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.

My vacation is drawing to a close, and it’s been a pretty productive one. Well, ‘cept here. I meant to do a game review at some point over the week so I guess tonight or tomorrow.

I could deliver a bit of short form love for now though! I played the free demo of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, because it was well, free. MGS 1 and 2 were alright, but I got sidetracked from starting into 3 (I snagged that Essentials collection that came out in the pre-MGS4 hype.) I know that the heavy handed symbolism of the series is pretty easy to make fun of, but the characters in the first five-ten minutes of the demo had me doing some Tactical Espionage Facepalming. For one, there’s the “Soldiers Without Borders” program Snake’s apparently started, which sounds a hell of a lot like a special ed program for mercenaries- except they’re not mere hired guns! They just fight for fighting’s sake and occasionally take money for their services. So one day, a college professor shows up to hire him, with his prize student Paz Ortega. “Her name means peace, in Spanish,” he says.

wha-

“Yes, and I would do anything to protect my namesake,” says Paz Ortega.

Snake’s buddy Kazuhara speaks up, “What a coincidence- my name also means ‘peace,’ but in Japanese. But you can call me… Kaz.”

Paz and Kaz. Peace and Peace, in a game called Peace Walker, in a series whose underlying theme is WAR IS BAD.

Ha, ha, ha.

I added a Paypal button to the About page in follow-up to that post before last.

So, let’s talk, shall we?

I’ve officially begun my vacation on a productive note (though not catching up on my backlog of comics yet, a-heh,) with some cooking, fine tuning of my resume and portfolio, as well as working on getting a new banner up here and finally remembering to re-add the paypal button to my sidebar. I also sold off some old stuff, to free up space (though honestly not that much aside from the outgrown clothes.)

Normally I wouldn’t just outright go EY SEND ME MONEY, and I don’t want to go dangling ‘premium content’ over people’s heads or anything like that, but I’ve been kind of thinking since the last auto-renewal of my hosting plan came at kind of a dicey time for me financially last year, maybe I should attempt to at least get it to pay for itself. That has a little less personal stigma for me than having a donation drive every time one of my consoles or computers breaks down, so if I could bring the cost down a bit, that’d be swell, and if I ended up with some absurd surplus of donations that gets me a new wacom or something, hey, that’d be awesome. All I’m asking (not demanding or anything like that) is if you like my drawing, writing, or any of that stuff, feel free to tip a buck or two. I’m also pretty open for drawing  comissions again (I have a photo-restoration and a couple logos in queue other than my personal stuff, which isn’t much,) if anyone wants something more ‘tangible’ for their money.

In other news, I’ve been invited to the Anime Punch! con as a guest Game Master, to sort of demo the Dream Pod 9 Silhouette RPG system and probably pimp some of my own work in one fell swoop. The scenario I’m kicking around right now: post-apocolyptic bikers vs. a berserk traffic-control system. Details as they come.

Well, that was kind of dry, wasn’t it? I’ll make my next update soon. And more interesting.

I feel kind of like I should give Street Fighter 2010 another go or something to kick off the year, but instead I spent the actual first day of the year penciling comics while practically sitting on my floor heater.

It seems like every year since the millenium, we’ve survived many famous fictional apocolypses. Even though we’re edging nearer and nearer to the infamous year 2012, I’m still kind of let down that the start of last decade didn’t bring The Day of Lavos interrupted by the crash of the mysterious Superdimensional Fortress One, and followed shortly by the Second Impact.

We’re living on borrowed time here, people.

Watch out for the furries, just to be sure.