Knaddian

Funemployed!

2011-11-30T17:51:00.000-08:00

So after almost three and a half years of working there, I (along with some other cool folks) got laid off today from Meteor Games. Sad day, as we worked on a lot of Facebook titles together. There were good times, bad times but as long as you work with people you like and laugh at each other, you can tough through anything.

But sometimes, in order to move on, our walls have to come crumbling down first! It's as much an opportunity as it is a loss and I've got nothing but wonderful things to say about my coworkers.

Anyways, I've decided to take the rest of the year off. I don't anticipate a lot of business getting done from any company around Christmas as it is and, call me selfish, but I think I could use a break.

In the mean time, I'm gonna be hanging out with my wonderful girlfriend, working on some pages for Lumia's Kingdom and dabbling in a few personal game projects. So looks like I'll be working from home for a while!

Expensive investments

2011-10-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted something on this blog. How you guys doing?

I apologize for the lack of updates lately both here and with the comic. There are a mixture of reasons why I've not been as productive lately:

Work got a bit crazy and dramatic as of late
I became obsessed with my personal game project
Flat out laziness

With that in mind, I'm constantly thinking of ways to try to improve the speed of which I do the comic. Several strips ago, I tried digital inking and I was pleased with the results but had to fight with my Wacom Intuos to get what I wanted. As a result, I abandoned digital inking in favor of pen and paper. But this, too, is time consuming as I'm not a very fast inker and it makes it harder to try to keep at something when it takes so long.

As that was going on, I set a goal for myself financially--I wanted to get my savings account up to a certain amount. I figured I could do that by the end of the year and then I could use whatever was left over to get something nice for myself.

I met my goal earlier than I expected a few weeks ago.

So when my next paycheck came in, I gave some real thought to one particular question: should I get a Cintiq?

I'm not talking about the huge $3,000 one. I mean the small $1000 one, the Cintiq 12wx.

I have a bit of a bad habit with investing in technology and then not using it as much as I'd wish (my DS and original Intuos tablet are evidence of that). Also, I wasn't sure that I'd truly like having a Cintiq.

After much deliberation, I came to a particular conclusion: I'll go ahead and get one. And if I don't like it, I'll sell it to one of my friends who could use it.

Of course, Wacom was sold out on their website. I saw it listed that the Fry's in Burbank had some in stock, but upon visiting it we found out that the sole Cintiq still said to be in the store could not be located. No biggie, I figured. I'll wait.

Then I went home and checked Newegg. And surprisingly, they had it in stock.

So I dropped a grand and had it shipped to me at work. I expected it to come in a packaged box with "Newegg" on the front.

...It came in the original box from Wacom, with "CINTIQ" written and pictured on the front. Just poorly wrapped in clear plastic.

...And in the front where all the artists at work could see it.

It was an awkward walk to the back of the office.

So I took it home, stuck it in my room and then... went with Daniella on vacation for a week.

We got back and spent some time just resting.

Then, I finally dragged out that box and hooked up the darn thing. I had read a bit about it and thought I knew everything to expect from it tech wise.

Except for the handy back stand. That I did not expect :3

So far, it's been pretty useful. I configured it to work with GIMP pretty well and I've liked what I've seen (except that, since GIMP opens multiple windows on the desktop, I open a window on from the tablet and it appears on my other monitor. A bit annoying.) I'm currently thumbnailing/penciling page 178 digitally and it hasn't felt too laborious.

Well... that's not entirely true. There is one side affect; my back hurts now.

The handy stand allows me to prop it up on my computer desk to draw. Except, like any desk, it sits lower than one can comfortably draw at. So I have to hunch over a bit to get eye level with it...

My spine doesn't like me now -__-

Writing the beginning of your story

2011-07-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

I got an email in my inbox this morning from someone who had been reading my work ever since I was drawing Blue Zombie. I don't really have permission to divulge everything that was brought up in the email he sent, but this snippet should explain everything:

"I need help with [the beginning of my webcomic], and was wondering if I pitched my story to you sometime, you could suggest a good way to open it up? I can get everything else to work just fine(action scenes, the works) but i'm just pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to open it up!"

And, of course, me being me, I wrote a huge response about things he should consider when starting his story and how to approach going about it and even examples of TV shows, comics and video games that have done it very well.

And then, right when I was about to hit that "Send" button, I thought "Hey, this would make a good blog post!"

Now, before I begin, I will say that while much of what I have written in this post is truthful, it doesn't necessarily mean that I followed all of the advice myself. Much of Blue Zombie and Lumia's Kingdom (...well...okay, MOST of it) is made up as I go along. But while I might not be the shining example of the practical application of what's written here, there are several thousand examples that do take this path and shine brighter than anything I could ever write.

So without further ado...

When writing the beginning of your story, be it a novel, a comic, an animation or even a character-driven video game, your first goal is to hook your audience as quickly as possible. These are some (but not all) of the things you will want to consider in order to effectively pull this off:

The mood you want to convey
Past/future events in your storyline
How you intend to develop your character
The current social climate of your character's world

The mood you want to convey

The beginning of your story is what will ideally hook people into sticking with you. With that in mind, you should try very hard to give a good idea of the mood you wish to convey relatively early on. When you choose to do it is up to you; you don't have to convey the mood right from the get-go, but I don't think it would be very wise to switch your story from super serious in the beginning to slap-stick mid way through the entire plot.

Is your story humorous? Then it might be best to lead in to a funny or silly situation. It could start off super serious for the first few minutes/pages, but then have a really wild and hilarious twist that makes your audience roll in the aisle with laughter.

Or perhaps it's not funny at all; perhaps it's super dark and very gruesome. To illustrate the contrast, you could show something beautiful and bright, showing what the world could have or used to be like and then segue into a dark, rainy world where hope is hanging on by a thread.

A good example of this is the beginning of Shaenon Garrity's webcomic Skin Horse. The first two panels of the comic explain the situation our heroes are facing; they're in the Washington D.C. National Zoo facing down a genetically altered African lion that has escaped from its enclosure. There appears to be a person standing fearlessly a few feet in front of the lion. He mentions that there's a sniper on the roof poised to shoot the lion a moment's notice. How does this sound to the reader? Dangerous? Yes. Intriguing? Heck yes. How did the lion get loose? How is it genetically altered? We want to know.

And what do the next panels show us? We focus on that person standing in front of the lion. It's a man with a folding chair. Huh. Why does he have a folding chair? Why not a club or a katana or a rifle? And he's wearing women's clothing?? What kind of guy is this??

Finally, we get to the last panel. This man, who has been thinking to himself the entire strip, lets us know that despite the seriousness of the situation, everything is under control. Confidently, he reveals his title to us: "I'm a psychologist."

Why is a cross dressing psychologist facing down a genetically altered lion in the nation's capital? I don't know, but I do know that the story is extremely silly and that this man, whoever he is, is confident in his ability to bring a stop to the chaos and is willing to do so dressed in a skirt and some high heals. At this point, the reader can decide for themselves whether this story is their cup of tea. As for me...well, I'm game :)

Starting with the past or the future

One way to start the story is to start off with a flashback or show events further ahead to in the series and then segue into past to show how everything unfolded up to that point. This provides a bit of intrigue for the audience; they're given a glimpse of what has happened or will happen and they will want to see how it effects or is effected by what's going on in the story now.

Take Joss Whedon's sci-fi series Firefly; the beginning starts off with a massive fire fight between two opposing forces on the planet Serenity. We're introduced to our valiant hero Malcom Reynolds as he tries to rally the troops and stand up to the Federation. He has his partner radio for aerial support only to find out that his side has given up the fight. We pull away in slow motion as the federation bombs his troops to death and see despair and hopelessness in Malcom's eyes.

And now we're in the present--we are plucked from the battlefield and presented with Mal and his (new?) crew several years later. Who lived through the ordeal? What are they doing now? How have they changed since the events that have taken place on Serenity? I want to know.

How you intend to develop your character

Regardless of if you've given your audience a glimpse of what your character was like or what they're going to be like in the future, you'll need to plot out how your character develops as time goes on. Are they going to become incredibly strong throughout the course of the story? Then they should start off relatively weak or put in a position where they have trouble fending off the opposition. Or perhaps they're already strong, but need to fall in love or become compassionate. Then they should start off refusing to get attached to people. Maybe they find skillful ways of avoiding interactions and commitment, or maybe their a bit of a hard-ass who simply tip their hat and walk away from people's problems.

Okay, bare with me for a moment, because the freshest thing I can think of right now is the first episode of the rebooted My Little Pony series. In the beginning, the main character is a pony named Twilight who seems to prefer the company of library books to dealing with other ponies. Her behavior has proved to be quite useful, though; through reading the books, she learns of dark prophecy that could prove to be disastrous to all of Equestria if not brought to the attention of those in charge. Despite her efforts, though, the prophecy is brushed off by her superiors and she's sent to another village to prepare for a ceremony. There, she meets up with several other interesting ponies who, against her will, try to befriend her. She struggles to deal with learning about friendship just as the events of the prophecy manifest and their darkest fears are realized.

The episode ends on a cliffhanger. What will happen to Twilight? Will she put her issues aside to band together with her new "friends" and save Equestria? Do you even care? I do, and apparently so do millions other people.

The current social climate of your character's world

The character and the mood aren't the only thing that are important to beginning of the story. It would also benefit to give a glimpse into the social climate of the world we're looking at. What are the people most concerned about? What makes them happy? What makes them sad? Are they thriving or are they dying and why?

One of my favorite video games of all time is Michel Ancel's sci-fi action-adventure game Beyond Good and Evil. Starting a new game opens up with a news reporter immediately talking about an alien race referred to as the Domz attacking a faraway planet called Hillys. From there, we're given the image of a what appears to be a relatively quiet planet and a strange object comes rocketing towards it at high speeds. Then, we're taken to a rather pleasant scene where our main character Jade and her orphan companion are peacefully practicing meditation under a tree. As Jade opens her eyes, we see the sky turn dark as the alien object enters the atmosphere.

What's Jade's response? Contrary to what we may think, it's not "What's going on? Why did the sky go black??" Instead, she says "They're coming!" She, and the rest of the world, already know who "they" are. And she knows enough to gather up the orphans and take cover. Whoever is coming, the people of Hillys are scared of them and know to run away when "they" arrive.

In summary...

These are just a few of the things you should think about as you start writing the beginning of your story. There are, of course, several more aspects that that you could and should take into consideration, but for the sake of brevity, I will simply end the my list here. As I stated before, the goal here is to try to hook your audience as quick as possible. The results will vary and the each medium will have a different set of expectations associated with it. But regardless, there is one definitive fact that holds true to them all; if it takes you more than an hour or several hundred pages to describe the setup of your story and/or introduce your characters, then I'm going to take my attention and time elsewhere.

If anyone has any other suggestions on how to go about starting a story, want to talk about what's written here or simply have a question, feel free to leave a comment below.

Very ill timed

2011-03-14T22:35:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading the comic up until now, you know that I try to keep it very funny and light-hearted for the most part. However, even I sometimes dare to venture into darker territory and strike up a violent cord or two. No where was this more evident than when Violette went berserk a few pages ago.

This particular incident was not an isolated one--I do indeed plan for more violence to occur in the comic. Some of the characters I have planned are very sinister and gruesome and I have no intention of censoring myself as long as I feel the timing is right.

At this particular moment, I am inking page 150. It is an incredibly violent page. And it could not have come at a worse time.

In case you've had your head under a rock these past few days, there was a very serious earthquake that struck Japan last Friday. Entire towns have been wiped off of the map by very devastating tsunamis that struck shortly afterward. Mere words cannot describe the destruction wrought by all of this but I don't want to link to any images of it for you guys to follow. I'm sure Google is swamped with enough of those at this point.

