One month!

by on January 29, 2014 at 1:57 am

koff

Hey, did you know that we had an update every Wednesday in January! That might not seem like a big deal, but I think it’s a pretty huge landmark.

Currently, I’m working on writing some chapters that are going to appear around September that I’m very happy with. The writing process is typically sort of a pain for me, because school is frequently very busy. This month, however, we have had five cancelled days due to weather, which opens up all sorts of free time for me. So, in addition to writing, I’ve also been reading, gaming, and watching movies.

Recently, I read Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, which I highly recommend (it’s under 150 pages), and Judd Winick’s Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned.

Train Dreams is a novella that follows a man in the American West in the start of the 20th century after he loses his family. He lives out his life, deciphering the broader changing world, as well as his own dreamlike existence. Each chapter is a unique chapter in the life of the protagonist, and the story is full of bizarre turns.

Winick is a cartoonist who is known for being on The Real World: San Francisco, and the story is about his friendship with another housemate, AIDS educator Pedro Zamora. While Winick considers himself “a bedwetting liberal” he is still unnerved when he finds out he will be living with someone who is HIV positive. It is a beautiful story, and an excellent look at the bond between two people. I haven’t read anything with such human, real characters, in quite some time. Despite it being autobiographical, the story of sharing such a close bond is something that I feel speaks to many people.

Enjoy the comic, folks. I’ll be back to plug more books I like real soon.

 

In Other News…

by on January 22, 2014 at 4:26 pm

So I think the whole idea of a blog is kind of a foreign concept for me.  They evoke that kind of mindset from when I was in high school where everyone had a Xanga or a MySpace page. But all the posts were about how the world didn’t understand us and the only friends we had were our Xanga friends. Then we grew up a bit and found out later that our Xanga friends were bot accounts and that Tom guy was friends with everyone. It’s a mindset I need to get past.

It shouldn’t be a problem. I wrote about video games as a freelancer for a year and never had a problem getting up a couple articles and/or game reviews a week. But that’s purposeful writing. I can do that for the same reason I could write essays in school. Writing like this is purposeful but for a different reason. It’s writing to connect with people the same way we hope the comic connects with people. But when I think about writing something up to coincide with a new page I always get stopped by that same feeling. So to do this, I’m going to fall back on old habits and write about video games. Because.

So I don’t get a lot of time to play video games anymore. Ask Jimmy, I’m pretty notoriously bad at beating games. I still haven’t beaten Ni No Kuni and that came out a year ago. Between my day job and drawing the comic and other social obligations the time just isn’t there like it used to be. But I just managed to beat Burial at Sea, the first episodic DLC for Bioshock Infinite. Without spoiling anything for either Burial at Sea or Infinite (sure it’s almost a year old, but that’s still a big ending to spoil) I’m really excited for Episode Two. Normally I’m not such a huge fan of “What if!?” DLC. I find that it rarely adds anything to the game and the worst DLC is just a pointless cashgrab. But Burial at Sea feels really interesting and the way they’ve modified parts of the world of Infinite to fit within the confines of the original Bioshock really appeals to me. I love the new design of the Sky Hook and I think the first Bioshock would have been a lot more interesting with that gameplay mechanic already in it. It clocks in at about 3 hours and in that time it’s nice to see the devolution of Rapture. We’ve seen it already broken and it was one of the most awe inspiring locations in a video game. But then Bioshock 2 made us go back and it was the same, just…worse. Something set on the cusp of the fall of Rapture would have been far better from a storytelling perspective, so it’s nice to see them going there this time.

Now back to playing Borderlands 2 in my free time…

Back to that original idea of connecting with people: In the Year of the Rabbit is officially old enough for social media! We’re going to work on getting it integrated into the site as soon as possible but for now you can find us on Facebook and Twitter! Like and Share and Skywrite and tell strangers all about how much you love us!

http://www.facebook.com/intheyearoftherabbit

We’ve also decided to open up comments on blog posts. You’ll see a little “Leave a Comment” down there under my signature. We’d love to hear what you guys think and what you have to say.

I think that’s all for now…yeah. Yeah that’s it.

<3

Tyler

A Taste of Things to Come.

by on January 15, 2014 at 8:00 am

I like the idea of giving you guys a peek at what’s coming, so here’s a little something-something.

taste

Just to give you all an idea of where this is at, you’ll see this image again sometime in August.

Big things coming. I don’t know all the details (that knowledge is above my pay grade) But I know enough.

Stay tuned!

<3

Tyler

Mobile site is live!

by on January 8, 2014 at 9:00 am

Attention people with smartphones and tablets [EDIT: NOPE, tablets apparently don’t work yet]: the mobile site is now live!

I don’t think it looks half bad, either. Thanks to some tinkering I did while snowed-in at home as Chicago fell victim to Winter Storm Hercules, we now have a mobile site! Woo!

Comic pages take center stage and all of our blog posts are nicely compartmentalized into their own little spaces for convenience.

Thank you all for being patient with us, and thank you for coming back for page 2!

<3 Tyler

p.s. I don’t know that we’ve ever formally said this, but we update every Wednesday. See you next week!

[EDIT: Yeah, the plug in I installed and the tweaks I’ve made don’t seem to support iPads. Which is kinda hilarious if you think about it. I learned that the Kindle’s Silk browser works perfectly though. Like…it displays it like a normal website, which is awesome!]

A second page.

by on January 8, 2014 at 12:00 am

I have always been the sort of person who doesn’t write on the chalkboard because my handwriting is illegible. As a result, I’m a damn poor artist, and I prefer to write when I have something creative to get off my chest. This is why it’s so exciting for me to write this strip. I have ideas that I get to see expressed in a visual medium, and that’s very cool.

That being said, I write this strip, and I like to talk about what I write. My posts will probably reflect that. I think that this first chapter is pretty simple, pays homage to some old samurai flicks, and ultimately, it establishes the protagonist as a sort of archetype. The story, like most stories, gets more elaborate and unique from here.

Needless to say, I hope you enjoy it both now and going forward.