CONTACT: TIRA BRIELLE

3/16/05

  Feeling lots better now.  Thanks for the digisoup, Carmen! ^__^

  Well there it is, my first attempt at space and spaceships.  I wanted to design a fighter that was more sleek than an x-wing but a bit more bulky than, say an Arwing.  I also wanted to base the design on the Vic Viper of Gradius.  The ship's name, Viper, gets it's origins from the Vic Viper as a sort of homage.  It really didn't have anything to do with the Battlestar Vipers (as cool as they are).  In fact, I didn't even remember the fighters were called Vipers originally until the new series came out.   My mind was pretty much set on keeping the name though.  After all, it's like the old saying, "it's all been done".  It's just one of those things you've got to get used to when you're doing a comic, or just about any creative work for that matter. 

  Like the Viper, there are many things in the Paradox Lost universe that were inspired by old school video games.  I honestly like them better than the majority of what's on the shelf these days.  Maybe it's the nostalgia, or maybe older games are more fun simply because they had to be.  Back in the proverbial day. a good game didn't have some amazing hardware capable of "blurring the lines of fantasy and reality".  You couldn't judge a game by it's polygon count.  A good game had to rely on solid gameplay.  Developer teams were also smaller, and I think that enabled them to put a certain amount of love into what they did.  Those games were created.  Today's games are produced.  If you haven't already read it by now, I recommend this article.  The author, Greg Costikyan, spoke at GDC and what he said (and thereafter transcribed) really sums up how I've been feeling about where the gaming industry is Headed.  Thanks, Ace, for using your Secret Agent Skills to dig this one up.  Alternately, I suppose you could have gotten it from these guys. >>;

  I have a bunch of links for you, but they're all at the office. =/  I'll catch them next newspost.  I'll also talk some more on games and music. =)  (And Tira!  YAY!  She's finally in the story!)

This was the last straw, I'm remixing game music again.

UN-X-PECTED RESULTS

3/7/05

  A word of advice: taking cold medicine can leave you worse off than dealing with the cold.  I feel like I'm under water! XD

  In order to show some real detail in the next couple comics, I split this one in two.  I was either going to cut some panels or find a point to split a comic.  This way, I can actually add some panels and show a lot more detail in the next comic, which is what I wanted since Tira is finally showing up in the story.  I think there was just too much going on in one comic the way I had it originally. =)

  It's an interesting thing, writing a story driven web manga versus writing standard manga.  You need to find a good ending point at each page to leave off.  This presents challenges you don't think about in a normal comic book.  Each page has got to have some sort of punch line or end point, and there's a big difference between a cliff hanger and just leaving some one hanging.  Often this means cutting down dialogue a lot, or omitting panels all together.

  I've decided that when I put Paradox Lost in book format (yes, that's the long term goal) I'm going to do sort of a "Paradox Lost Remix".  Since a lot of the comics have to be altered because I didn't think to put them in standard size, I'm thinking about completely re-drawing a lot of PL.  This way I can add other bits to the story using the freedom you get from a normal comic book with pages.  As sort of an experiment with this, I'm going to make up some full size comics for chapter one that I'll bring to conventions with me.  I'm guessing it will be roughly 35-38 pages with another 8-12 pages of art and concept sketches.  With any luck, I'll have them by Anime Boston, but definitely by Portcon.  More on that soon though.

  In other news, I think there is no Katsucon report that could better tell you what being there was actually like than Jekka's Stick Figure Notebook Theater! XD

Suds has the cool con pics.

KATSUCON SKETCHPAD 3: FLYING THE DEADLY SKIES

3/1/05

  Bleh.  Not terribly happy with this one, but it's time to move on and start getting back to the story, ne?  I also played around with a grayscale version which isn't so bad, and the original sketch, which is ALMOST what I posted.  Yes, I did bring a ninja this year, and the above events did happen. ^^;  My ninja turned out to be invaluable to everyone at my table, though, and if I'm sad that he won't be at Otakon this year, I'm totally over it because we found out Sunday that he's gonna be a DADDY!  My most heartfelt congratulations to my best friend Scott Lyons, whom I've known since Kindergarten, and to his wife, the lovely Hui.  I love you guys!!

/mooshy stuff off. ^_~

  Thanks goes out to all the PL readers who've been e mailing me.  I'm pretty amazed by you guys sometimes. =)  Thank you for the huge amount of reference material I asked for a few comics back regarding Ace's weaponry.  I should have enough images of Benelli shotguns to get our agents through any size zombie horde now. 

  Speaking of feedback, it didn't take long for readers to recognize our mystery Tsunade cosplayer as Lindze Merritt.  She actually dropped me a line herself as I was writing this newspost!  Check out her other work, it's really impressive!  And while you're at it, go show her some love and buy a hat from her shop, Genki Gang.  They're super cute! =D

  This update pretty much wraps up my Katsucon tales for this year.  It was an awesome time.  Seing Nico and Matt again was a lot of fun, I still owe both of them some art.  It was also a lot of fun seeing Bill and April again.   April had an awesome Agent Jekka cosplay!  I can't wait to get the pics back from Bill. =D  There's always so much to go over at cons that I'm sure I'm going to forget something!  I'll wrap it up with three things I want to touch on:

  Rich and Margie from Order of the Stick rock, and the comic does too.  I need to toss this one in the links section.  Shawn from Staccato was also very cool, hopefully we'll get the chance to chat it up more soon.  See, there's never enough time at conventions! =)

  Kristi Bonnor from Inkjet Studios has some AMAZING art, and she's a sweety to boot.  Hopefully we'll get a chance to talk more at future conventions.  I'd been meaning to pick up some of her art but she had poofed by the time I got over to do so. ^__^

  Lastly, I was dumb and left all the prints at home.  I plan on making them available here on the site very soon.  I'll add the eggplant shirts too.  Nothing elaborate, just a small paypal link.  I may even have a cool surprise for you all. ^__^

  Oh, and Scott posted that one piece art that now adorns my office wall.

This is getting really good!