So, after a lot of thought, I decided to hold off one week to post page 150.

I simply think that, in light of what has happened, I should put some distance between what I am going to show and that which has occurred in our world.

That is all.

Valhalla Jones and Valkyrie Love

2011-03-04T08:13:00.000-08:00

So I took a break from doing a webcomic last night to pursue even more absurd ideas...

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the next great Blacksploitation concept... VALHALLA JONES! On the underside of Midgard, the gang wars have always been particularly bad. But now, the dwarves are smuggling ice giants on Valhalla Jones turf. Aw, snap! Looks like it's time for VJ to whip out his mighty pimp hammer and lay the smack down on some shiesty muthas! Joined by his companion VALKYRIE LOVE and his trusty six wheeled Cadillac SLEIPNIR (not pictured), VJ will stop at nothing until the dwarves have been put in their rightful place! Concept by: Tamar Curry and Daniella Orihuela-Gruber. Sponsored by: Raven-Ban, the official sun glasses for Odin's birds.

(Don't worry, I will get back to comicing next week :P )

Tales from the workplace

2011-03-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

I try not to talk about work too much because of many reasons. One being that I try to comply with my employer's wishes and avoid hinting at what company I work at. Two being that some days are sorta frustrating to me and I want to forget about them when I get home.

Regardless, I have made many friends and met a lot of interesting people at my job. I do enjoy working with these guys, though sometimes things can get a little...out of hand.

Like last Friday.

You see, one of the perks of the workplace is that every Wednesday we are allowed one vote per employee on what to eat for lunch on the coming Friday. Then, the company actually gets whatever we voted on. When lunch arrives, everyone lines up for, eyes and hearts set on the prospect of tasty food. Food that came to us without having to escape the confines of our office and venture out into the restaurant-less area our building is located in. Food that we didn't have to pay for.

Over time, this voting system has become very polarized, with people cooperating with each other and voting for specific items en masse. The results are still tasty, but get tiresome after a while. I can only take eating Mexican food so many times within a two months span before I chuck that tasty burrito at the incredibly large window that I sit near.

That said, For the past seven weeks, I have been continuously voting for one elusive meal: Chinese. We hadn't eaten Chinese on a Friday for quite some time. I might also add that I am addicted to sweet and sour chicken. I expect that when I die and the coroner performs my autopsy, he will not fine blood, but tasty sweet and sour sauce congealed in my veins.

Last Wednesday, however, I had to give up my vote. The reason? I wasn't going to be there on Friday. Instead, my girlfriend, her mother and I were going to be in Las Vegas, celebrating my girlfriend's father's birthday. So I asked my supervisor what he wanted me to vote for. Like me, he desired for Chinese.

I casted my vote for him and then proclaimed rather loudly: "If Chinese wins this week and I'm not here to enjoy it, I'm gonna be so f*cking pissed!"

As I was preparing to leave that Friday, I checked Facebook to see that my supervisor left a message on my wall, detailing the top two choices for lunch day:

"Votes: Chinese 20. Pasta 10."

Flippin' great.

Posted underneath that was a comment left my another coworker:

"we're going to put some chinese food in your desk drawer for you. No need to thank us."

I thought nothing of it as I packed up and left for the weekend.

This was a mistake.

I came back to work on Monday and did my usual business: look at code, gripe about what the programmer before me wrote and how he cut corners, realize that I was actually griping at code that I wrote, cry a bit, fix some bugs, yadda yadda yadda.

Around noonish, though, something odd happened. I started to smell a faint scent. I wasn't sure exactly what it was or where it was coming from. I figured something had been spilled by my desk and that the cleaning crew would probably find it and clean it up later. After a few hours, I started to think that maybe the smell was coming from me? I just changed deodorants. Maybe Arm and Hammer produces a rather undesirable scent when it's been sitting in my pits for a few hours? Flippin' great. Wonder if there's a better deodorant. Will have to look into this later.

I came back on Tuesday. The smell is worse. What the hell? Where is this smell coming from! There's nothing in the trash cans, I didn't smell this before I left the house so it certainly wasn't me, there was nothing on my desk or the desks around me!

And then I thought back to my coworker's comment.

They didn't...They wouldn't!

...Would they--?

What played out next was like a bad horror movie:

Check the bottom drawer.

Nothing.

Close it slowly. Move my hand to the middle draw.

Pull it open. Nothing. Phew. Two down, one to go.

Flip open top drawer.

Scream bloody murder.

Fade to black.

One last voice creeps out from the void before the credits begin rolling:

"Oh god! The SMELL!"

The chopping block

2011-02-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

As you may or may not know, one of my greater passions is making games on the side. In fact, when I think about game design, I tend to get this look on my face that I can only assume tells people "I am either thinking about something VERY HARD or have to take a REALLY bad crap." (Hopefully more of the former than the latter).

In any case, I had some ideas churn up over the weekend that I really wanted to get down the code for. But I wasn't about to ditch my comics for the week to do this. So I decided to hammer out both thumbnails for this week and enlarge them so that I could tackle them on Monday and Tuesday.

I don't do scripts anymore. This isn't really out of laziness as it is I tend to change my mind a lot about the story. When I started Lumia's Kingdom, I wrote about 60 comic pages worth of scripts. I got half way through them before I altered the story incredibly. Now, we couldn't be any further from what I originally wrote than we are now. Nowadays, my thumbnails are really my first stab at writing anything for a page. And for the most part, I'm alright with this.

Tonight, I was driving home and thinking about my current story arc--the retelling of Knaddian history. It's a doozy, considering I cover a lot of different characters and how they contribute to the current situation. I often argue with myself over how long I should focus on one event before moving on to the next. I know I got a bit too narrative heavy in some pages while perhaps spending too much time focusing on the earlier stuff.

In any case, it dawned on me that I could cut out what was to be Tuesday's page entirely and simply cut to what was going to be Friday's page. Tuesday's page would have focused on the moment-to-moment events between three of the characters. Instead, it cuts straight to a more narrative page that describes what happened quicker and moves the story along faster. I debated it for a while--did I need a page explicitly expressing how Myriam felt about Lumiere's decision, or could I get away with simply alluding at it in the next page?

I talked over it with my girlfriend. She seemed to agree that I didn't need Tuesday's original page and as long as I took the time to properly word the narrative for a smoother transition, the edit would work just fine.

This isn't the first time I've done something like this. I once cut a six page mini-arc in Blue Zombie in half. Not because it was laborious, but because I found out that the first three pages had served the purpose of the entire arc and the last three were redundant. And there were some pages of Lumia's Kingdom that I got part way through and then ditched and redrew.

Now, I'm not claiming the be the greatest when it comes to self-edits, but I can't help but think that a lot of comics could also benefit from this kind of editing (including a large number of action-oriented manga). I realize that so much of it is to build up suspense and a lot of it is mitigated by having a more consistent and frequent release schedule, but MAN, if I had a nickel for everytime I wish Goku could've just shot his enemy in the face with a pistol and be done with it or wondering why it's so hard to get deported from Japan... I mean, don't those guys have bills to pay?

In the long run, LK needs a lot more editing like this...I'm a 140+ pages in and I've only covered about a week in their world. A lot of comics need to do the same, I think. But I don't think the lot of us will realize this until we take a step back and thought really hard about what's really needed and what's fluff.

Here's hoping I get to Lumia's inauguration before I hit 300 pages.

On the road to recovery

2010-11-21T20:33:00.001-08:00

The hiatus is reaching its promised deadline. I feel mildly refreshed and looking forward to trying out new things.

Note the words "promised" and "mildly." As in, "not certainly 100%." They run hand-in-hand with "goddammit, of all the f*cking weekends to get sick, why did it have to happen RIGHT NOW."

In any case, I'm going to try to get this page out for Tuesday. Wish me luck.

A bit of time off

2010-11-09T00:01:00.001-08:00

Things have been quite busy lately. Trying to nail down some things at work, a bit of traveling, figuring out how to mend relations, a slight mid-mid-life crisis (yes, two "mids"... I'm only in my twenties!) and some rather unsettling health issues have sort of been nipping at me a lot lately.

But don't get me wrong, I still plan on updating the comic. I just need a bit of a break.

My preferred re-entry into doing pages is targeted for November 23rd. I say preferred because, as we all know, shit happens and nothing (especially with me >_>;;) is every guaranteed.

So, if it wasn't obvious by now, I must ask you all for a bit of patience while I try to sort things out.

In the mean time, I will do my best to keep sketching things to post for the next two weeks.

I'm off to bed. Thank you and good night.

Things you didn't know about Lumia's Kingdom: nations and their names

2010-09-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

In the first on a series of obscure references in Lumia's Kingdom I'm going to focus on something that might not be quite so obscure to some of you. Surely you've noticed the most obvious joke; it was the very first implied joke in the comic.

That's right.

"The greatly hung king of Knadds." Lumiere XI's grandeur was not a freak accident; each and ever single one of his forefathers were equally endowed (more so, in the case of Lumiere VII).

Enter Lumia, his tiny daughter who, up until now, was trying her best to live a quiet, normal life. She's the first queen to ever rule without the company of a male counterpart.

Already this implies that she's going to have a lot of difficulties trying to get ahead in what is obviously a male dominated profession. Not only that, but she has to do it when her ancestors pride themselves on their masculinity so much that they never bothered to wear any clothes.

So we know about Lumia's disposition. But what about her peers? What do the names of the countries say about them and their upbringings?

Let's start with the boisterous Queen Camilla.

Camilla, bless her heart, hails from the country of Mastodia. Mastodia is named after the word "masticate" which is essentially the process of chewing food. Mastodians are known for living it up; they are an extravagant people who have a reputation for doing anything and everything excessively. If you're going to throw a party and you want to go over the top, then have a Mastodian plan it for you. This is the very reason why Camilla has taken it upon herself to plan out Lumia's inauguration ceremony and suggest some of the skankiest dresses for her to wear from a rather questionable publication.

Next up is Pectoralonga, homeland of the very sweet (and horrendously strong) Lady Kara.

Derived from the word "pectoral", Pectoralongans are an incredibly powerful race of humanoids with pointy ears (which only the most ignorant and masochistic of observers dare to point out.) In addition to their strength, Pectoralongans also tend to be very short-tempered; even the most reserved of them are known to undergo a complete personality switch once they are involved in a battle for more than five minutes. They are also notorious for underestimating their own power. This detail alone has made their nation's carpentry and construction profession extremely profitable for centuries.

The last nation we'll talk about today is Lobest, birthplace of the tentacled queen Madam Uupa.

The name Lobest is a mutation of the word "lobe", in reference to several parts of the brain. Lobest has built a reputation for being one of the most efficient and industrious nations in the region. They have very skilled artisans, engineers, architects, philosophers and scientists. Their competitiveness stems from the fact that they are at a bit of a disadvantage; they are an underwater nation having to compete with land-bound countries for trade and business. In fact, there is a famous saying in Lobest: "Get wise fast or die even faster." Unfortunately, their isolation has made them a bit weary of others. They often overthink things and are quick to jump to assumptions and become paranoid about the actions of outsiders. It's not all mistrust of others, though. Growing exposure to foreigners have led to an increase in curiosity of other species, what they have to offer and, unfortunately, has given way to a rise in marital infidelity.

I'm afraid we'll have to end it there for today. Rest assured there will be other nations (and quirky monarches) to learn about in the future.

