm running out of space at a pretty decent pace, but I just can't find a good time to shut down my computer and do it. I keep it on all the time, and just put it on sleep when I'm not using it. I don't even restart it unless something requires it to. The only time it gets turned off generally is if I'm away for a few days, the power goes out, or it crashes. The reason being most of the time I have something on that I need to do the next day, so I don't want to turn off my computer and forget. One of these days I'll get around to it, probably when I'm forced to because of lack of space.

Made something after all

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:41:40 +0000

I really didn't think I would get around to drawing anything for this week, but lo and behold, I bring a new 'works' for you! It's actually kind of a sketch gone overboard, and I decided I liked the way it came out so much, I'm going to do a series of them for the main characters.

Next week's comic will come out on time, I'm in the middle of drawing the cover right now. Next week looks like it might be another 'skip week' however, and the biggest one yet. I might start preparing some things for that week if I don't have the comic ready, that way at least I'll have something ready to go that time. I don't really like this every-other-week schedule, but for now it's necessary, and honestly it's probably better right now given the traffic to this site. I'll keep pressing on however - 10 pages a week ain't no slouch. Tell your friends, we're out there.

I haven't a thing to say.

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:44:25 +0000

I'd just like to say for what it's worth, Thenayrbia is practice too. Yeah...practice...(Stop glaring at me.)

There's nothing that pains me more than saying to myself, "Hey, I should post about that..." only to have forgotten about it by the time I actually do want to post. And yet, this occurs frequently, on the order of several times a day now.
Okay, I lied. My stomach pains me more than that, but that's completely besides the point and beyond meaning of the expression.

Now considering that I post at about the frequency that a mammoth moves whilest frozen in a block of ice multiplied by the chance that I essentially have 22 hours in a day to post (remember that whole 1 hour per sentence thing), this means that you, the wonderful viewers, see approximately 3% of what I actually wanted to write in a post. Maybe 5% if you are lucky and it was something that had happened that day and my brain gets enough nutrition to remember what I had wanted to write during the post.

Otherwise you get one of these; a message so chock full of odd strung together sentences that happen in a randomized context within range of meaning without loss of definition and surprises. Yeah, one of those.

In any case, after you've time to purge the introductory paragraphs of the introductory paragraph (which I suppose is this paragraph) from your mind, I suppose you await the beef of the post, only to find out that it's not beef but lightly seasoned lemon chicken. Or fried Tofu. Or Inari sushi. Or maybe just the rice. In any case, the major portion of this post will be my description of somethings that I've had the pleasure of enjoying in my mind for the last week or two. So enjoy my enjoyment of the weeks behind, or at least, what I can remember of them.

For one thing, I still have trouble believing that I'm inconsequential to the people that I pass by everyday.
I know it's not in their minds to do or say anthing about me, especially when I'm passing by, but for some reason I have extremely self-concious thoughts. Im that much closer to being a hermit. Already on the first step to paranoia.

Number 2, can you believe that there was an American Anime Awards? Apparently it happened last Saturday, and I happened to catch the news on Japanator. It's not like it's a bad thing that it happened (despite the poor choices of nominations that people will be quick to point out and burn at the anime cross), but it's a questionable result. Some of the awards are inconsequential to me, but the categories themselves are confusing: Best Actor and Best Actress, then Best Actor and Actress in a Comedy? I know they make similar distinctions in the Academy, but why only Best and then Best in Comedy? They don't give special consideration to other things like action or drama, so why make the disitinction only for comedy? Maybe it's because the comedy section is distinctly lacking?
Akira should've totally won best movie. Because it's like 20 years old and it still looks awesome. It is unforgiveable that they would not have something better to put in the slot besides a Pokemon movie and a Inuyasha movie (burn me all you want, that opinion isn't gonna change), but I'm sure they would've gotten a Miyazaki in there if they could've. I'm sure there's some legal nonsense of why they couldn't. Certainly, at least, good ol' Jean-Luc would've pwned the Best Actor category (he was in Nausicaa).
Maybe it's a bit impertinous for me to be like this -- they are trying after all -- but maybe, they need better nominators?

Third, check out fricking Google SketchUp. It's so fricking awesomely simple for a 3D modeler, I barely know what I'm doing and I'm getting decent results. After looking at other modelers, I can safely say that SketchUp is probably the fastest and easiest way to get a model made, though that's to say nothing for real applications of models; I'm sure other things are much better at doing stuff like animations and otherwise...but for me, a user of the glorious MSPaint, and a man who adores simplicity in getting started, this is right up my alley.

Fourth, this post was amazingly long, so I'm gonna stop it here. I was gonna bring you some more review of things that become of paradoxical anomalies due to counterance of sucking, but I'll leave it here for now.

