Comments For Page 318

From this point on the party will be split up. Most of the characters are leaving with Horese and Obickert; while, Racheal, Slara and Toi will be heading to the mountains. The mountain adventure should only take a few weeks and then Racheal's group will try try to reunite with the rest of the gang.

Where is Horese taking the other group members and what will happen there? You'll have to wait a few weeks and see what happens.

Sorry for the lateness of this post. I've been distracted lately. Losing the weekend didn't help, but I should have been able to get this page done earlier and with better backgrounds. I guess the important thing is to move the story along. I'll try to do better on Friday. See you then.

Comments For Page 317 + Animediafest

What could Toi want that embarrasses Slara so? You won't get to know that until Toi actually earns her reward. Some observant people might realize what sort of person Toi is and guess what it is she wants, but I'll leave that to your imaginations for now.

Feel free to e-mail me at dungeonwarden(at)msn.com (replace (at) with @) if you want to know if your guess is correct or if there is anything else you want to talk to me privately about.

I had an interesting weekend. Friday was better then Saturday, since many people left early and some events had to be canceled. The Festival wasn't as big this year due to funding cuts and other organizational problems but Friday's events made it worth going.

The day started with a panel discussion about the current animation industry. Like many other art forms (music and movies in particular), the animation industry is run by people who don't know anything about the industry. The people with money fund the latest thing without regard for why it's popular in the first place. Many producers think the only people who watch cartoons are young children and adults with the minds of children. It is really hard to put any intellectual content in animated shows and the few good shows that do get put on air don't last long because there aren't funny enough. It's hard to get that mix of smart humor that plays to adults and children, and it doesn't help that most writers know nothing about the animation field. The most successful ones are comedians since they can at least tell a joke even though they don't seem to understand the animation is a visual medium. Many writers write things that are very hard to animate without any though to how to portray it visually. Some things are not explained in visual terms at all, leaving animators scratching their hears and wondering what the writer was thinking.

The animation industry is now in a boom period which is great if you're new to the industry. Money comes and goes quickly so you need to make money while you can. You never know when the bottom will fall out again.

In the afternoon session, three industry heads (two from Collideascope and one from Fat Kat) showed us some tricks of the trade. This included how to do good puppet style animation, how to do classical animation with Flash 8 (or as I like to call it Flassical), and how to properly design sets and props for your animation. I like the idea of really thinking about what you're drawing. Don't just draw a tree. Think about that the tree looks like, how the bark feels, how the branches grow and twist, how the leaves form clusters and shapes. A good artist can draw a tree with a few quick shapes that looks better then what a bad artist can draw after hours of careful reproduction. It's not about making the tree look real, it's about making the tree feel real. I was very impressed by the skill of the Collideascope artist. His quick examples were very well designed. He has a very good eye for detail, although he admitted he is too detail orientated. The head animators are allowed to remove 10% of the detail from any of his designs without needing any permission.

In the evening, we had a stop-motion expert show us some of his techniques. He even had a few puppets on display we could play with. It was very interesting to see the history of the industry and some of the shows he had personally worked on. Some of the tricks to make objects seem to float in the air was well worth the presentation on it's own.

On Saturday we looked at the Unreal engine for computer gaming and talked a little about the game industry. Animation is a big part of gaming and is also a bigger industry that TV or Movie animation. There is money to be made for those willing to look for it.

We had a pizza lunch and watched some student animation. You can see some of the animation at the Applied Arts Student demo showcase. There is some well made and funny animation here. Also check out Knights Out, the animated short that I helped create along with several of my class mates.

Comments For Page 316

I finished up the picture in school because I didn't get it done before hand as I planned. I had to use Photoshop and so the picture is a little rough. I'll try to fix it later. It doesn't look to bad as long as you don't look closely at the details.

I have about 15 minutes until the first workshop starts here at Animediafest. I wasn't sure I'd get this done in time but it looks like I'll actually have a few extra minutes.

I might post later today or tomorrow to let you know how things are going. Otherwise I'll summarize the event on Monday. See you then.

Comments For Page 315

Looks like Toi is the only one without an excuse to leave. Will she go anyway or will she stick around with Racheal and Slara? You can find out Friday when I put up the cover page for the next chapter.