Obscure references in Lumia's Kingdom

2010-09-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

In this next part of Lumia's Kingdom I've decided to tackle a large chunk of backstory. As I mentioned on Twitter, I'm trying to make the story as ludicrous as possible (even though there are some serious parts). However, there is a lot of material that I have to cover in this and I've decided that the best way for me to do this is by hammering out a time line. I penciled out a first draft and ran it by my editor/girlfriend to see what she thought. In general, she liked it but mentioned that one aspect of the story didn't match one of the obscure references I had been making throughout the comic.

This inevitably lead her to another question: why hadn't I blogged about the obscure references in the comic at all? A good question indeed. I never really gave much consideration to writing about the hidden bits of Lumia's Kingdom before, even though they have a lot of influence over the world, its characters and even the story.

So, thanks to her suggestion, I will be talking about some of the more obscure references in future posts. I think my first one will be on Tuesday of this week. The subject? Well, you'll just have to wait and see :)

Origins of a name

2010-07-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

My mother was stationed in Germany when she gave birth to me (or, depending on who you ask, watched in eagerness while I hatching). Afterwards, neither my mom nor my dad had any idea what they wanted to name me. The anesthesiologist came to their rescue and bestowed upon me the name "Tamar".

It has been a mixed blessing since then.

Tamar is not a common name here in the states. And worse, if you say your name is Tamar, people think that they misheard you and ask if you meant Mark/Lamar/Jamar. Often times my name has been misspelled (Tamra, Tamara, Tamair, etc). In fact, every year that I entered the middle school Reflections competition in Georgia, someone made a point to misspell my name even if I put in the notes section of my application that it was spelled T-A-M-A-R. It had gotten to the point that I actually became frustrated with the name and tried to go by another. At first, I thought to go by my middle name, but that was even more damning that my first name-- while it is a common name for both men and women, my middle name is spelled the feminine way as well: "Erin". When I went to college, I did a dirty combination of the first letters in my first and last name and slapped an "O" at the end. So for much of my academic life at SCAD, I was known as "Taco", which was very easy for people to remember, even if it was a euphemism for female genitalia. Of course, being a black guy, that inadvertently led to some people referring to me as "Choco-Taco". So no matter how I spun it, I could never win with the naming situation.

It has also acted as a context for some rather funny stories. My personal favorite being my former roommate talking about me to her coworker and conveniently never mentioning that I was a guy. So when she said "Tamar's girlfriend is going to move in with us", her coworker shot up and said "You live with a lesbian?!"

As for where the name came from... I grew up mainly on the east coast where the origins of the name "Tamar" aren't known pass the Biblical text; in Genesis 38, a man named Judah marries a woman named Tamar. Judah dies and Tamar is left without child and resorts to sleeping with her father-in-law in order to get pregnant and avoid being sent back to her father's estate.

What a legacy I have! Up until now, this was the only thing I new of the origins of the name.

That quickly changed when I moved to California. There are a lot of middle eastern and Jewish people in the LA area who, when they hear my name, are quick to point out it's origin. It has been the opening conversation of many of my doctors appointments.

I have been told that "Tamar" is a kind of date fruit found in the middle east and that the name is actually quite common, especially in Armenia. And yesterday I was told that there was a princess named Tamar who used to light a candle as a signal for her forbidden lover to meet her (that is, until, her father discovered this, lit a candle in a boat to lure her lover into the water and rowed the boat around in a circle until said lover drowned. Hence why the Armenian expression "Oh, Tamar!" is kind of a jab at women who break your heart).

So apparently, Tamar is either a very desperate Biblical figure, a unfortunate princess now associated with breaking young men's hearts or a kind of fruit.

Oh well. I guess I'll take what I've got.

Busy week!

2010-07-20T20:42:00.001-07:00

So this week has become surprisingly busy quite suddenly.

On Monday, I went to the doctor to check up on some abdominal pain I had been having. The pain had been getting better, but apparently my doctor thought it best to get an endoscopy. Which is a process that involves sticking a camera down your throat. Or your butt. I'm not sure which I'm getting (I hope like hell it's the former!), but I've set up appointments for this week. Needless to say, doctor's offices are open during work hours, so I have to take time off from work and then make up that time as well to meet my deadline.

On top of that, on Monday my girlfriend and our friend Phyllis and I decided rather late in the day to go to Meltdown Comics and get the last volume of Scott Pilgrim. This was a rather lengthy journey because I had to drive down the 405 to pick up Phyllis and then drive back home, grab something to eat and then attend the event.

I'm also due to get up during the days of Comic Con and go to a friend's apartment to feed her cat while she's out of town.

Topping all this off is the feeling that I should experiment with the comic-making process a bit more. Which may involve me getting more materials than I currently possess.

So there won't be any pages this week. I'll do my best to get them up next week.

100 pages... wow

2010-06-21T23:53:00.001-07:00

This is what my comic's folder looks like right now.

I've officially drawn 100 pages worth of Lumia's Kingdom.

I'm going to go pass out now.

Two year report

2010-06-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

It's officially been two years since I left the slow-paced life of Savannah to become a Flash game programmer in Los Angeles. I've had a lot of interesting experiences, both of the fun and sad variety.

I got to meet a lot of friends. I got to say goodbye to a lot of them as well. I've lived with five different roommates and legally resided in three different apartments. I'm having to deal with hearing about (as opposed to watching) my little niece grow up on the other side of the country. On Facebook, I'm reading about college mates who were freshmen when I was a senior graduating. I've experienced roughly 5 California earthquakes (all minor). I'm no longer afraid of flying in planes. I managed to get (and keep) a girlfriend. I've experienced traffic on the infamous 101 and the horrendous 405. I've re-invigorated my interest in writing, drawing and maintaining a webcomic (which is now approaching 100 official page updates!).

I've learned a lot about myself as well. Not as much as I'd hoped, but I have learned quite a bit.

Who knows? Maybe some day I'll put what I've learned to good use :P

In the mean time, though, I'm gonna keep on truckin', keep the girlfriend pleased, keep hearing about my niece's (mis)adventures, probably have to move a few more times, pray that "The Big One" won't happen anytime soon and, oh yes, crank out 100 more pages of Lumia's Kingdom (presumably faster than the first 100 will have taken).

*Insert victory music here*

Page 94 preview

2010-05-10T21:09:00.001-07:00

Running late tonight. Here's a preview of page 94.

One month later

2010-04-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

So the project deadline has come and gone. It's still very much a work in progress, but overall things have (somewhat) calm down for me for the time being.

I did still manage to put in a few pages of LK during that time. I've found that doing the thumbnails slightly larger really helps. If I can get the tight pencils in on the thumbnails, I pretty much go straight to inking once it's on the larger paper.

I have also noticed an increase in the number of people viewing the comic. Also, a LOT more search results on Google (yes, I'm one of those guys who Googles his own website).

As for the ads on the Comic Dish page, I haven't gotten a whole lot of cash from it (about $30 since I started), but that's not surprising. Instead of banking that, I think I'll use it to promote LK on other sites once summer rolls around.

Time is still a bit tight. But I think I'm managing it a bit better now.

Oh... dear.

2010-03-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's what's going on:

As I'm sure you've noticed, it is quite a challenge for me to get the comic up and running on time. I meet Tuesday-Friday schedule about 50% of the time. The reason I don't switch to the "updated sporadically" schedule that I did with Blue Zombie is because I feel that doing my best to meet the Tuesday-Friday schedule keeps me from getting lazy. And, delays aside, I think I'm doing pretty well.

That might change for the next few weeks.

For those who don't know, I work for [nameless] game company making games that people play on Facebook. Usually, the games we make have an initial development time of 2-3 months before they are released.

I got a new assignment this week. For a new game.

It's due in three weeks.

...If it hasn't set it for you yet, let me explain: three weeks is not a lot of time.

I'll probably have to work weekends to meet this deadline. And, when things get busy, I'll probably have to stop carpooling with my roommate for a while in order to get in early/stay late to make the deadline.

And, unfortunately, I can already foresee more delays for Lumia's Kingdom.

So this is a little heads up; if the comic hasn't updated in a while, it's because I'm even busier than normal.

I got interviewed!

2010-03-10T21:42:00.000-08:00

I had an awesome interview with Shayne and Modesty on the Dish Podcast yesterday :) You guys should check it out.

(BTW, if you to the bloopers at the end of the episode you get to hear me burp while I'm in the middle of a sentence. EPIC!)

Writing what you know... right?

2010-03-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

The rule of thumb when it comes to writing seems to be "write what you know."

Many writers, be it fiction or non-fiction, stick to that which interests them and are able to produce an amazing number of essays, reports, theories, books and even novels based upon that which they have seen, studied or experienced.

The late Michael Crighton (who wrote Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere and created the TV show ER) was well versed in the ideas and theories of science (apparently of the biological, medical and intergalactic kind). Gary Larson, the famous cartoonist behind The Far Side, often depicted animals in interesting situations because he studied biology in college (and is said to have worked for Jane Goodall after he retired from comics). Going beyond printed work, Donkey Kong and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto has made a ton of successful games by tapping into the experiences he derived from everyday situations; the levels from early Zelda games were inspired by exploring the Japanese wildlife when he was a child and Wii Fit was conceived when decided that standing on his bathroom scale wasn't interactive enough. And Kate Beaton has created an incredibly successful webcomic based almost entirely on interesting twists on historical events.

Knowledge in any specific subject--be it history, science, outer space or even video games--can make for fascinating pieces of work when presented in a way that engages people.

This worries me.

Not so much the idea of writing what you know. That, like I said, is the freakin' rule of thumb.

No, what really worries me is that I don't really write about that which I know. In fact, I must confess that I'm not very well versed in any one subject outside of game development. And even that was a bit rocky for me; I didn't know what I wanted to do in game development when I signed up for the degree. I just know I wanted to be involved in it. I wore a lot of hats in college and, admittedly, it probably made my life a bit more difficult because I don't feel I've really mastered one particular aspect of the field (that and the fact that I probably spent too much of my time helping others learn software instead of having fun and/or sleeping >_>).

It sort of puts me off that I don't really have anything that I can easily transcribe into my comics short of some joke other than giving myself a seizure because I shifted some 1's and 0's in the wrong direction while working on a color transform in Flash...

For now, I seem to somehow get by with what I picture as interesting situations without any kind of knowledge to back it up. Like a seventeen year old girl forced to look over a country that I still have yet to create a definite culture for. Or cute zombies who play out their family issues by decapitating one another. Neither of which I'm sure I have the proper credentials to write about. Especially when it comes to the zombies.

But somehow, I'm enjoying myself. Not sure why I am. Especially when I feel I don't have enough smarts to add legitimacy to any it.

Strange, ain't it?

Lumia's Kingdom Facebook page

2010-02-26T07:13:00.000-08:00

The Lumia's Kingdom Facebook page is now live. I highly encourage those that can stomach my writing and artwork to become fans :)

You can view the page by clicking here.

Goals

2010-02-23T21:47:00.000-08:00

Wow, I haven't posted anything in over a month.

Been busy as of late with work and the gym and trying to be a decent boyfriend. And, oh yeah, that thing called a webcomic.

I do like the direction that the story is going in so far, but I had to make some small tweaks to it to try and get ahead. I discovered that one of my plot points wasn't going to work as well as I had intended and looked through some of the pages for some idea on how to get around it. Luckily, there was something I randomly mentioned in one of the pages with no intention of delving into that helped me out :)

Another thing I have planned but haven't had time to sit down and do is making an HTML tutorial for those interested in doing their own webcomics. It amazes me how many people are extremely impatient with HTML and aren't willing to learn even if they want to post content online... I code all of my pages and JavaScript by hand (except for the Lightbox 2.0 code on the gallery page) so the idea of leaving my code at the mercy of some $200 to $500 WYSIWYG program doesn't sit too well with me. I'm no expert (and everyone's always screaming at me for still using tables in my pages, apparently) but I figured I can at least show people how to use image and anchor tags. So that will be coming down the pipe sometime this year.