Engulfed in work-type stuff

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:05:47 +0000

I totally forgot I had a bunch of things to do these past days, so when I said I'd post something I didn't realize I had all this stuff. I'll try to get something up before the actual comic update next week, but you know how it goes around here...

With that out of the way I'd like to talk a bit about Portals, and why it exists. Portals was designed from the ground up as a web comic, to be printed in the future. This is why it's 10 pages per issue, and it's in the page format that its in. It was also made so it doesn't have too much action, but enough so it's interesting. It's also finite. It has an end, however far off it is, its definitely going to end, and end within 1000 pages most probably.

The reason? This comic is practice. That's right, it's not a cop out excuse or anything, but this comic really was made from the ground up as practice. I've never written anything of this length before (if you've been reading it I probably don't have to tell you that), and I generally need to get better at drawing, so this was made to get me into shape for the comic I was originally going to do. My real webcomic idea. What is it? I can't tell you. Will you ever get to know? Hopefully. What I have in mind is a little more than a webcomic, so it should be more interesting than this.

Anyways, since I had nothing for you guys, I thought I would give you that little something as small consolation. Look for another update to the site itself by St. Patrick's day or so.

It's happened again.

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:18:22 +0000

I'll state right now, there won't be a comic this week. Projects time has come up again, and once more it's too much to deal with and prepare the comic for this week. And once again I'll do my best to deliver some other stuff for you guys during the week to make up for it.

Issue 11 up

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:51:09 +0000

Things are gonna start picking up now, hopefully this gives you all a good indication of that.

Not much else to say right now, kind of tired. Post later...maybe, I guess.

A Source of Imminent Failure

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 12:25:50 +0000

Last night, Kris found out through various means that the RSS feed on the main page wasn't working. Since we hadn't changed anything with the RSS feeds for a while, it must mean that the problem existed since we moved from the other server, and we probably broke the feed when we moved the server.

This means that the problem had existed without us knowing for at least 3 months. Sorry, for any inconveniences that may have caused. I'd normally explain the reason behind the problems, but this time, it's mostly due to just overlooking stuff.

Oh, and Happy Chinese New Year too.

Happy Almost Late Valentines Day!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:00:04 +0000

Well almost forgot to make a Valentine's Day post. Here it is.

I made a couple of updates to the site too. First I added a new theme for Valentines Day...or pink I guess. Anyways it's in the upper left, the little heart box, though I don't really imagine many people actually keeping that theme, once u see it lol. I also added a new 'Works' over to that section. Just a little color sketch for Valentines Day, featuring Alex and Miles. Finally I just fixed some parts of the css that were broken before. It also kind of bothers me that the Valentine's theme I made is slightly misaligned in firefox, like by one pixel, but because of the way ie7 renders that dotted border, I don't really have a choice right now, so blah on ie.

I'm probably going to add a green theme or something soon, since its one of the main colors I wanted to add but just never got around to.

Pink with pink all over.

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:35:50 +0000

It's that time again. That time indeed. It's around that time when one of those saints (and his patrons, whatever professions or status they may be)
gets his own day and we don't clearly remember what the original meaning of it is, but we make our own meanings of it by buying lots of stuff, giving out things to people we like and decorating various objects in garish colors.

That, my friends, is Christmas, which was two months ago.

Err...today is Valentine's day, one of those days where everything is just overtly pink, because the color pink somehow symbolizes either love, girliness, or good ol' saint valentine. So go put on your pink suits, and adorn your head with pink glasses, while wearing pink shoes and socks, and walk down the street and be stared at like some kind of perverted stalker, expressing your love through the power of being pink, swinging around your decked out pimp cane, wooing all the girls on the way down. Though I hear pimp canes are purple, not pink. Oh well. I now give you time to go press that heart in the upper-left hand side so you may continue with this website in all it's pink glory.

Even if you don't know me, you probably know well my Valentine's archetype: one of those persons whose never actually received a real valentine, one that was given to you after your time in Elementary school where everyone was filled with obligation on Valentine's day after making bags for an entire week to hold all the cards you were going to get from people you didn't know and the teacher (even your friends gave you standards most of the time), and doesn't really know why people bother to think about Valentine's day as an actual day of something, and doesn't bother to really celebrate it by giving out cards or anything. Oh, and doesn't have someone to give it to specifically, so if he did he would either be flirting with people or just doing it out of obligation. If I were in Japan, I'd be one of the many boys who would open their shoe lockers to the sad, sad look of one devoid of anything but shoes and air, probably not even getting one out of obligation -- I'd be unlikely to get one of those either. To be honest, I'm kind of glad I'm not in Japan: on White Day (March 14) I don't think I could take giving chocolates to anyone, even obligatory ones -- and all the girls will slowly exclude me from anything that I want to do, until I become an outcast in the society known as "gakuen".

