1 Year Down — We Did It

by on January 1, 2015 at 12:00 am

Happy 2015, guys. One year ago this very minute we published our first comic.

Actually we published it early because the WordPress settings weren’t set for the right time zone. But we fixed that, and then one year ago you were able to read In the Year of the Rabbit for the first time. Ever since then you’ve been able to find a new comic page every Wednesday. Every week. No missed days. No screw ups. I honestly didn’t think we’d do it. I was sure something would come up, or get in the way but thankfully I was wrong.

Since then we’ve grown a lot. We started a Facebook and a Twitter page for the comic. We even made some friends, and hope to make even more in 2015. But most of all, we hope to keep growing. There are things about the website I hope to change in the coming months. There are some really cool upcoming stories and characters that I hope you guys like. We’ve even got a contest coming up for this month, so stay tuned!

Mostly, I hope you keep reading. I hope you keep enjoying what we’re doing.

Thanks for making 2014 a really important year for me.

Thank you all.

<3

Tyler

P.S. Check behind the page break for a little visual thank you.

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Destiny. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you and yet….I hate you.

by on December 20, 2014 at 4:31 pm

I love Destiny. I hate that I love it. But I do.

When Destiny began I was excited, like everyone else. I took great care in creating my Hunter, and this character is my personification in this universe. I took her through the story, got her leveled up to 20 and then discovered the light system. The devious machine by which Destiny keeps you playing.

The Light system represents every reason why I’ve never played MMO’s. It’s ridiculously manipulative. The Light mechanic forces you to grind and grind and grind for the promise of better gear and weapons with more Light that lets you increase your level and therefore access more content that will inevitably force you to continue to grind.  Once you’re at max level and there are no more worlds to conquer, Destiny becomes a job until the developers release expansions that really only add more things to grind on. I’m almost ashamed to say that I STILL get excited when a blue or, dare I hope, purple engram springs out of the corpses of my enemies even though I know it’s highly unlikely that it’ll be anything worth keeping. But you gotta keep grinding. Because you might get better stuff.

It’s so stupid,  and yet, as we speak, James is running a character I made yesterday to get him to level 20 while I’m stuck at work. I made another Hunter and managed to get him up to level 7 yesterday, with Jimmy doing the rest of the work today. But there’s no love for this new Hunter. He is just a tool. The express purpose of this character is to farm Strange Coins. So that when I get home from work I can give him all of the gear my OTHER hunter is wearing to buff him up to level 29, and Jimmy and I can run that Weekly Strike again so that I can have enough Strange Coins to purchase Patience and Time from Xür.

Engrams. Weekly Strikes. Strange Coins. Patience and Time. Xür. Things that only make sense if you’re playing Destiny too.

On a podcast James and I were recently on (that should be available any day now,) we joked that we’re both hate-playing Destiny. But I think this little exercise in madness has really cemented the “hate” part of that for me. I mean, I know that if James should succeed, when I get home I’m going to gleefully run through the strike, get my coins, and prance up to Xür to buy what is basically the most badass sniper rifle in the entire game. And I’ll use it and use it, and use it and use it. But I also think this means I’ve officially given up a small piece of myself to the gnashing teeth of Destiny’s machine.

Maybe it’s time to finally beat Shadow of Mordor…

<3

Tyler

 

Update 2:33am: We did it. Down to the wire, but we did it. The cycle begins anew.

Long time no…stuff

by on December 3, 2014 at 12:30 pm

Hey guys and gals. How’s it been going? Good? Great! Glad to hear it!

So we’ve got some stuff coming down the line here that we wanted to make you aware of. Our 4th arc, Tengu Dreams is wrapping up next week and then what we were going to do was a little Christmas arc through December. Something that was supposed to be easy for me to do, and still fulfill our dedication to updating every week. But well…We’re still doing that, it’s just going to be in January instead. Partly because it wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated for me to do.