Also, my girlfriend (why, no, I'm not spamming you with links to her blog :) has set up a Lumia's Kingdom Facebook page for me to potentially post updates to. It hasn't gone live yet, but hopefully it will when I can actively remember to make it public.

That's all I've got for now. Later!

Increased the format size again

2010-01-18T22:23:00.000-08:00

I moved the format for the comic up a smidge. In the beginning, I was drawing on 8.5" x 14". Then, I moved on to 11" x 14". Now I'm at full 11" x 17", which is the standard size that American comics are drawn at. In the past it used to be quite difficult for me to draw at this size, but I started craving more room to draw the characters and fit in dialog... so we'll see how long this lasts.

Of course, the biggest headache of this all is finding an adequate means of safely storing all these pages >_> Bugger.

Nosiree...

2010-01-14T22:12:00.000-08:00

So I spent 9 days working on this page. I tried to do the entire process digitally this time, thumbnailing it straight into the GIMP and refining the image and inking and... well, to make a long story short, it flopped.

I went back and did the thumbnail by hand on my standard 5 x 8 notecards, scanned it, and continued from there. After FINALLY getting into a groove with it (that took about, oh, four days to get into!) and getting the page ready and decent, I've decided that the digital inking process isn't really something for me. Maybe I'll fool around with it in a smaller capacity later, but using a tablet to ink isn't the same as holding a piece of paper and a pen in your hand.

I still use the tablet for digital pencils. That part is a lot of fun. But then again, I guess I have fun until the point it requires me to be refined and clean and you know, ink. In which case, it's ALWAYS nicer to be able to look at the entire page in one glance instead of zooming out and rotate the page if I'm trying to ink a line in a particularly difficult direction.

I do realize the restrictions that this creates (harder to fix mistakes, having to deal with scanning quality, etc) but I do think the old way is slightly more personally gratifying. Which is very important; if the process of creating a comic becomes more laborious than it has to be, it takes away a lot of the motivation.

I'm still greatly motivated to do Lumia's Kingdom and I'm still going to draw each and every page so long as I'm alive and have a story to tell. I thought going the digital route would make the process faster (and less expensive), but sometimes, the old method is just more satisfying.

So sorry for the delays. I'll try to get back on track with these pages.

Website content update

2010-01-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

Hey guys!

I've updated some of the content on the website:

The Gallery page has some new artwork by others (and by "others", I mean "three new pieces of art by Al")
Updated the Creator's page with photos, includes info on those who contribute to the comic
Switched Brett's link on the Links page to reflect the new webcomic he's working on.
On the Rant page, there is now a separate section on collaborating with others on a webcomic.

Now I'm going to see what I can do about finishing this page... Toodles!

Going down the increasingly digital path

2009-12-30T19:13:00.000-08:00

Running into what seems to be tighter and tighter schedules these days. This is only exacerbated by the fact that I know where very few things are in this town now that I've moved. It's going to be hell to find a barbershop that's open on the weekends.

I've also determined that it's time to turn to an increasingly digital method for making the comic. The reasons are obvious: cost and time. As I stated in my tutorial, I usually use some pretty low tech and inexpensive tools (the exception being Bristol board). However, I'm nearly out of printer ink and a good number of my pens are dying. As a result, last week's comic was thumbnailed on paper but refined and inked on the computer.

That's how it's going to be for Friday's comic. And next week, I'll be doing it entirely on the computer for the first time. If all goes well, I'll increase the format so that it's proportional to standard American comic book size (which is drawn at 11" x 17" in a 10" x 15" live area).

I really want to get back on the ball with the comic. Moving and traveling for the holidays have really dug into my time. So far, I've only spent ONE weekend at my apartment. Ugh.

Regardless, I'm gonna make this work. One way or another.

MOVED!

2009-12-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

I have successfully moved! It was quite the epic journey that ended unexpectedly with me moving in the last bit of my stuff while the police were conducting a manhunt via helicopter near the apartment. FUN TIMES! (not really)

Now I just need to sort out the mess that is my room. And find a third roommate >_>;;

After that, it'll be back to making comics! YAY!

Moving update

2009-11-25T19:04:00.001-08:00

So, when this move started, I thought I'd be in the new place by the middle to late November.

Things haven't gone exactly as planned, though they are still on track.

Essentially, the individuals whose room I am hoping to occupy aren't moving out until November 29th.

And I have to vacate my own apartment by November 29th.

So that's a little disconcerting, but not terrible.

One of the other roommates in said apartment has already moved out, and it was agreed upon that I could temporarily store my stuff in his room once the landlord inspects it for any damages and whatnot. Then, once the others moved out, I would move my stuff into the proper room.

Awesome sauce!

...Except the landlord caught the flu and hasn't had the chance to inspect the room yet.

And so I wait patiently. And, unfortunately, so must you wait before I can resume updates for the webcomic.

So press on, dear reader, and continue to troll the internets for other humorous material until I have negotiated these windy (but not hectic!) trials in epic relocation :)

Previews galore!

2009-11-22T16:47:00.000-08:00

Hey guys! Sorry I've been so silent for a while. Been thinking things over for the story and getting ready for a really big scene that's coming up. And I mean REALLY BIG!

Now, I dunno when I'll get back to updating status, but here's some previews of the next three pages in the mean time. They don't give much away, so I don't mind letting you guys peek at them :P

What's Ott up to? Why's Gen so panicked? And what's got Lumia so upset all of a sudden?

Well, you're just gonna have to wait and see.

Til next time! :D

On reviewing others

2009-11-16T21:04:00.000-08:00

I know from time to time I tend to write a review on something, such as a game or a movie. Sometimes, the words I choose might not be the wisest, but I often do it because I feel strongly about what I say. I don't make bold claims that I could do better or that said work of art is done by someone who doesn't know any better.

But, since this is the internet, you can always be assured that someone else will say something to that effect.

Some time ago, I stumbled upon the blog of a guy claiming to be a critic of webcomics. From that sentence alone you can probably do a Google search and find said blogger, but I'm not going to post a direct link to it because I don't want to cause trouble.

In his first post he stated:

"I'm here to provide a straight up fact filled review, and curse free while I'm at it!"

Hmm... okay.

All implications aside, the reason I decided to follow his reviews was because in his third entry he stated that he would eventually critique Blue Zombie and Lumia's Kingdom.

A few entries past. I never paid them any mind because I'm lazy and didn't feel like reading walls of text unless it pertained to my work (I'm self-centered like that).

But what did catch my attention was when he gave a particularly vitriolic review of one webcomic. There are some things in his entry that I do agree with, but I think they could have been stated in a less condescending manner. Not only that, but he made bold accusations about the quality of the art on said webcomic and then proceeded to imply he could do better.

The problem with this was that many others (I will not pass judgment myself) felt that, given the quality of his review and his art, he couldn't do any better than the person he reviewed and made their opinions on the matter known to him. He got such a negative response with his review that he wrote another entry where he apologized for it and then, from what I gather, wrote another, less scathing review about the same comic.

Like I said, I'm not going to pass judgment on the guy.

Instead, I will say this:

The internet is full of people who think they know best. If you're going to try a professional hand at writing something (especially when it comes to reviews), at least write it in a way that people will take you seriously. Otherwise, no one will take you seriously. And it may cost you more than that.

For example, you could end up like former GameSpot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann.

As my former roommate Al pointed out, regardless of how you feel about GameSpot's termination of Gerstmann over his choice words for Kane and Lynch (a game that GameSpot had skinned their site with at that time), it's hard to deny that much of his video review is far from what would be considered professional.

So please, if you have something to say about someone's work, make sure that your words are thoughtful, not spiteful. And when you respond to people's feelings on something you wrote, don't be so quick to defend what yourself. Because, in the end, you don't know when it will come back to bite you in the ass.

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-11-07T22:18:00.001-08:00

So this weekend, I went to see Where the Wild Things Are. I wasn't sure what to expect from the film, but I was hoping that it would at least leave me feeling happy.

The film, overall, was good. But I must say that it was not what I was expecting.

There's so much psychology about the film: clinging on to people, not seeing how your actions end up hurting those you love, expecting others to lead you to happiness. I'm actually surprised the film got away with a PG rating.

At the very beginning of the film, the main character Max is chasing what is presumably the family dog. He eventually tackles the dog and proceeds to wrestle with it. Very violently. Now, this would be okay... if they actually told you what happened to the dog. You don't see it for the rest of the movie. Which seems a little... disturbing.

Still, I enjoyed it. It was a pleasant film that definitely went to interesting lengths to get its message across. Though, I'd say watch it yourself before letting your kids see it.

Anniversaries and moving

2009-11-02T21:58:00.001-08:00

So November 7th will be the one year anniversary for Lumia's Kingdom. That's right. One full year of inundating you people with my horrible inking, my flawed panel continuity (gestalt be damned!), my tacky racially motivated pun towards bird brains and, let's not forget, naked kings.

How do I plan on spending it?

By packing up boxes and moving into a new apartment!

Lemme explain.

Sadly, my roommate, despite all his awesomeness, could not find employment. And so, after almost a year of working on his portfolio, sending out resumes and hoping for the best, he's decided to leave the hotter-than-hell world of SoCal and move in with his family in the colder-than-hell world of Michigan. And, given how expensive it is to live out here, I can't financially handle living in an apartment by myself.

But as luck would have it, some friends of mine are in need of a roommate. So if all goes well with a meeting with their apartment manager, I will be moving in with them later this month.

Of course, this means that there won't be any regular page updates for Lumia's Kingdom for a while. I do plan to edit some of the website, but the actual comic is on hiatus until I can relocate and unpack everything.

So in the mean time, subscribe to the RSS feed, join the email list, follow me on Twitter, or park yourself right here for updates on when I'll return.

And if anyone has anything they'd like to submit while the comic is on hiatus, drop me a line.

Hope to be drawing for you guys again soon :)

Another preview!

2009-10-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a preview of page 65! Don't look if you don't want it spoiled!

Page 64 rough

2009-10-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

I'm experimenting with the digital process still. I don't so much like it for making the final piece, but I've discovered it's flexibility for refining roughs at a lower resolution. So today, I did "digital pencils" instead of "digital inks". The digital pencils are done at a resolution of 100DPI (I typically scan my inks at 300DPI). I also see that it's good with spotting out potentially nice areas of black. Adds more contrast to the page.

So the thumbnail started off like this:

I took it into the GIMP and refined it some more so that it looks like this:

Now, I'm gonna take a break and then come back to it later. If I decide nothing needs to be changed, I'll convert all the black to magenta, print it out and ink it by hand :3

Some concept art

2009-10-25T02:55:00.001-07:00

Here's two pieces of concept art I did tonight.

Advertisements are live

2009-10-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

I've been approved by Project Wonderful to host their ads on the LK website. My goal at this point is to make enough money so that I can indulge in chewing one gumball each day.

Nom nom nom.

On story progression & making new characters

2009-10-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm extremely guilty of playing things by ear, even if I have an idea of where I want things to go overall. Of course, we tend not to focus on the little details until they're immediately in front of us. Then, when the deadline rolls around, it's like "Oh, crap, I gotta put something out now!" And it's very tempting to write a farts-and-dicks joke just to keep the current gag going, but sooner or later, it can bite you back and it often hurts.