In any case, before you start pestering me about things like pity and mocking, you should know that Valentine's day usually takes a pretty harsh role in Nayrbian life; at least for Badguy and me anyway. Goodguy seems rather indifferent. Ever since a certain incident, every other year, we basically have to tie Badguy to a tree with really good rope that he can't bite through, and keep away from him the entire day, lest he start doing things like begging and pleading or killing and destroying. This usually keeps the world safe for another two years, and Badguy from acting on all those grudges that make him go crazyevilcrazy.

Why every other year , you ask? Well, the first time we had to do it, every time I looked at him through the window he always looked really, really sad. And when he noticed I was looking at him, he started making puppy-dog eyes and welling up tears. Mind you, his hands were tied and he never took his shades off. He was making puppy-dog eyes through the shades, that's how bad it was that day. So, we instead let him off every other year, and, since he was tied up the year before, his usually a lot happier to celebrate being free on Valentine's then to go and add to his jars.

By the way, this happens to be a free year.

I don't have much to add today. I think I'll end it here for fear that the front page may be about to explode.

I also recently discovered that this site hates firewalls. It was an unexpected twist.

Over halfway

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:20:15 +0000

We just got past the halfway point of book 1 with this issue. I'm more or less recovered from being sick now, so I guess you can expect another update or two this week with something or other.

I have another link for you this time as well. This awesome video was shown to me by a friend:

"Turkish Star Wars"

This is such a ridiculous and awesome video, and I'm almost certain it will confuse you, as it's not literally Star Wars in Turkish. In reality it's this movie, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam.

Anyways have fun with that, enjoy the comic, I'll see you guys later this week...maybe.

Random Things

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:23:30 +0000

I've been sick pretty much the entire week, but it looks like it's winding down. The bad news is that it's winding down right when it doesn't matter anymore, that is, right after exams and my project are done.

Anyway, my head's pretty fuzzed out, so it's hard to put together a coherent post of what I want to talk about, so I'm more or less going to talk about random stuff (in case the title didn't drop any hints). Well, not talk so much as drop random links to stuff I thought was cool today.

You ever see the live action Super Mario Bros. movie? No? Well you're not missing much in my opinion, but this article over at Destructoid makes a pretty good case otherwise. It does bring up interesting points, has pictures, and is really long. It did manage to make me hate the movie a bit less.

I saw this flash over at Newgrounds yesterday. Cuboy Ep. 1 is a really funny and great flash about this cube guy at work. It has really great style and catchy music at the end.

And finally, lol at this. (I'd link to the actual deviantart page but I don't know where it came from, some one else sent me this.)

That's all for now, I'll start making proper, more interesting posts about actual things once the weekend is over and my eyes don't feel pressurized.

New Sketch

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:41:42 +0000

I put up a new sketch, this time in color! I got some more practice with the pen tablet, finally. This is just a quick post to let you know. I'll post again tonight or tommorow, depending on how things go.

Unexpected Problems

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:28:58 +0000

This week isn't the best week I've had...
I know I said I would put something up today, but yesterday I got sick, and felt pretty bad. Because of that, I wasn't able to do much of my project I have due for class, and now I'm behind on that. I'm still sick today, and I have a few midterms in a couple of days. Yeah, I'm whining, but I'll still try to get you at least a sketch or something in the next couple of days. Stuff always happens when you don't expect it, doesn't it.

It finally happened

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:02:11 +0000

You knew it was coming sooner or later, I've warned you all multiple times, and now it's here. There will be no comic next week. OMG! As it stands now, I have a big project due next week, as well as a couple of midterms, so it was just too much for me to deal with the comic this week. I'm really sorry about it, especially since there's some good stuff coming up in the next couple of issues. But I'll make it up to you guys. This week, though, I'm going to at least post something for Monday. Expect at least a couple of sketches, maybe more if I'm not dead.

It's also nice to see a lot of you using the rss feed. I wondered whether it was really going to be used a lot
, but it seems a good number of you do. I'm considering adding an rss feed that hooks into the update flags - basically a feed for the comics and art. I'll probably also finally get around to some more site enhancements once midterms are over too.

Since there'll be no comic for you to check out this week, there's a few other things you can look at:

_____\(^o^)/____ for FLASH
This game is really really hard. Like I couldn't get past the first area kind of hard. My friends got further, but I'm just the impatient type. Good luck, you'll need it.

Russian Puzzle
Pretty decent puzzle involving fitting 5 pieces into a square. Harder than it looks!