We had the idea to do something festive a few months back and ran with it and while the final product isn’t what we had planned originally (we’re probably still going to use that story, just later.) I still think it’s pretty great. We’ve essentially made a little 5 page Christmas book. Think books like “T’was the Night Before Christmas” but set in Japan and all in haiku. I’ve had a blast drawing it and I hope you guys like it. We were going to run it in December, but it wound up being set AFTER the next arc instead of having nothing to do with it, so instead you’re going to get a bit of Christmas in February. I actually really like that we decided to connect it to the story instead. It’s a nice way of doing a “sometime later” style time-jump without actually missing out on anything.

I’m planning something cool for January to celebrate our 1 year anniversary, so keep your eyes peeled for that. It’ll likely involve social media somehow because duh.

Then in March we’re taking another month off so I can build up some more buffer. But because we’re bad at taking time off, we’ll very likely have another little two page story featuring our Merchant as well as behind the scenes stuff for the past couple arcs. Someone asked me awhile back what my “process” was like, so I think it’ll be cool to show you guys that.

Also, anything that isn’t the Merchant comic will be a blog post. I don’t really like how the other interludes come up in the comic, I think it disrupts the flow of everything, so all of that’s going to be fixed/backdated eventually.

Anywhoodle, that’s all I’ve got. Just wanted to pop in and let you know that James and I aren’t both dead and the comic isn’t just being updated automatically by an iMac that’s gained sentience. We hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving and that you’ll have a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus, X-Mas, Decemberween, or whatever it is you may celebrate!

<3

Tyler

24 Hour Comic Challenge

by on October 6, 2014 at 4:18 pm

Last Saturday, October 4th was the 24 Hour Comic Challenge.

What is the 24 Hour Comic Challenge? Comic creators Scott McCloud and Steven R. Bisette came up with this idea way back in 1990 to complete a 24 page comic in 24 hours. Pages are 11×17 in size or 100 individual panels if drawn digitally. Prolific creators like Neil Gaiman, Kevin Eastman and Chris Eliopoulos taking the challenge helped word of it grow and now thousands of people participate in it every year.

Including myself.

There are 3 ways of doing it, the McCloud way, the Eastman way and the Gaiman way. Eastman stops at 24 hours and whatever you don’t finish you don’t finish. Gaiman keeps going until it’s done but doesn’t sleep until it’s done either. The McCloud way is that you do it. You succeed. No question. If you succeed you can submit your comic to be added to the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

This was my first year and, being a digital creator, I took the 100 panel challenge. Unfortunately, I also wasn’t able to get off work so while I was able to work from home I had to work on panels around doing my day job.

Unfortunately, I failed. BUT I got 49 panels finished in what I’ve calculated to be about 13 hours. I don’t mean to sound boastful, but I’m confident that if I could give myself the day next year I could do it. Provided James gives me something to draw, of course. I honestly don’t think I could have worked as quickly as I did without him. I was dead set to be boring as hell and just draw every hour of my day in 3 panels but he decided that was lame and, while on a bus to Indiana for a linguistics conference, wrote up the story of Captain Amazing! You know it’ll be great when the email reads “You’re going to hate this.” I worked diligently at home while my compatriots worked at my local comic shop, Chimera’s Comics. Seeing so many creative people working in once place toward a common goal was really cool. I hope they opt to do it again next year.

It’s pretty great, and pretty terrible, and certainly not my best work. It ends though, which I hadn’t planned but works out nicely. To quote James “This is a garbage comic from garbage island and I couldn’t be happier.”

I think that says it all. Check it out The Hastily Drawn Adventures of Captain Amazing at tylers24hourcomic.tumblr.com 

New Chapter Next Week! Woooooooo! I don’t wanna spoil anything but I will say this:

Birds.

<3

Tyler

Yeah. That Just Happened.

by on September 24, 2014 at 10:52 am

Not a trick. Not a misdirect. Kazuo up there just got run through with a wakizashi.