Or… do I?

Last day of vacation here, it’s been a pretty good ‘catch-up’ break for me so hopefully that means the end of the site’s dry spell. I’ve finished chapter 24 of Revolver and updated the first timers’ summary page if anybody’d like to give the comic a shot but don’t have time to read the whole archive right away. There’s also been a few tweaks to the character page, mainly removing incidents of the word ‘mysterious’ for characters whose motivations and natures were revealed months and months ago. Chapter 25 starts Friday. And with a totally different set of characters.

The scene change goes nicely with me being sick of drawing Kenji in his little Sol Badguy headgear thing. (Technically it’s a ‘modern’ Surrenian Army visor, but who paid that much attention to Z’s flashback chapter anyway?)

(Once I ‘fix’ the RK hub page, the comic related blurbs will probably stay there for the most part since I know there’s a subset out there who think the comic promotions are kind of annoying and just want to see more gaming stuff.)

On that note, and since I’ve saving my vinegar for full length pieces, I’ve been enjoying the daylights out of Macross Ultimate Frontier for the PSP, something of a delayed Christmas gift from Jake (longtime readers might be getting the impression I’ve pretty much only got one friend in real life, and that’s a blatant mistake- I have three!) The ‘giant robot’ genre of action gaming is bizarrely empty of quality titles, especially if the stuck-in-the-cockpit perspective of Mechwarrior isn’t your cup of tea. MUF does a pretty admirable job of recreating Macross dogfighting, with missiles twisting everywhere in wild patterns and familiar series background tunes. While the designs in the sequel and prequel series are awesome, the most fun I had was blasting through the classic Macross series since I was a Robotech addict when I was younger. About the only gripe I have for the game is that it looks amazing in action, but when you see the stills on loading screens or when a model moves just the right way, they look really cheesy. Since when you take the poly count down on a Zentraedi battleship, it’s basically a giant death pickle.

Maybe that’s what my next stupid doodle will be. Death pickle. Yeeeeeah.

I just can’t shake this tired, bluesy feeling lately, though it’s mostly the fault of the late summer heat/humidity. It’s like my body saps up excess moisture in buckets and triples my body mass for however long it takes me to reach the next air conditioned building. Needless to say, I’m more of a winter type, but not so much that I’m one of those “Let’s jump in the freezing river!” psychos.

Uh, anyway.

In what could constitute another mini-review/impression bit, I gave in and picked up my own copy of Phantom Brave a couple weeks back, for $15 new. Whee. And, similar to how I latched onto Soul Nomad, I’m finding this other less-sung N1 title to be pretty enjoyable. The time-limited summoning is actually a lot less aggravating than it sounded on paper, as it sort of justifies the bloated casts these games end up with. The way items and confinement work adds a lot of possible dimensions to the play, and while Makai Kingdom expanded on the modified, grid-free engine, the plot was a lot weaker, and combat ended up repetitive and shallow. On the other hand, jetbikes.

Phantom Brave, on the other hand, is a regular puppy kicker of a yarn, featuring a quirky cast and witty script focused entirely on shoveling piles of horrible onto the head of a relentlessly optimistic little girl. Go Japan!

Image intensive post, so this time I threw a cut in rather than drowning you all. Being a designer by training and always on the lookout for relevant applications of it, I do a fair amount of our store’s in-store signage (A large chunk of the photo dept.’s for grand opening, and various ad signs throughout the store when one is needed faster than advertising can accomodate.) Lately they’ve had me throwing together presentation booklets to show off the various new facilities they’re oh-so-proud of to other stores. (This is why many of my comics end up late- trying to do cubicle style work while standing up in a wide open area full of people who think I know where the diabetic peanut butter is.)
Continue reading Signs, Signs, Everywhere I Signs.