For those of you reading One Piece scanlations out there, and have read the latest couple of issues, and seen the new guy: Great character? Or greatest character?

Sounds great.

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 10:33:12 +0000

It doesn't really. No, it sounds kind of like a vacuum cleaner, the sound of pseudo-sucking. It's worse than actual sucking mostly because it makes you think it's good for some time before you realize that you're already in the vacuum cleaner, coughing on dust mites and skin follicles.

Why? What are you talking about? ~~Who the hell are you?~~ I'm sure there's many questions in your head right now. Like "Doushita?" or "Eh?". And those questions shall be answered...with a nugu, nugu mipaa~*.

Anyway, I read the bit from the Diety of Portals, Kris, blog about Nodame Cantabile. Nodame's not the one doing the pseudo-sucking, though. It just reminded me that, since my arrival on the other side of the Bandwidth Barrier, I've been taking in far too much of that stuff for my own good. Kind of like a pseudo-sucking vacuum cleaner I might add.

Anyway, I thought I'd keep up the thought about having thoughts about thoughtful things, which I thought would be a good thing, to which I thought that it might be a lost thought. We may be about comics, art, and stuff (certainly stuff at least partially covers the subject of anime), but I'm sure you don't want to take my incredibly lame reasons, along with many incredibly sweet raisins, for watching stuff that should already be in your list of things to care about, if you should care to be watching anyway.

Instead, let's enjoy this topic in another way. Let's look at some things I've been sucking in, and figure out whether or not it's gonna clog the tube for a while, or create a disturbance in the fabric of space-time by making a pardoxical situation where a vacuum has somehow sucked in a vacuum, which means that nothing has pulled another nothing towards it through the inverse movements of mass. (Some scientist will assassinate me later for saying such a thing--I'm almost completely sure that vacuums can move another vacuum anyway, somehow, but go with it.)

Let's start. Someone will attack me for it, and no I did not watch through the entire thing, mostly because I just didn't want to after a while, and this doesn't mean that it's not somehow quality stuff for someone, just not for me. That said, a little while back I had the notion to watch the Adventures of the ASOS Brigade 0 and 1--something that is actually going to be put on the US releases of Melancholy/Haruhi. Now, I must say that the original concept feels almost like a joke and at the same time is a wonderfully thought out method of campaigning for the US releases. Maybe, because it seems like a joke, it becomes a pretty good marketing campaign. No, I'm not gonna attack. Why? Cause it's a joke and a marketing campaign. Will I care to watch another piece put together the same way? Hellllllz, no.
Half is enough for me, thank you very much. I'll see you again when those DVDs are released. And, no, I don't think this film made me want them; in fact, it was close to tainting them. Someone who doesn't know what the heck is going on will probably avert their eyes.

To everyone who was in that video: Frankly, I think you could do better.

The paradoxical pile wins today. Now, back to Curious George.

100 Pages

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:41:07 +0000

With this week's issue, we've finally hit 100 pages of comic! So to commemorate, I suppose, this week's issue cover is in color! Also I put up the full art for this cover, sans title, over in the Works section.

On other things, the Naruto anime series is almost done with it's 2 years of fillers, yay! I've been watching the last filler episodes, to see how they'd finish it off, and so far, not good. The current arc is basically a rip off of the whole sound 4 battle arc (for those who've seen it), but in reverse, and squeezed into 3 episodes. It seems they'll have room for a couple of episodes after this arc before it finishes and we move into Naruto: Hurricane Chronicles (Pokemon Chronicles?)(minor spoilers on the link if you haven't seen all of the Naruto anime before the filler episodes), so maybe they'll still do us right and finish strong.

Speaking of things that are similar, Nodame Cantabile. Separated at birth from Honey and Clover? Not quite. Though it is basically Honey and Clover, but with music instead of art, I find it a half step short in quality. It's about the same level of funny, but the pacing seems off, and the drama feels not-quite-as-dramatic. Still a good anime though, especially with Honey and Clover gone, and any real competition in this area of anime somewhat nonexistent at the moment, so we'll see how it goes.

Finally, I'd like to mention that we have post formatting now! Kly put up one Sunday evening, and its working great. For those that want to know, we're using TinyMCE, it seems quite nice so far.

Scanner Problems

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 23:33:52 +0000

My scanner started acting up today again. It's been getting worse lately. I have this fairly old scanner, a Visioneer PaperPort 6100. It's from like 1998 or something. But that's not the problem. The problem is the software. It's not made to run on Windows XP, it's for 98 and below, basically. So XP gives me that warning, which I ignore, but this program actually doesn't work when I run it, unlike every other program that warns me about incompatibility problems. There is a part of the program that does work, however, and that's the TWAIN import from Photoshop.