The next chapter will be dealing with Racheal and Slara's trip into the mountains to find the rare herb needed to cure Slara's Father. What trials and disasters await those who dare climb Mount Vormump? Keep reading and find out.

Sorry I went back to my old style. I got Super Paper Mario and it's eating up a lot of my time. That game can be so challenging and fun at the same time. I've already got five of the eight hearts and I only got the game Saturday.

My next post will be from Animediafest, assuming I can log onto a computer. I'm hoping my account is still active. Technically I'm not done school until June 15, even though there are no more classes. I'm sure someone will let me use their account. If not, there is always the library CAP (Computer Access Program) site.

Comments For Page 314

So what do you think of the new style change? I think the third panel with the flower looks the best since there isn't such a flat background. I guess this style needs a lot of highlights and shadows to really work. It's interesting how black outlines can really frame an image. I'll play with this style a little more and see if I can't remove the flatness. I do like the way it looks otherwise.

Slara is referring to Racheal in the last panel in case you're wondering. Looks like Slara and Racheal will be going mountain climbing in the near future.

On Wednesday, it will be decided who will go to save Gene and who will go with Slara and Racheal. On Friday (or possibly Thursday) I'll do a cover page for the new story line. I'm going away this weekend to an animation festival, so I'll have to do the Friday page early and a cover page is the best way to do that.

Comments For Page 313

What has Racheal gotten herself into now? It looks like the group will have to split up for a while. Slara will be staying in town with her father while Horese, Terra and Ann go to fine Gena. Toi, Bunny, and Angel will have to decide where they want to go. Balap will go where ever Bunny does and Obitckerk will probably transport people to Gena's location.

I'm going to try a different art style on Monday and see if it makes my comic look better. It will be a bit more work (which I don't really want to do), but it will hopefully improve the quality of my art. I wish people would let me know what they think but I know no one will. Why am I even doing this?

Keep watching this blog for updates. I need to really get the word out if I have any hope of surviving this industry.

Comments For Page 312

Ah, so Toi has fine mess armor. Strong enough to stop a blade from cutting her, and light weight too. Too bad Horese stopped the fight, it was just getting started.

I wonder what news Horese has brought back with her? Something that will send the girls on another wild adventure, I'm sure. It's time to shake the story up again. Who knows what weirdness will happen next.

I haven't gotten any response to my last post. Does this mean you're all fine with the comic the way it is or that you don't really care one way or the other. After getting one strong reaction to my comic, I would think I would get some reaction from the rest of my readers.

Hello, is there anyone out there?

Comments For Page 311

Toi finally reveals what's under her dress. Quite the skimpy outfit, I'd say. I wonder how she can avoid injury while wearing so little? Does she have a force field like racheal had or something even weirder. Find out on Wednesday.

I find it easier to draw these simple poses then trying to draw characters interacting with one another. I guess everyone has trouble with fight scenes, but I need to push myself to get better.

If I though I could actually make money doing this, I would spend more time perfecting my drawings. I feel like I'm spending a lot of time on this comic and not getting anything else done. It's kind of a catch 22, in that I need to do more work to get people's attention so that the comic will be a success but I don't want to waste my time if no one is interested.

Which brings me to this series of posts. I assume these were all written by the same person, even though the "name" is different in the first post. Notice that they were all posted at the same time.

Yes, I am over 35, although I don't know what that has to do with my weirdness. I was actually thinking that my comic wasn't weird enough, but a strong reaction like this suggests that people (well, at least one person) find it very weird. That's good. I was going for a very weird story design and it's nice to see at least one person understands that.

It's nice to get some comments from some one, even if they are extreme like this one. It lets me know that my comic is having some effect on people. The reason I allow anonymous comments is because I want people to be free to criticize me without fear of reprisal. I also wanted to make this post to let people know that I don't mind negative criticism. Please let me know what you don't like or what's not working for you. Do you think the comic is too weird or not weird enough? Should I add some muscular men to counter-balance the beautiful women? What are your feelings about where the story is going. Please let me know what you think. I only ask that you explain what you have a problem with and why. The above poster says I'm weird but doesn't say what they found weird. Page 309 (which would have been on the main page when this post was made) just shows Toi and Terra arguing. Is there anything weird about that? I didn't think so when I created it.