I've been trying to keep things moving at a decent pace but trying to make sure they stay interesting at the same time. Last Friday's page is an example of this; I didn't really have an idea of what I was going to do when I made the page thumbnail on Wednesday. I figured, "I'll just do another Lumia versus Camilla comic and call it a day!" But before I began, I realized that in the long run, I still have a lot of ground to cover with other characters that I haven't touched as much. Sure, Lumia's got her plate full with the R-MUTT and the palace doors and the queens, but what about Ott and Jordan? What about Kitty and the alleyway bums? And did Marceaux survive his epic toss out of that window??

So I think I was wise to deviate a bit and do a strip about Antoine and Leon remembering the good ol' days. And, if you caught it, I hinted at something else as well ;)

The deviation, I feel, should prove to be a nice segue into these next couple of pages.

...Which, ironically, aren't written down yet, but at least I know what I'm gonna do for them!

I actually took time to brainstorm a bit and doodle some (I don't doodle enough. You can chalk that up to my free time being spent too much on game design) and I came up with a new character to push the story forward.

But I can already hear you: Tamar, are you insane? A NEW character? But you've already hinted at two characters (Violette and Etienne) that haven't even appeared yet!

Well, hear me out. This character plays an immediate role in the page I have planned for Friday, October 17th. They will help bridge a gap between current characters and characters that haven't appeared yet.

Oh, here we go again. MORE new characters? Are you serious?

Well, wait a second, let me clarify. Settle down. Yes, more characters are on the way. The slew of characters that have yet to be drawn have a pretty big role in this story arc. And maybe beyond the story arc as well (I haven't decided yet).

Hell, they've had a pretty big role in my life...

But I said the character in next Friday's page will be new. Technically, the characters after that aren't all that new.

If you catch my drift :D

Feedback

2009-09-21T10:24:00.001-07:00

I've gotten quite a bit of feedback from readers on the whole full-time webcomic artist deal. So far, it has all been very supportive and I've gotten a lot of good ideas.

I'll post more on this later.

Dealing with car stress

2009-09-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest things that a person can deal with in life is when something incredibly stressful is suddenly thrown at you.

And one of the most stressful things to deal with is car troubles.

I have had my share of car troubles. I've been in three accidents--two of which in the car I was driving. I've had my starter die, my nearly-ruined transmission cut open, and my CV boot fail on me while I was driving it in Savannah.

And yet... I still have the same car. I have had this car, this 1998 white Nissan Sentra, for 6 years.

Truth be told, only the starter dying happened on its own. The accidents, the transmission having to be cut open and the CV boot failing were all due to (expensive) human error. The latter two are the reasons why I don't go to Firestone for repairs anymore.

Despite everything that has happened, though, my car has managed to pull through in the end. Which is why, with great pride, I have named it after the famous game designer John Romero. Because no matter what you do or say, you can't keep John Romero down. And the same goes for my car.

Today, John Romero had another incident to deal with.

I was walking to him at 6:45 this morning for work. When I got to John, I looked inside and realized that my ashtray was sitting in the passenger side seat.

This immediately struck me as odd because I don't smoke. Aside from stuffing trash in the ashtray, it is almost never opened, much less removed.

It was then that I realized that not only was the ashtray out of place, but the glove compartment was open, stuff had been pulled from under my seat and the inside of John was pretty much trashed.

As my eyes traveled from the front seats to the back seats, they moved upward to what was the masterpiece of the horror before me-- a broken rear panel window.

My car had been broken into.

As I was talking to the police on the phone and going over the damage, I was trying to figure out what the thief had taken other than loose change. Apparently, I had left my emergency road side kit in the back seat. This kit was contained in a rather large bag and did not explicitly say "HEY! I'm an emergency road side kit!" Most likely, the thief thought it was actually something worth money and decided he wanted it.

Oh, yes. He wanted it BADLY.

It seems he attempted to pick both locks on the front doors. But good ol' John wasn't having that. The driver side didn't work for the thief (and now sticks a bit when I put my key in it thanks to his fiddling around with it), so he moved to the passenger side.

It was there that he broke whatever instrument he was using to pick the lock off in the lock itself.

Furious, but still determined, he resorted to breaking in the rear panel window to gain entry. All for an old road side kit and some change.

I am still pretty upset over the matter, but I somehow managed to swallow my stress and drive John to work and back after calling the cops.

It wasn't until later that I really thought about how much trouble this thief had to go through to get into John. And how much hell John gave him over a stupid road side kit that has some partially melted jumper cables, a bunch of old pain killers and band-aids that are probably expired by now.

So yeah. In the end, John Romero has lived up to his namesake once again and proven his worth.

An apology

2009-09-15T19:33:00.001-07:00

I must sincerely apologize about my last Knaddian email.

My girlfriend is very adamant about the comic. So much, in fact, that she does get upset with me when I don't post page updates.

But she did not threaten me with bodily harm. It was a joke on my end that, in retrospect, is not as funny as it sounds.

...But she has punched me in her sleep.

It was an accident.

I still love her.

Why so late?

2009-08-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Some people may be wondering about the lack of updates lately.

Truth is, I lead a fairly busy life. Since moving to California, I've been finding time to be more lacking. This is exacerbated by the fact that traffic in SoCal is freakin' horrible. This sometimes makes attempting to get comics up in a timely manner quite challenging. Add to it that I try to balance time by drawing another mini comic and trying to design a computer game in my spare time, ~~and wanting to get in at least 6 of my 8 required daily naps~~ and you can see how it gets pretty busy.

On top of this, my girlfriend has temporarily moved in with me while she does an internship for her graduation requirement. And, well, truth be told, I'd rather spend weekends out of the apartment with my girlfriend than spending it inside drawing comics.

Add to that, my roommate has been jobless since November. Yes, this is the same roommate who got me the job at the company I work at now. He's been applying everywhere humanly possible, but hasn't gotten any promising results lately. So if anyone knows of any place hiring 3D character artists-- even if it isn't in California-- drop me a line. In any case, it's been hanging in the back of my head that I might have to move soon if my roomie goes back to Michigan, so if that happens, that could cut into more of the comic's updates.

I'll try my best to get back on track with LK as soon as I can.

Just bare with me for the time being :)

Tutorial pages are back up!

2009-07-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

The tutorial pages are back up! \ ^o^ /

Give them a good looking over and let me know if anything is wrong:
http://lumia.comicdish.com/index.php?page=tutorials

Deadline again

2009-07-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

Have a deadline again, so no comic pages this week.

I'll post some filler art on Tuesday and Friday.

Plan of action

2009-07-13T08:20:00.000-07:00

After an email convo with Mr. Flynn, I've decided to push the website redesign I've been considering. The new site will be a much more standard and browser safe site. I'll move links to the top and the bottom of every page and get rid of the clutter on the left hand side.

Design commences when I get home from work tonight. So there will be filler art for tomorrow.

Then, I'll have a new page up for Friday :3

New scripting format

2009-07-01T21:57:00.001-07:00

When scripting for my comics, I used to write out all the action and dialogue, panel for panel. It's a really traditional way that works for most people and, in truth, it has worked for me as well.

My main problem now is that I keep restructuring and re-editing while I draw the comic and often times almost re-write the entire dialogue when I'm lettering. Sometimes the way an image is drawn will make me think of better dialogue. Sometimes, I find that I haven't drawn enough space for the dialogue and I have to condense it. In many cases, I've thrown out entire scripts in favor of taking the story in a different direction. Heck, for Blue Zombie I threw out entire storylines.

As of now, there are 45 pages for Lumia's Kingdom. I had originally written the first 60 scripts for it.

I only used up to page 25 before I really started winging it.

So for the last 20 pages, I've literally been going without a definite script. I had it thought out what I wanted to do and where I wanted the story to go and even did some small sketches, but nothing was distinctly written for it until I was lettering.

Obviously, my spelling errors went through the roof. Luckily, I've had people point out my mistakes and I've been able to go back and correct them.

Still, I do feel that I need to have something written down, even if I don't follow it 100%. But I didn't want the headache of writing out everything in detail and then gutting weeks of work.

So I came up with an idea.

I do need to write down what happens on every page, but only as a synopsis. I'm literally writing about three or four sentences and maybe a snippet of a conversation now, but that's it. This way, I can clearly document my ideas and good an idea of how the story is flowing on paper before I attempt to execute the drawings. I've only written stuff down for the next five pages so far, but what took me only a few minutes would've taken about half an hour to an hour in full script format.

So far, that's a plus. Let's hope I can keep it up.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-06-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

I watched Armageddon. I got a head ache.
I watched Pearl Harbor. I got a head ache.
I watched Transformers. I got a head ache.

Michael Bay's work gives me headaches.

His knack for rotating the camera 360, 720, and 1080 degrees around a single stationary object should be outlawed along with his lens flares. He uses way too much physical comedy which is always executed through stupid side characters and way too much yelling. He also needs to learn pacing.

Unfortunately, I'm a sucker for well done digital imagery. And it's easier to see a film if you have low expectations (Eragon being the exception here, because that movie didn't even meet my low expectations).

In short.... I got a headache. And I felt like I just sat through the ultimate Transformers fan fic.

What was up with the disjointed slow motion shots in this one? If I wanted a slide show, I'd go to Flickr! And the weird "filming the shot at an angle where NO ONE CAN TELL WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON" stuff gets very annoying.

Still... purty 3D models of robots... *drools*

Journal comics

2009-06-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

I have my own separate folder in Google Reader for webcomics, as well as the "Subscribe" button in my tool bar to easily add webcomics with RSS feeds to my reader. It's quite nifty.

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed that the comics I've been adding the most are journal comics. In other words, comics that detail the life experiences of those who draw them.

The main difference I've noticed so far is that journal comics tend to be a lot more narrative; in other words, the person takes the time to briefly describe what they did instead of showing you what they did. And yet, somehow, the majority of these comics manage to not come off as preachy.

In addition, they seem to cover much more ground in terms of story and life events. Eeeeennnnteresting... Wondering if I should experiment with this kind of format...

About Blue Zombie...

2009-06-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

I have gotten a few emails about Blue Zombie lately. Mostly, the emails have been about me picking up Blue Zombie again... or handing the reins off to someone else willing to continue the story.

I'll be quite blunt; I have no intention of picking it up again in full. And I will not hand it over to anyone else.

BUT.... I might have some Blue Zombie characters in Lumia's Kingdom... I'm currently looking into "interesting" ways to include them in the story somehow. Not as regular characters, mind you, but I will look into giving them proper cameos.

In the mean time, it's obvious that if people are still hooked on my last webcomic, I have to work even harder to try and make my current one better.

Jeez. Can't get a break, can I? <:)

Separation of hobbies and blogs

2009-06-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

Hello, non-existent readers!

Just letting you guys know that I'll no longer be posting game related stuff on Knaddian (since I have a tendency to talk about it more than the webcomic at times). Instead, all gaming stuff will be posted at a new blog called Conflicted Gamer.

No posts there yet, but I'll probably have a slew of things to write about tomorrow.

Anyway, time for bed. Later.

Shree concept art-- COME GIT YER @$$ WHOOPIN'!

2009-05-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

Describing mechanics through words

2009-05-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

One of the joys (*cough*) of writing about game mechanics is trying to word it so that the person reading your description knows exactly what you're talking about. Especially when you're trying to describe something that seems unconventional for the kind of game you are striving to create. It's challenging to get someone to think that what you've written about could even be remotely fun to play, assuming they understand what you've written about at all.

Over this Memorial Day weekend, I had an "AH-HA!" moment for how I wanted dungeons to be played in my game. It was a very simple idea that solved a lot of problems I was encountering. It had everything I was looking for (simplicity, tension and abstraction) while somehow managing to weed out everything I didn't like about dungeon crawling (feeling of getting nowhere, being lost, unpreparedness of random enemy encounters).