Now it works, but it's buggy. The main glitch it has is sometimes when I press the scan button it will start to scan and then immediately stop. Then the whole screen flashes gray and then the screen comes back and i'm left with a black image as the result. Lovely side effects of this include my Start bar going completely transparent until I mouse over every part or resize the whole thing, and Photoshop being totally unusable for scanning until I restart it.

Usually this only happens once in a while, but as of late its about 1 out of every 3 scans. That's really bad. Do you know how much it sucks to restart Photoshop and fiddle with the start bar every 15 minutes or so when I have to scan in like 10 pages? A lot. That's how much.

Anyways the point of all this is that I almost couldn't scan in the cover for next week's issue, as well as the sketch I just put up. I say almost, because after it crashed a few times in a row, and waiting an hour or two, everything just worked again, all magic-like. Things like that happen to me a lot, especially with my computer. The magical self-fixing I mean, not the horrendous crashing. I'll relate those stories to you some other time, perhaps when I can finally format my posts without actually typing any html.

Back to the living

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:03:09 +0000

Note: Love the new thingy at the top.
Looks so awesome.

Well, after being a ghost of the internet past for about 3 months, then being dead for a week, I've finally returned to the realms of the online living (as opposed to the online dead -- the on-dead).
What does this mean?
For you, joe average user who probably didn't even notice that I was missing, given that I don't post all that often anyway and I'm not all that important in the timestream-universe that is this website, probably absolutely nothing.
But for patron saint of Portals, Kris, my return to this side of the Digital River Styx makes a somewhat more significant difference.
For one, I can actually look at all those links he keeps sending me.
Sheesh.

My return also marks a new phase in my life, which also gives me a legitimate reason to not post such long messages and not post so often, which is my new phase in a different area of the world, where I actually have a job.
It's a big difference. Really, I mean it. The excitement of have a job plus my return from Virtual Valhalla makes this a noteworthy event for me.

Oh yeah, there was suposed to be a comic for New Year's...unfortunately I was so busy getting where I am now, I never actually put it up and well...I think the joke would be kind of old now, so I'll just put it up next year and you can see just how much I failed in my New Year's Resolution.
Except for speaking like a pirate. Arrrrrrrr.

Getting....Backup.

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:23:25 +0000

Yeah this week's issue didn't have the best title, but I really couldn't come up with anything better. Just finished the cover for the issue this Sunday too.

Expect at least one sketch this week, possibly late in the week. I really need to start filling out the "works" section right now, seeing as there's only one work in it.

I got a new hard drive this week, don't know when I'll get to install it though. I've had it for about a week now, I suspect it'll be at least one more before I see an extra 400GB in my computer.

Added a few things

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:24:08 +0000

You may have noticed that we have a masthead now, yay! It was actually much much taller, like around 300 pixels, as opposed to the 100px it is now. It took up so much screen space on lower resolutions that you could barely see the id boxes! I also made a couple of fixes to the css and html that I just found here and there.

I also added a new sketch today, this one is actually for the layout of the character Ian's house, as well as his pet. It's somewhat odd that I layed out his house with so much detail, because it doesn't appear much in the story, but the time when I made this layout I still thought it would (ooh maybe spoilers huh? I didn't say anything...) Anyways, still working on more updates. There's a distinct possibility of there being no comic this week, or else next week. I know I keep saying it and it never happens, but this time it really might. Isn't it better if it doesn't keep coming true in this case though?

Issue 7 is ready to go

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:20:58 +0000

Issue 7 of Portals is out now. Just thought I'd mention.

I've been trying hard to get stuff to put on the site, the effect of which seems to be a lack of updating other than the comic and occasional sketch, but don't let that fool you. The lack of site activity just means that I'm doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes. Really. The front page will get a bit nicer, I have a masthead coming soon, and I'll probably adjust a few things.
I'm also going to put up a new sketch or two this week as well. Maybe a color art or something if I have time. Those issue covers are tough to think up, I don't do them in advance, it's an on-the-fly sort of thing, so sometimes it can be hard.

Also I'd like to mention that Kly's inactivity lately has been because he just got a new job recently, and had to move. Because of this, he doesn't have any internet right now, and so no posts or anything. When he gets back though expect some upgrades that you won't see the direct results of, but will feel in other ways.
For instance, we're going to set up some sort of formatting tool for our posts. As it stands now, we just type into plain text boxes, and have to do all formatting ourselves with handwritten html tags and such. Not much fun. Expect nicer posts with things like images(ooh) when that's set up. Another side effect of this will also be my posting more regularly, and not just when I have a sketch or issue to put up.