Please post your comments in this post or in the shout box at the bottom of the main page. I'd like to know what people think.

Comments For Page 310

The battle between Slara and Racheal is finally over and Slare won, with a little motivation from her mother. I think Slara was really hoping to drag the fight out but the message from her father forced her to speed things up. Racheal doesn't really have much combat experience, so the fight was really in Slara's control all along.

Monday will start the fight between Terra and Toi, and we'll finally get to see Toi in full battle garb including whip in hand. These two are both experienced warriors and neither of them has any reason to hold back, so expect to see an all-out brutal battle starting next week.

Nothing to report. I'm still not getting much work done outside the regular pages. Please show some support so I can get motivated to do something special for you.

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: It's Time To Support The Archive

I've been going to the ASIFA website for over a year now and continue to go there every day. Why? Because it's one of the best places to see art work and animation that hasn't been seen in decades. There is some great stuff here that you can't get anywhere else. By that I don't mean it's difficult to find anywhere else, I mean a lot of this stuff comes from private collections, so unless you know the collectors personally, you are not going to see many of the images or animations anywhere else.

Some of the best stuff requires you to actually go to Hollywood and visit the Archive in person, but several times a week you can find a post with some real gems in it.

Just recently the Archive posted several episodes from an early Hanna Barbara cartoon called "Ruff and Reddy." The catch was that you needed to visit the Blog every day to see each episode. You can still see the post, but the links to the videos are gone. I'm not sure time limited content is necessarily a good think, but it certainly encourages you to check the site every day in case a new gem makes a time limited appearance on the site.

I encourage everyone to check this blog out. You won't be disappointed. Note that the link above leads to a post that explains more about what the archive has to offer.

Comments For Page 309

Looks like Toi and Terra are at it again. I suppose Toi is still upset that she's only about half her size after Terra "fixed" her.

Did you know Toi has a whip? I've been meaning to reveal this fact for a while now, but the story just got ahead of me and the opportunity just never came up. It's hidden under her dress along with her new battle outfit. Both will be revealed soon.

Still haven't put up a counter. No one has given me any money anyway. Of course, I haven't given anyone a reason to. I really must do something about that soon.

Comments for Page 308

Oh that Rachael. Bringing a force field to a sword fight. Of course, she looks a lot sexier in the glowing armor then in the samurai armor but she needs to fight fair.

I got the glow effect by layering several colors at different transparencies. First a solid color (Rachael's skin color), then a blurred color (light yellow) and finally a gradient from yellow to clear to give the glow. You can always add more layers of different sizes and transparencies to really bring out the glow.

Sorry, I didn't get much accomplished again this weekend. I'm really going to have to crack the whip if I want to survive. At least I got this page up early, so I have some time to work on things today. I'll let you know how that goes on Wednesday.

Comments For Page 307

Rachael's looking sexier all the time, but can she really fight in that outfit? Find out next time as the battle continues.

I got the page done by lunch time, so I'll be able to work on some of the projects I need to get done. First up is a Donation Meter and some incentives. You may notice I added some Google ads to the site to try to make some money as well.

I'll let you know Monday how things are going. Hopefully, there will actual be some incentives up and people will actually donate a few dollars. I can only hope.

Comments For Page 306

Oh, that Racheal. More worried about her coat then her life. As anyone following the story so far should realize, it's not that easy to kill a Token girl. In fact, they get stronger the more they get hurt. Slara better be careful since she doesn't have the same invulnerability. Then again, Slara has been fighting along side Angel for a long time and may know a thing or two about her weaknesses.

Of course, the two girls aren't actually trying to kill each other. Slara's just letting off a little steam and Racheal is just playing along until she can figure out that's going on. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

A friend of mine has been moving this past week and I've been helping. I really should be trying to get some work done. I'm falling way behind what I wanted to have accomplished by the first of May. Sorry if anyone has been expecting those big announcements I planned. Hopefully, I can get some work done in the next few days and have an announcement by Monday. Sorry I haven't gotten anything done sooner but it's been one distraction after another around here and I really need to get my priorities straight if I want to survive in this business.