So the next step was to capture this idea in words. That... took quite a while. Or rather... about 3 days of constant thinking and off-and-on typing. I wrote it all on a small webpage so that I could easily show it around to people I trust. I poured over the wording quite a bit and even rewrote entire paragraphs.

Then, I sent the link to one of my friends--a fellow gamer--to get her opinion. I sat in anticipation while I waited for her AIM messages to tell me what she thought.

She responded back: "OK, that sounds cool. I'd play it."

Yay! Step 1 achieved. Although, in reality, it is a small step. Not to discredit my friend, but having someone say "they'd play it" and then actually making sure they'd have fun playing it are two different things.

I talked with her briefly about the wording and whether or not anything was confusing. Surprisingly, she said that I actually over-explained some things and that she got the point before she finished reading.

For now, I celebrate a small victory, for I have articulated my idea properly to at least one individual. My game design is that much closer to completion and my mind that much closer to internal peace.

Now, to show the idea to another ~~victim~~ friend.

Ar Tonelico 2: What the f---?!

2009-05-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

Fun conversations from Ar Tonelico 2

A conversation about "Diving" into Lady Cloche:
Luca: I'm sad Lady Cloche took your "virginity".
Croix: Well, it was kind of strange that I had not done it in my life until then. I should feel honored that my first partner was Lady Cloche.
Luca: ...... I wanted to be your first partner That's why I never did it with anyone except for my customers. But, she took your "virginity" in front of me...
Croix: Well, that was just...
Luca: I was even ordered to help you two feel better during that... I'm sorry
Croix: Ah... well, sorry. I did it with her as my job, too, anyway.
Luca: I know, I know that...

Cloche and Luca talk about Croix:
Cloche: Anyway, Croix is such an exasperating guy...
Luca: Why do you think so?
Cloche: Because he can't even dive alone. How pathetic. If you hadn't helped him, his dive into me wouldn't have been successful. And he came running out after losing in my Cosmosphere so quickly. How can he be a Knight like that?
Luca: ......
Cloche: But, I really want to thank you, Lucca.
Luca: ...If that's what you think, please give me back his virginity.
Cloche: What? Did you say something?
Luca: Oh, nothing.

First impressions... Ar Tonelico 2

2009-05-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

So in my cravings for a new game to play, I went and bought Ar Tonelico 2. This is partially because I saw some people praising it on some forums I frequent and became curious... I'm a sucker for interesting battle systems, so I decided to take a look. I've never played the first Ar Tonelico, but seeing as most JRPG sequels rarely have anything to do with previous installments in the series, I don't think this will be much of an issue.

Keep in mind, I did buy the game new, so I do have the manual. However, I was curious to see how the designers approached the in game lessons, so I have yet to read the manual.

After about two hours of play, my feelings are mixed. So far, the battle system seems to resemble what I've encountered playing the first Valkyrie Profile-- buttons are mapped to a character and the user goes takes turn with the enemies, alternating between attack and defense. It seems pressing the directional pad while pressing a button does different moves, but I've yet to figure out how strategy factors in to this... some attacks just seem to do more damage, but they take longer to execute (so they eat up time, which determines whose turn it is) In Valkyrie Profile, different attacks could stun the enemy, get you behind the enemy, or send the enemy flying into the air, which gained you more crystals if you hit them while they were air born.

I do like the mechanics behind defending the person behind you. It's an active procedure that also requires timed button presses. I like it when games give me some control over this. Reminds me a lot of the Mario RPGs.

Story wise, it seems to deal a lot with the main character's relationships with various girls. We have a stereotypical uptight hero who does his best to make sure his companions (all of which so far are female) are satisfied. And these seem to be quite the stereotypical anime female archetypes: the angry girl who trusts no one, the cute childhood friend who is obviously in love with the main character, and the very direct kid sister.

Apparently, it's necessary to spend part of the game getting to know the girls better. This is done by "diving" into their minds and essentially helping them with various psychological issues that haunt them. The result of doing so is that they learn better spells that can be used in battle and work better with those protecting them. My first encounter with the dive system has me under the impression that it's essentially like playing a visual novel, except with points. Doing certain things consumes points, and if you run out of points, you're kicked out of the mind (although, other characters seem to be hinting that you could also die if you run out of points... I wonder if that's the case). Anyway, so far as I can tell, this addition of psychological diving just seems to be an excuse on the developers end for adding more reason to see cutesy female magical characters in funny costumes and try to add some legitimacy to it.

Of course, being an Asian game comprised of a single man interacting with several young women means that in game conversations are going to be weird. As I am writing this, I've just encountered a young woman in a bar who is asking one female character if the main character is a gigolo >.>;; And before my first aforementioned dive session, another character used the phrase "Croix, I demand that you dive into me!", which I'm sure the localization team meant as some sort of double entendre... I do wonder about game writers some times.

I'm equally mixed on the artwork for the game. The sprites are nicely done, but the way the environments are constructed makes them look like a popup book, and not a very good one in my opinion. The assets are 2D elements that are layered in 3D, but the results are none too pleasing. Often times, there seems to be issues with characters overlapping parts of the environment that they really shouldn't.

I do like the simplified interface for navigating from one place to another in towns and on the world map. This is something I personally feel is a lot more satisfying than having to walk all over an extensive world map. So far, its difficult to get lost and I like that.

I'll continue playing the game later tonight. If something noteworthy does come up, I'll be sure to write more about it.

Kung Fu Panda

2009-05-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

I never went to see Kung Fu Panda in theaters. A shame, really.

My roommate got the DVD from NetFlix and let me borrow it.

I must say, it is the absolute best DreamWorks animated movie I've seen.

Three reasons, mostly

1) They avoided the "cast animals as people and then forget that they are animals" drudgery that was very evident in Shark's Tale. But in Kung Fu Panda actually played on the individual qualities of the animals; how they move, how they pose, and even how to use their abilities in their martial arts.

2) They didn't litter the movie with pop culture references like they do in other DreamWorks animated films.

3) They didn't try to bank on the film being like other films on the market at that time (i.e. there were no other furry animated fighting animals showing on the big screen at the same time that I can remember)

They even went so far as to actually provide reason for the setting and use the culture and environment to their advantage in the film (something Disney really lost with The Emporer's New Groove... Did it necessarily have to be in an ancient South American civilization?)

To put it simply... I enjoyed the film very much.

Star Trek

2009-05-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

Saw the new Star Trek movie this weekend with my roommate. To be quite frank... the movie was awesome.

Given all that happened in the film, it's the most interesting way I've seen anyone incorporate what happened in previous films into another installment in the chapter (even though it's a prequel... or... semi prequel, I guess).

I highly recommend seeing it, even if you aren't a trekkie.

Digital Inking

2009-05-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

For the past few months, I've been experimenting off and on with digital inking. The latest experiment involved scanning in a rejected LK thumbnail and simultaneously blocking out the characters while refining the lines.

In general, I can see the advantages to this. For starters, you save a lot of money on paper and ink supplies. If I were to use this process, I'd pretty much only need a pencil, a stack of 5 x 8 notecards, my tablet and the GIMP. It also allows for making changes to the art rather quickly. Part of the headache with inking something on paper and posting it is having people come to me and say "This panel is confusing. You should have done it like this and this or moved this here."

I've seen videos of artists using digital inking processes for Penny Arcade, Looking for Group, and Octopus Pie. They're quite good at it, although Meredith at Octopus Pie seems to have made the move to traditional inking. From a money saving and editing point of view, it makes a lot of sense. What's not to love about it?

Well, I did find something that I hate with this process... I like the feeling of paper under my hand. I like the way my pen runs across the bumpy surface of whatever it is I'm putting ink on. I like being able to rotate the page at any angle to get it just right without hitting keys on my keyboard. Apparently, I'm a freakin' traditionalist.

So in all honesty, I don't foresee myself ever using the digital inking for my projects. Even if I were to use a Cintiq, I don't think it would help me feel any closer to the art than holding my Micron to the Bristol board. Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong? Perhaps one day, someone will show me that special technique in digital inking that will blow my mind, make me a convert, and I'll never look back. But until that day happens, I'll happily rip the pages from their pad, slice them down to size, and deal with the ink blotches as they come.

Shree: Evolution of a character

2009-04-30T22:04:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take a moment to elaborate on my current game project. After this, I promise I'll shut up about games for a while :)

A while back, I had an idea for an RPG (or rather, ideas on how to tackle major design issues I have with RPGs). I decided to follow up on the idea and do what I can to try and make a game that is fun to play and great to look at.

One of the things I've changed the most about the game is the characters. They've changed as a result of the my drafting different stories, environments, and even mechanics in the game. I was under the original impressions that RPGs were best when you had multiple characters to play with, but I've determined this to be wrong and have since boiled down to controlling just one character.

Being the JRPG-phile I am, I decided to make a very young lead character with a mound of issues and enemies to tackle. I also decided to make the character female. I have a tendency to make up unusual names for my characters... and I called her 'Shree'. This was the first pass at Shree.

Simple, young, vulnerable. She was supposed to be a very nimble and dodgy thief.

But her design was a bit too plain. So I tried to spice it up a bit.

Yeah, this is-- wait... no... no... still too plain. Let's try this again.

Alright! Now she's looking a bit more thief like. This was also the first appearance of her trademark "chaos" symbol on her shirt. But then my friend Coppelia (who is now my girlfriend :D) pointed out that the pants were too baggy for a thief. So some minor adjustments had to be made.

Better! I was happy with this design for quite some time.

But as the idea progressed, I thought a bit harder and said "hmm... what sort of character have I not seen in an RPG before?" Followed by, "Well... I rarely see black females. Maybe...."

And thus began a whole new debate with myself. Casting a black female as the lead in a game is extremely uncommon. Black males are more common (though still rare) because they are usually regarded as strong characters and, in some cases, have quite an attitude (at least in western games... Eastern developers still seem to hold on to a number of stereotypes about us, like big lips and afros >.> )

After a few weeks of thinking her design and character, I decided not to try and tap into the attitude of a black female because, well, that's just waiting for someone to scream out in anger at me. So I simply left it at she just happens to be black.

In terms of color, I tried to take a more earthy tone while dwelling on a bit of innocence. Perhaps some unnatural hair color as a result of some sort of chemical poisoning to add a bit of sympathy to the character? Hmmm... And I thought, for some strange reason, I should make her kind of resemble a tomato...

Kewl.

But because my mind is constantly wondering, I realized I was attempting to tap into the typical fantasy setting for the game. There's nothing wrong with this, per se, as it offers a lot of chances to make incredibly creative environments and cities.

But what if I went with something a bit more urban? What if the game took place inside of a city? It still had fantasy elements, but there were signs and public transporation and pollution. How would the character look then? Another thing that came to mind... I didn't want to make her too girly, but I didn't want to make her to be a complete tom boy. So, maybe a shirt that could almost be long enough to be a dress... but with pants?

Wow. Not bad. She actually looks like she could live in an urban setting.

...And then I moved. I had to shelve my game for a few months while I concentrated on other things. Eventually, I decided to work on webcomics again and was plotting out a number of characters. When I got to Jordan, I thought it would be a good idea to re-use Shree's design because I didn't know when I was going to get a chance to use it for anything.

Now that I'm actively thinking about the game a few months later, I decided that I still wanted to use Shree as the lead. But I didn't want to make her a kid anymore. She needed to be older to comprehend the story ideas I'm bouncing around in my head.