Another sketch

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:34:21 +0000

I put up another sketch, this time it's some notes on Ian's design. Getting back to toning pages for the comic isn't really something I look forward to, right after finishing that Tokyopop entry. I have a couple of issues I'm backed up on that need to be toned, and after spending a good week doing nothing but toning, another 20 pages or so is not something I really feel like sitting through. However, what needs to be done, needs to be done, and so it goes.

Things should be moving soon...

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 00:51:36 +0000

I finished that comic for the Tokyopop contest, and none too soon, as the deadline is on the 12th. Now that that's out of the way, I can concentrate on the site more. All those upgrades and enhancements I keep talking about but never happened yet? They're coming soon now, this time for reals.

Issue 6 is also up now too by the way, link's on the sidebar.

Happy New Yarrrrrr

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 21:29:46 +0000

My New Year's Resolution was to talk more like a pirate this year.
Since I don't really talk like a pirate during the year, I figure that the title alone should cover it.
Stay tuned next year when my resolution will be to talk some more like a pirate.

This holiday has been an interesting one, with this project behind and ahead lies the unknown, I haven't been thinking about relaxing at all. In fact, these days have been some of the most interesting and yet least festive. They were just days that were slightly more holiday-ish than normal. Except the people that I'm trying to contact...they all seem to have this whole "We don't work on Holidays" thing going on. It's making it very hard for me to find everything I need as I prepare to move into my new life.
Unlike normally, this new year actually represents a lot for me, most of it extremely exciting and frightening at the same time. I'm picturing myself not surviving.
Anyway, forget about my problems, it's time for some more cheer. Yaarrrrr!
I'll be keeping this in mind when the next National Speak Like a Pirate Day rolls around.
I'll spend a little time on a a New Year's comic. I'm not exactly in the making mood. More like destroying.
See you gents later.

Happy New Year!!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:16:04 +0000

It's a new year, and with the new year comes a new issue of Portals! Issue 5 is up.

I also think I managed to fix some of the ie6 problems we were having. The update flags are still messed up apparently, but that's because of some new strange css I was trying out, I'll have to look at it some more later.

I'm still seeing whether or not I'll be able to put up issue 6 on time next week. I'm working on a comic for Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga contest and the deadline is on the 12th and I still have to tone and letter all 20 pages (infact I'm just finishing the drawings tomorrow). It's going to suck for the next week as I'll be on the computer all day - working as opposed to just floating around on the internet - which is what makes it suck. It's a learning experience though; I'll be toning this comic in actual screentone(the digital kind), not in grayscale in Photoshop like I usually do.
When I lose, I'll post it up on here for you guys to see ;)

Knowledge that Kills

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:53:35 +0000

I'm not keeping track of everything right now, but as far as I know, right now I am like a supreme commander in a war game, in control of many lives that are deemed rather insignificant to me other than their cost and time to manufacture, secondarily their military foil in battle. Even in games that want to simulate the realness of a battle taking place by giving real emotional values to units, by giving loss a tremendous cost to unit based moral values hidden from view, by making resource handling suddenly super-significant at one moment and then not at the next, the majority of the game comes down to handling the units to their best efficiency in battle. Something that game makers constantly make easier to do.
But this post has nothing to do with gaming. It does have to do with you though. Yes, you.
A week ago, the grand-exalted one gave me suggestions he's gotten from the lot that view the page. Just so you know, I AM listening to suggestions, but even if the other guy has some kind of title like "designmasteroftheuniverseandallother possibleuniversethatcouldpossiblyexist atanypointinanyofelevendimensions", I do tend to disagree with a lot of them, and I don't like making changes, especially if it involves multiple changes that require lots of fine tuning in the code which I can't do because the version on my computer and the version on this site are not in sync.
In any case, I made a change a while back, that put the page number into the title of the page so people knew what page number they were looking at since for some reason people read things in pages rather than in issues online. Not that I blame them, I do it too. I still felt the change was unnecessary but I did it anyway.

Yesterday, another message came shooting down the tube. Change the page numbers to start at one instead of zero.
Now...it's not that I disagree with this change so much as the title one. This one has a logical sense behind it.
However, it's deemed that the title page does not count as a page for most things, so the logical thing to do in that situation is either assign it the lowercase roman like in a book when you have multiple pages that require differentiation, or to name it page zero as the page that comes before the page with the number one.
With that in mind, I made the changes, which required more work than I was expecting. So, the changes were made and you'll now no longer see that precious number zero come by itself anymore. I was just thinking that I imagine that if the previous change had not been made to make the number more visible, I'm almost guessing that this second one would've passed by without a hitch. Besides, humans get used to lots of things. Silly humans.

Oh, and before I forget, the "holiday" Nayrbian comic is up, because you know you love it.
No harm done, so I'll be seeing some bigger changes coming soon I guess.

Merry whatever you celebrate

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 00:33:16 +0000

Here's something you need to know right now:
Today is Monday. It means a new Portals is up as expected. And apparently it's a doozy. A DOOZY!
It's also Christmas, one of those days where everyone is to get together and be all of good cheer.
But there's one more thing you need to know about me.
I didn't realize that it was Christmas until my sister told me yesterday that it was today.
That's right; that's how much my family celebrates Christmas. Sure the exchange of presents between cousins, aunts and uncles that you rarely see and the meeting of people you don't necessarily know but are somehow related to you does occur, but, at least to me, without the necessary good cheer and actual mentioning of Christmas-y things that are a part of Christmas. I only had a general idea that Christmas was here, I didn't actually know until I was told. And there's no tree.
It'll probably be the same with New Year's.

So, for a holiday themed post, here's some of my Holiday stats:
I'm the "littlest bro" of the family, so I'm the one who gets attacked by all the older cousins, and the one who gets called "baby" by all the aunts and uncles who haven't seen us in a while.
It also means that I often get the hand-me-downs of just about everyone (even girls...), and rarely get real presents, less good ones.
Number of gifts I usually give personally during the holidays: 0.3
Of those, gifts that are jokes: 0.3
Number of gifts received during holidays: 2.3
Number of gifts that are usually some cash: 1.3
Number of times I'm asked what I've been doing: 34
Of those, number of times I actually answer: 22

So, everyone, try to be nice to your little brothers and sisters while you pwn them at whatever awesome loot you've snagged.
Or they pwn you. Whatever. We little bros and sises have it tough during the holidays. ("Nugu nugu, Mipaa~*" comes to mind)
Oh, and be sure to look out for my new Nayrbia issue, coming soon. It's holiday themed, but I'm late to the party.
Peace & Love!

P.S. On some technical jargon, I found out that I was doing things wrong, and I feel really stupid about never figuring it out until now. Anyway, you, the regular user will never see the changes I made, but know now that the changes mean great things for the god and I. Declared, and so henceforth be awesomed into history.

Merry Christmas!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 14:09:11 +0000

Just saying it in advance since I won't be at a computer on Christmas morning. I already opened about half my gifts already, we do this thing where my family opens our gifts at home first, then we go to my cousin's house and exchange gifts there, so it's like Christmas in two parts!

I also saw Night at the Museum yesterday. It's pretty good, as long as you don't mind the nearly complete lack of plot. The movie really seems to center around Ben Stiller's interaction with the things in the museum as they come alive - there's an 'outside' plot too, where he has an ex-wife and a son, but it barely comes into play. The main plot takes place inside the museum, but even that feels like it was added on to give reason to the whole playing-inside-a-live-museum thing. I guess that's why the movie is just under two hours. The good news is you don't really care about the plot, as it's just fun to watch all the happenings in the museum anyways, which is the idea.

I also put up a new sketch. It was going to be for a poster or something, but I scrapped it. See it in all its unfinished glory over in Sketches.

Today I'm headed to Target and/or Circuit City, for a last minute shot at a wii controller. Those things are pretty hard to find right now.

New Hosting!!!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 21:53:07 +0000

We finally got new hosting! Yay!! If the site seems alot less horrible now, thats because it is, since we finally moved (to Dreamhost if you're wondering). Right now, I'm working on making the default site style look a little nicer, cause it can use a little help ;). I also didn't get to put up any sketches this week, I'm really sorry about that, but hopefully I'll make up for that next week.

I'm going to be gone until Tuesday, but again there'll still be the Monday update for the comic. Hopefully we can get a steady stream of updates going after that.

What should I post?

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:09:35 +0000

It occurs to me that I haven't been as frequent to my blogging posts as I used to be, even on this one where the length of the post can be much shorter since they all appear on the page, with full text, causing the page to become an undefined length.
And if you are one of the 'lucky' viewing this in IE6, approximately twice that undefined length.
In any case, it's mostly my lack of idea-ism that prevents me from jogging my fingers over the keyboard to make one of these things come out.
I don't have nearly as much to say as I used to apparently, which I find surprisingly when I look at just how much I normally say. It's quite surprising to me.
Most of it is this roundabout sentence-like structure that repeats information over and over again, with the intention that the information is repeated over and over again, making sure that the roundabout structure of this sentence-like structure is clearly used in such a roundabout and repetitive manner, that the person reading feels like it just might not have been worth it to read the whole thing, but it was a good idea to anyway because of the roundabout way that it was said.
Six sentences to this point.
In any case, as we lift our site to reveal new heights and see the sun, we ultimately expose it's naked body to the ever-cruel winds above the clouds, waiting to tear the poor newborn of a site to shreds, leaving in their wake a small skeleton of a poor farmer boy from Texas.
Wait a minute, how did he get in there?
Better check the source.