And perhaps make her slightly more feminine? Hmm... So today, I came up with a few sketches of Shree as a teenager:

Yeah! These seem nice! Long, slender legs for ~~kicking ass~~ running away from/to danger.

Another sketch to illustrate the idea:

Yeah... I think I'll stick with this design for a while.

Yay!

2009-04-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

After many weeks of torture, it appears that the admin at ComicDish have managed to rid the entire website of malware! That means we're back in business :D

I'm gonna be making some updates to the site tonight as well as uploading a new comic. I will still maintaing my mirror at ComicGenesis, though, just in case this happens again.

Programming again

2009-04-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

After months of holding off on it, I've started programming again when I'm at home. This past weekend, I got pretty far on making a backend for what will hopefully be a framework for a game.

I spend most of my time at work programming in ActionScript 3.0 with strict mode turned on. I've become accustomed to using AS3, but for this personal project, it fell a little short of what I was looking for. Instead, I've turned to Python for this project. I feel it to be better suited for rapid game development in that the process of compiling Python code is usually faster and the fact that it's not tied to a specific rendering API like AS3 is.

Of course, it's proving to be challenging moving over to a different syntax as well as keeping in mind how assigning values in Python works differently than many other programming languages. But, hey, no pain, no gain.

So far, the entity management system seems to be working, but I won't be able to tell for sure until I get a rendering back end up (most likely going to be provided through PyGame). I'll also have to make my own resource manager and I have no idea where to start with creating a GUI. Hopefully, I'll find solutions for all of these relatively soon :)

Monsters vs Aliens

2009-04-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

Just got back from seeing Dreamworks's newest animated movie, Monsters vs Aliens. In general, the movie was pretty enjoyable. I would have liked to see more character development with the cast other than Susan, but the movie was written to entertain with comedy and action with a bit of "awwwwe" for the lead female.

If there is one gripe I have about the movie (and all animated movies by Dreamworks, really), it's that they try too hard to throw comedy at the audience. Ever since the first Shrek movie, Dreamworks has been looking for ways to push comedy into our faces instead of easing it in like other studios do with their movies. The biggest overuse seems to be the insertion of pop culture references where they are often not needed.

Still, for the most part, Monsters vs Aliens entertained me. Unlike the Tale of Desperaux, I don't regret spending money to have seen MvA.

Editing LK while reading Monster

2009-03-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

I took a week off from drawing Lumia's Kingdom to do some important editing. The last few comics were all re-written on the fly after much consideration, but it seems to have really mucked up a lot of what I had originally written in the coming comics. Along the way, I wanted to experiment with the idea of convergence of various plots into one grand event. I've had the idea for a while, but I think it's really picking up steam since my girlfriend loaned me her copies of Naoki Urasawa's Monster.

Monster is quite intriguing; there are so many characters with very well developed plots and backgrounds that are all linked because of one singular person. Though Dr. Tenma is the main character of the plot, he is sometimes absent for most of an entire volume. Nevertheless, the story is still very gripping.

It's really inspiring me to try and push the idea of convergence into the next batch of LK scripts. Hopefully, I can pull it off.

On inking

2008-12-22T21:19:00.000-08:00

I find it very interesting in how my attitude towards inking has changed since I've been working on Lumia's Kingdom. When I was doing the art for Blue Zombie, inking was one of my biggest hassles. I simply did not want to do it, but I saw it as a necessary evil because my pencils are very messy and don't scan well. Back then a lot of my art was done with ink pens such as the Sakura Pigma and Staedtler Sketch Pens.

After taking my Sequential Art classes at SCAD, I really tried to push towards using more professional tools like quills and brushes. I think I've probably spent close to $100 on various nibs and pen holders, trying to find the right one. After I stopped doing Blue Zombie, the pursuit of such knowledge of finding the right nib died a bit.

When I started LK, I found an art store near by and picked up a few nibs and an ink vial and went to town on the first page. And I learned something very interesting--trying to be more professional with my technique began to take the fun out of it. I tried all the nibs I bought, but they all felt like there were making more work for me to finish the page. In short- they were taking out a lot of the fun of doing a comic.

I still had some Pigma liner pens from a few years back, so I broke those out. And what do you know--it felt less like a chore for me that way. Sure, the line width is harder to maintain and longer to implement, but somehow, it feels better this way.

Now I don't mind inking so much. It actually gives me something to experiment with, especially since the comic has gone completely black and white for the moment. I'm sure if I returned to my professors and told them this, they'd scoff at my efforts. But then again, the way I see it, it's about my personal enjoyment. And in the end, regardless of the fans, regardless of the more professional techniques, the most important thing for me is that I have fun with what I'm doing in the end.

Wow.

2008-12-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

Being a gamer, there are very few games/pieces of interactive software that make me go "WTF?? ...That's really cool!"

This is one of them.

Time for hobbies

2008-12-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

It's hard work to live a life and have time for your hobbie. The amount of time I spend driving to work, being at work, and driving home from work is almost 12 hours. It really put a damper on my hobbies (which are playing video games, sleeping, and drawing comics of course!).

With that said, I was speaking to my former roommate about doing webcomics. He commented that he was looking for an artist to draw his comic idea because he felt he didn't have the time to do it himself.

Which brought me to an interesting conclusion... If you don't have the time to commit to your own hobby, why would you want someone else to do it for you? In my opinion, it kind of takes the fun of watching your work come to life. Now, I'm not against collaborations between an artist and a writer, but this idea seems kind of silly.

There were other factors that were worked into his decision, again, none of which I think really supported his decision. But at the end of the day, it's how he has decided to go about doing things.

Part of why I draw comics is to act as a form of escape and to better my storytelling skills. If I make a page and I think it came out well, I feel really proud of myself. If the page comes out poorly, I try to make myself do better the next time. It's a real push and it's one that, in many cases, can keep you sane in some pretty hard times.

But if you collaborate with someone, sometimes the results can be different from what you expect. This can be a good thing, but it can also be very bad. Suddenly, the effectiveness of your hobby is partially relying on the contributions of another person, and if the results aren't what you envisioned, you can't justify it by claiming that the other person did not live up to your expectations.

I know what is like to witness this first hand. I was that person who didn't quite meet someone else's vision in another project. Add in my own mixed feelings at that point and time, and it's easy to see why things didn't work out.

In the end, what I suppose I am saying is this; a hobby--be it drawing comics, collecting cards, or programming games--is something you do to make yourself feel good. And you should not expect someone else to help you achieve that goal. Because sometimes, when your happiness is riding on another's efforts, you will find yourself less than happy.

Beginning webcomics...

2008-11-23T20:53:00.000-08:00

How did I get started on webcomics? It's an interesting story.

Well, not really.

I had always been fascinated by comics as a child. My brother got me started on the Marvel and DC heroes at a young age, and soon afterwards, we discovered manga. As the manga industry picked up, though, I learned that the majority it had to offer seemed to be rehashes of the same wild-haired youth with super abilities or skills running through pages filled with obnoxious screen tones (at least, that's how I saw it).

On top of that that, I had an extreme love for newspaper comics. My dad didn't get the paper every day, but we usually got the Sunday paper and I would bask in the glow of Peanuts and Foxtrot as well as other comics. My favorite is and always will be Calvin and Hobbes and we had amassed a sizeable collection of Calvin and Hobbes treasury books. The Tenth Anniversary publication in general educated me about the history, process and plight of newspaper comics over the years, going from full page publications to 1/4th page prints with throw away panels. A part of me died when I learned quite later that the reason I didn't see any more C&H comics was because Watterson had retired. I've searched around quite a bit, but I have yet to find a comic as great as Calvin and Hobbes.

In the year 2000, two friends of mine introduced me to a webcomic called Mega Tokyo. Back then, it was still relatively new and rife with gaming and anime related humor. However, as the references to both seem to wain over the years, so did my friends' interest in the comic. And, after a while, so did mine. However, it inspired me enough to try and make my own webcomic.

I worked on and off for 2 years on various ideas, most of which failed horribly. Eventually, after attending SCAD's Rising Star program, I did a 5 page comic for my final that eventually became the intro to my first webcomc, Blue Zombie. After a few pages went up, I gained two partners in crime and, through some careful links exchanges and communication with other people, a pretty decent fan base.

Things went downhill after high school, as college ate up a lot of time and the comic, which already suffered from sporadic updates, became even more sporadic. After graduating from SCAD in 2007, I found myself thinking about Blue Zombie even less and, eventually, it phased out of my mind altogether. With my companions off doing other things, I couldn't really motivate myself to work on it anymore. Worse, I had fallen dangerously out of the habit of actively drawing (something I'm still trying to get back into the habit of doing on a regular basis). Working in the bookstore did not help with this, as I would often come home tired and just wanting to sleep.

Somewhere in that five year period of time of working on Blue Zombie off and on, I had an idea for a comic about a girl who reluctantly takes the thrown of a very poor nation. I wanted to pitch it as a newspaper comic, but I couldn't decide on a good way to start off the comic and, eventually, it fizzled away in the back of my mind.

Fast forward to 2008. I had just landed a my new job and started moving out of Savannah. Somewhere along the way on my 3 day drive, the idea of this girl came back into my head and I played around with it. But I still didn't have any good idea of how to start out the story. With Blue Zombie, I think I did well enough with trying to capture interest in the first five pages (of course, I'm incredibly bias with my work, so I could be wrong :P )

In August, I finally moved into an apartment and had started taking part in a car pool with some coworkers. Being all 20-something year old males, the exchanging of lewd jokes were inevitable.

Somewhere in that time spent going up and down the freeway, there was mention of a giant penis in one of our conversations. And then it clicked.

A girl who would accept the throne from a naked (and well hung) king.

I explained the premise to some friends (one of which told me I was crazy) and it was somehow agreed upon that the idea was humorous. I wrote the first dozen scripts, drew up a couple of pages and popped them on Comic Dish. After a discussion with my friend Coppelia DOG, the comic was named Lumia's Kingdom

As of writing this, there are 6 pages online and 2 more cued for the coming week.

If there's anything I've learned, it's that I can guarantee nothing when it comes to my work, though. Who's to say that I fall out of love with Lumia's Kingdom just like I did Blue Zombie?

Only time will tell, I suppose. But for now, I'm having fun.

How I got my job, part 3 of 3

2008-11-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

After my sophomore year of college, I took up a part time job at the campus bookstore, Ex Libris, in the Spring of 2006. It was combination retail book store, text book provider, and art supplies store. I was hired on as a temp and, after working at Best Buy the Christmas before, I knew that I could possibly be let go of after the initial beginning of the quarter rush.

I did what I was asked and managed to stay on for quite a while. Two years, actually. I found a nice niche downstairs in the text book department working with Ms. Sandra Brown and Mr. Jerry Best, who are, without a doubt, the best people I've ever worked with in a retail environment. There were moments where we had our ups and downs (especially after our parent company changed the textbook management software) but we managed to make things work.

After I graduated in 2007, I worked close to full time hours, but still as a part timer. At that point, our parent company had put a freeze on hiring anyone full time unless it was a management position. Things happened within the store and, as a result, some of best workers left the store. Two of them were full timers who worked the art supplies. As a result, there were actually two full time positions available. I mulled over it a bit, knowing things in art supplies weren't the best they could have been. Even so, the idea of having my hours cut (and consequently, my paycheck) when summer rolled around didn't sit well with me, so I moved up to art supplies. In terms of work experience, it was a bold and beneficial move. In terms of personal morale, however, it was a big mistake, as I got to put up with even more furious students than I had encountered in the textbook department. There were other things that I'm not at liberty to talk about, but it all comes down to the fact that I was not happy working upstairs.