My mind has lost a little bit of it's presence since I left the world of studying for knowledge and begin my journey into the fathoms of the world beyond the study/apply barrier.
Mostly I start talking like I know something, rather than just being the randomly thinking, rather scattered person that I normally am.
There's certainly a lot of things I've stopped talking about: anime, manga, comics, art, games, my own lack of gaming skills, my own lack of ability to draw, the lack of my ability to actually learn anything to improve the previous two lacks, my sessions that I spend analyzing the tactics of programming and how that relates to the actual popularity of a game.... Oh, and my harem.
Definitely was a good idea to stop talking about that.
At some point I'll get to talking about some of those points again. Faster if I ever get a chance to actually start experiencing those experiences I've had, again.
Alas, times have surely changed.
This has been another useless posting. Enjoy.
P.S. Spread my ruby!

Christmas is coming!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:44:26 +0000

Ok so I'll be gone for the weekend and through a few days next week, but I'll have Kly put up next week's issue on time, probably.

Well I'm trying to convince myself that we need a new server, but every time I go looking for evidence everything seems to want to work against me. It's a conspiracy, NHK style. But what's worse, always broken or inconsistency? At least if it's always broken I can move or get it fixed, since I have solid, always-there proof that it exists. Anyways, I'll post again later this week, with or without an update.

Sorry about the lack of posts

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 03:44:14 +0000

I've been pretty busy over winter vacation. I actually forgot to buy gifts until the week before Christmas! I went shopping at three different malls this weekend, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be. I guess most people didn't forget this year...

Also, issue 3 of Portals is now up! Link is on the side flags.

We are looking to move to new hosting, possibly as soon as next week - what a great Christmas gift that'd be! I'll update when i find out how close we are to doing that. Imagine, no more blank pages! Once we move hosts, expect a lot more updates a lot more often too, including a nicer default template.

Issue 2 is up!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:12:37 +0000

Ok so issue 2 is up now, and later this week I'll put up more sketches. The website is still acting up, hopefully we'll resolve that soon. I also made a few adjustments to the look of the page, and added a new theme up top.

If you see a big column-sized space to the left of this one, and kly's area is jammed in with mine, you're more than likely using Inernet Explorer 6. IE6 hates my site right now, and i'm trying to fix the css so it doesn't do that, but it's hard to test without having ie6 anymore (I use firefox 2, and I have ie7). I REALLY recommend you get firefox 2, or at least IE7 (both linked in the right sidebar). Not only is firefox awesome, but it won't make my site look terrible, yay!

Welcome to [kadart]!

Kris kris@kadartcomics.com — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 02:34:49 +0000

Hi everyone and welcome to [kadart]!

We just got set up so it will probably be a little rocky for a while, so if you get any blank pages just refresh the page and hopefully it will load...Anyways, we have lots of things here for you to look at, with more coming regularly. Right now we have the following:

Portals - my webcomic. This will be updated every Monday with 10 pages an issue (!) except for this first issue, which is 20(!!).

Thenayrbia - kly's single page comic. Don't expect any kind of schedule from him. It's more of a bonus kind of thing, but it will most likely pop up around holidays (Christmas?).

Works - finished drawings by me. I'm still learning how to digital color, so don't expect much there, but I'll try to put stuff here when I can.

Sketches - designs and unfinished art by me. Here is where you'll see updates the most often. I already have a few sketches of the main characters of portals up, and I'll be putting things here pretty regularly.

So thats what we have right now, we're working on some other things too, but right now it's just trying to get the site in better condition (the server isn't the greatest thing ever...). Also, those little colored squares in the upper left, those change the site's color scheme - expect more of those soon too.

Enjoy everything and remember,
Portals updates Mondays!

Launching upon the world

Kly kly@kadartcomics.com — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:51:22 +0000

This site is almost totally launched.
Almost.

There are still some small problems that we are dealing with, and there are some major upgrades to the current system that may be implemented soon.

But really, this site is up and running, and I (semi-)personally invite you to go and read some of the work of the artist to my left, and like...enjoy it or something, I don't know.
And if you want, you can take a break and marvel at the wonder of why a person like me, who has zero dexterity for art and a corrupted imagination has a part in the artistry of this site (You'll notice it's in my tag above.)

But seriously, enjoy the site. I made it.
On another note, see that beautiful (read: ugly) little drawing of a little ruby on rails? I made it, but I am now officially putting it up for public domain...yeah. My hope is that someday, someone will take it and actually make it look cool. And then it will be used for people who like icons on their webpages everywhere!
*cough*
Yes, well...good day.