Adding to this was the fact that I had done little work on my portfolio after graduating. I had chased down some companies via email about concept art positions, but were pretty much told that the position was filled or that I wasn't what they were looking for.

I also had this idea for a grand, but small scaled role playing game in my head and would spend whatever hours I wasn't at work toying with the designs of such in one of my notebooks.

After a while, I determined that this grand RPG just wasn't going to happen anytime soon and decided that I was better off pursuing a smaller, simpler project. Reluctantly, I decided to revisit Lumps; with the idea and the gameplay proven, it seemed a rather easy task to repolish it and make it public. At least I'd be able to show skills in something.

I looked over my options for making the game. I wanted it to be cross platform and easily accessible, which just screams "make me an internet game". The best way of doing that, I thought, was through Flash. Which I didn't have. The situation was made worse by the fact that I refused to steal software, so I would not download an illegal copy, even if offered. I remembered that the SWF format was an open format and Googled some options, which lead me to SWFMill and the Haxe project. I tooled around with it and posted my thoughts on blog. Somehow, someone found that post and sent me a message that set me straight; that message was Download Flash Develop.

So I did and that's when things really started to pick up. After a few days (and nights) of some after hours ActionScript 3.0 programming, I managed to get an interactive demo up and running. I still didn't fully understand the concepts between AS2.0 and AS3.0 at that point, but I was learning. It needed a better name, though, because Lumps just sounded horrible. I thought about it over a few days and decided to call it Afflicted. My grand scheme was to try and get it up on Kongregate and get some exposure that way.

After a few weeks, I was talking to a friend of mine, Andrew, who actually had managed to get a job in the industry. I showed him Afflicted and he informed me that his company was looking for Flash game programmers. I was surprised at the offer, but followed up on it once he gave me the name of the person in charge of the department. The next day, I got a call for setting up an interview. The next week, I was on a plane flying out to talk to the company. I literally flew out on the day before the interview and flew back the day of after the interview. My father was kind enough to loan me $700 for the flight and I am eternally greatful for this contribution.

A few days later, I had a job offer and accepted it happily. I put in my two weeks notice at work and said goodbye to my friends in Savannah. I then drove 2,500 miles in three days by myself with no real place to live other than bumming off of a couch in Andrew's place.

Luckily, two weeks after arriving there, I learned that my grandfather did not live too far away, so I spent a month living with him. Shortly afterwards, Andrew was looking for a new place to live and we found a place together about 14 miles north of work. We moved in at the beginning of August. It's been an interesting coexistence so far (more hilarious than anything else) and work at the new company has been mostly fun and not nearly as stressful as working retail. I've managed to learn a lot in my few months here and I've becoming incredibly comfortable with programming Flash games now.

At this particular point in time, I can honestly say that I like my job. I'm feeling more inspired by being around creative people and getting to see the cool things they manage to create. Unfortunately, since then, I've not touched Afflicted at all since the move. I'll have to return to it some day. Along with Meyers's go-get-em attitude and some careful research, it got me where I am today.

I do hope to go back to Savannah again. I love it there, despite the crime and the crazy homeless people. Pretty much living there for almost 5 years will do that to a person. But there isn't very much creative industry there for me to work with at the moment. It's a hard choice to decide between living in the city you love with your best friends and working the job you've always wanted. Hopefully, sometime in the future, I'll manage to have both. But for now, I can only have one of them.

How I got my job, part 2 of 3

2008-11-23T18:35:00.000-08:00

Having finished interactive design, I looked forward to taking other classes in the curriculum, getting my degree within four years, and then joining the game industry as fast as I could. And paying off my student loan.

Of course, there was another class in my way that made me cringe as I had to dive back into working with Flash-- that class was called Programming for Interactivity.

On my free time, I actively pursued texts dealing with programming in C++ and a little bit of Python. This seemed a bit weird for someone going to school with the intention of making game art, and the concept seemed even more bizarre to some of my friends. One friend of mine looked over my shoulder at a programming book I was reading once and told me it was like an "alien language."

With Programming for Interactivity, we were actually to dive more into Flash's programming language, ActionScript.

I thought, hey, this time, it'll be a little more manageable. I won't have to deal with the Flash timeline as much. Plus, Meyers was teaching the class again. What could go wrong?

Well, the thing about Meyers is that he does one thing that several students in several majors could argue a lot of teachers don't do-- he listens to his students.

Of course, being in Interactive Design and Game Development, we had several game development students who argued against having to take the interactive design classes. For going to a $30,000 a year school, it seemed to many a waste of money. They didn't want to make interactive timelines or media players; they wanted to make games. And this point was made very, very clear out loud in front of Meyers on several occasions.

Our second project in the class was supposed to be an MP3 player that would load the MP3 files from an external source made in two weeks.

Of course, the glorious thing about being a teacher is deviating from the syllabus as you deem necessary.

Meyer forewent the MP3 player and announced to use our next assignment was to make a Flash game. This was equally exciting and scary. I mean, there's no better way to describe it other than taking a crap in your pants with a smile on your face. At least, that's how it felt for me.

We were given the option of pairing up with another student for this project and, for some odd reason, I didn't. Probably because I knew the game I was going to make. I had had the idea in my head for quite some time, but hadn't gone about executing it. After thinking it over, I decided that almost everything I wanted to do in the game could be done in Flash. It would be a nauseating clone of Tetris Attack with a screen that flipped and rotated itself. And I would call it Groblings...

Somewhere, somehow, two ideas for a name for two separate projects converged on the same location in Savannah. As I described the idea to my friend Christine, who was a double major in game design and animation, she grew wide eyed and pointed out to me that the creature in her animation was called a Grobling. Perhaps I had heard her mention it earlier but lost the connection with her project and the name? I don't know. But after that, I decided to rename the project. For lack of anything else I could come up with, I simply called it Lumps.

Not soon afterwards, I truly learned out difficult it would be to program lumps. Falling blocks with simple collision detection on a transforming movieclip meant all sorts of optimization hell for me with the little bit of AS2.0 knowledge I had. With an huge mixture of AS2.0 and a few well placed keyframed animations, I got the game running at a reasonable speed. And it was playable. I showed it to my class and it was generally well received, although there were a dozen things that could make it better. I seem to remember someone actually calling it "Monster Tetris."

After that quarter, I had no more classes that would require me to have to use Flash. SuAnne planned and executed another showcase for our major. This time, I took the initiative and submitted Lumps as a game prototype. To my surprise, it tied for first place with a group project. I was very happy with the results. My game idea had a proof of concept and it was well received.

At that point, I only had a few more classes to take until I'd graduate and, hopefully, join the game industry. I wanted to get my ideas out there and make an impact somewhere. Specifically, I wanted to do concept art; to me, that seemed to be the more creative aspect of the art side of games.

As usual, things didn't go quite as planned, and it took me over a year after graduation to finally get somewhere.

How I got my job, part 1of 3

2008-11-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

We're not supposed to publicly flaunt what we do at work, so I'm afraid I'll have to be a bit vague about my employer's identity until I'm otherwise notified.

Back when I started at SCAD, I made sure that I knew what my class requirements from beginning to end and I planned out in my head everything that I was going to do. In the end, this really helped me when I had to meet my academic adviser and figure out all the courses I was going to take for my course load.

My major was Interactive Design and Game Development with a minor in Sequential Art. It's a mouthful to say, but it pretty much boils down to I went to college to learn about making video games and comic books.

Pretty sweat deal, if I do say so myself.

In any case, as is the deal with many college game design/development program, there is no unified curriculum yet on what has to be taught to the students. Lots of colleges offer computer science degrees and many psychology so that the students have better knowledge of how to get the player to feel what they want them to feel during gameplay.

SCAD felt it necessary, much to the disgust of several students going there for game design, to make them put up with the interactive design aspects as well.

It's well known that the game design students and the interactive design students don't really care what the other is doing. Many felt that we were unfairly lumped together, but I see it as a good thing; games can really benefit from good interactive design. An easy to navigate interface could be what separates the game from being good or bad.

One of the courses that was despised by some of my class mates was called Interactive Design and it was required by everyone in the major. Before I started, Interactive Design was taught in Macromedia Director. They had just hired a new, upbeat professor-- David Meyers-- to teach the class. He was very proficient in Director and was really excited about the class.

And right before he taught his first group of students, SCAD informed him they were suddenly switching the curriculum to Flash.

This proved an interesting challenge for student and teacher here, as neither of us had much experience in it. I had a brief encounter from a previous class and determined that the Flash interface left a lot to be desired.

Either way, Flash was taught and I had to learn a bit of ActionScript 2.0. I didn't care for it very much back then and simply tried my best to get a good grade in the class. Meyer's was very proactive to the students and even stayed up with us until midnight before projects were due while we hammered away at the computers in the lab. On more than one occasion, he ordered us pizza.

By the time the last assignment rolled around, I had had a rough quarter and didn't want anything else to do with Flash. The final project called for a portfolio website made in entirely in Flash and I was grumpy as hell. To illustrate this, I came up with a self deprocating theme for my website... one filled with lots of disturbing images of myself and blood and even an clip of myself hanging in effigy swinging from a rope. I called it Monkey Death Sketch Machine.

For some reason, Meyer's loved it. But he did have this to say:

"Be careful what potential employers you show this to."

I dismissed it, happy that I was finished with the class and went on to handle other things. One of which was the club that I had somehow wound up being president of (apparently, the decision was made for me). Our club dealt with promoting communication and events within our major and it was mostly managed by the very talented Professor SuAnne Fu, who admittedly did more work than any of our club members combined. She was preparing for the Interactive Design and Game Development Showcase that year, which was to be held in SCAD Atlanta. She was describing the entries that had been submitted and told me something interesting:

"Yeah, your Flash project is in there, too."

"My what??"

"Monkey sketch something, I think it's called."

"O_O"

Meyers had submitted the project to the showcase without telling me. At first, I kind of regarded it as kick in the teeth. Especially after he told me to be careful who I showed it to.

When I won first place in the showcase for best interactive portfolio, I decided it was more of a kick in the butt.

Either way, the quarter was over and things settled down for a bit.

I was done with the class and Flash forever and had no intention of touching it ever again...

Or so I'd thought.

Welcome

2008-11-23T17:54:00.000-08:00

Hello, and welcome to my blog. I'm not too good when it comes to writing introductions (or I tend to be long winded), but here's a stab at it anyway.

I have had a couple of blogs in the past, one of which was a very personal blog that only a few friends were allowed to read. Of course, the idea of a personal blog is that the contents mentioned are not to be made too publicly known and, to aid in this, it's usually a good idea to write under an alias.

I managed to do this for a few years until I started work on a personal project and documented it's progress on my blog. After going public with the project, I Googled it and the first link to come back was my blog. This concerned me, as I felt that this bit of exposure could be my undoing given some of the material I had posted.

After some careful thought about it, I deemed it would be better to start over and just make everything public and choose my words wisely. Because as some point and time in their life, every human being wants to the world to hear them scream. Of course, it's hard to be heard when everyone else is screaming just as loud, but we try anyway and some of us have a damn good time doing it.

Thus, Knaddian was born.

Knaddian will be about my personal experiences and encounters dealing with life, comics, video games, art and other things to be added as I see fit.

As I start off this blog, I've been working at my new job for about 5 months now while working at a start up company making Flash games. I've also just started a webcomic called Lumia's Kingdom. So you can bet that a good deal of the posts will have to deal with ActionScript or the webcomic making process.

For the first few posts, I plan to talk about how I got where I am today with my job and on the web. They'll probably be pretty lengthy and boring, but its good personal theropy for me to jot down the history of such and give folks an indication of where I'm coming from.

Here's hoping ya'll find it interesting.