BlitzTheComicGuy

A lengthy Far Out There ramble.

(This is actually one of several blog posts I started working on at the same time, but it's the only one I'm making available to the public.  Don't worry, loyal patrons, you'll have some exclusive stuff again shortly)

I haven’t done a big, rambling “here’s where I am as a creative individual” in a while, which I’m sure not one single human being on the planet has felt worse off for. But I kind of stumbled backwards into an idea for a spiel that might actually be ...

Conventional Wisdom: Giant Gorg - page 5

This is another case of me planning to save an idea for the very end of the set of comics, but then several of the pages that were supposed to come in the middle didn't work out and suddenly it'd been another whole month since the last "weekly" comic, so I couldn't afford to sit on an idea without using it.

This is the sort of idea I bet a better artist than me could turn into a really cool poster: late night at the gentlemecha's club, all the old guard mechas drinking away their troubl...

Far Out There: Character Soundtrack - Stilez

Last time, when we were doing Bridget’s playlist, I blathered on and on about how she’d only like some very specific breeds of heavy metal, since she’d like the speed and energy, but a lot of it would be too clean and technical for her tastes. Now let’s talk about that very exact thing! This time, our character is Stilez, and everybody’s favorite giant catgirl is all about POWER METAL. Well, that and certain strands of speed metal and the faster extremities...

Conventional Wisdom: MAGfest 2019 - page 3

I was even more stressed out by this little bout of the butterfingers than I'd normally be, because this was my NEW phone (well, new to ME anyway, and newer than my previous one was when it finally exploded) and that was on its first con trip this was the first con trip said new phone had been on.  I'd been having such a bad time with the old phone at conventio...

Conventional Wisdom: MAGfest 2019 - page 2

This probably isn't as clear as I wanted it to be, thanks in no small part to my inability to get a picture at an angle that showed everything clearly.  The motel had two parking lots, a big one on the side of most of the rooms, and a little one right by the office.  We parked in the big one, figuring that wherever our room ended up being, it'd be more convenient to try and unload from there.  But no, our actual room turned out to be in the one spot where looping around from th...

Conventional Wisdom: MAGFest 2019 - page 1

While the ever-mounting mechanical quirks of my increasingly-aged van probably don't mean much to anybody else out there, this DOES speak to a more universal aspect of this year's MAGFest: it wasn't very cold.  Like, it was a bit chilly after the sun went down, you wouldn't want to be outside without a coat at night or early morning, but for the most part it was quite manageable.  But the thing is, they past few MAGFests were FREEZING.  They were massively, aggressively, frozen...

Far Out There: Character Soundtracks - Bridget

Okay, so if the previous Character Soundtrack was too gentle and boring for you, fear not, ‘cos this one is ALL RAWK. We did Alphonse last time, which of course means that now it’s Bridget’s turn! And let’s get it out of the way right off the bat: with the way Bridget idolizes her momma, I could have easily just had Bridget listen to the exact same music as Tabitha and called it a day. But that’d be really boring… and worse, it’d be something I could do quickly and without much ...

Conventional Wisdom: Giant Gorg - page 4

I snark, but I actually like how quickly the show moved past this moment.  I see so many anime these days where all forward momentum grinds to a halt so that characters can spend multiple episodes moping through post-Evangelion breakdowns, it's very refreshing to go back and watch a show that remembers to actually have things HAPPEN.  In fact, to be honest, this whole scene felt a bit perfunctory.  Like, the staff got a note to include some more Gundam-ish War Is Hell moments, ...

Far Out There Character Soundtracks: Alphonse

Well, last time we talked about Tabitha, so it only stands to reason that we move on to her kids next.  And weirdly enough, the two kids who are incapable of uttering sounds have perhaps the most explicit acknowledgement of their musical tastes in all of Far Out There. Alphonse, for example, is known to be a connoisseur of classical chamber music, we’ve seen him (through the magic of copy/pasting sheet music) playing the likes of Debussy, and we even know that his fa...

Conventional Wisdom: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018 - page 6

Yeah, I don't know what's up with that either.  I tried to think up Atlanta-related names and logos that don't exist anymore, and for some reason, I just immediately went for defunct sports teams.  And hockey teams, at that; we've got the Thrashers, the Flames, and the Knights up there.  Why no love for the Atlanta Chiefs?  Sorry for the snub, soccer fans.  Anyway, the only thing in that pile that's not sports related in some way is the logo for defunct oldies station...

Conventional Wisdom: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018 - page 5

I used to ride past Margret Mitchell's house all the time, just sayin'

Anyway, yeah, I know.  People still haven't stopped giving me grief over this, and they absolutely shouldn't  Don't worry, this really was the last time I'll ever camp out in a vehicle for a convention... assuming that vehicle isn't specifically designed for that sort of thing.  Yep, I'm still stubbornly clinging to my statements about wanting a camper van or miniature RV for conventioning purposes. &n...

Conventional Wisdom: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018 - page 4

No, seriously, this is what my childhood looked like.  It's one of those things that never even registered to me at the time, since that's just how childhood works, but having gone on to live in other places it AMAZES me just how much of my formative years were spent sitting in the back seat during a traffic jam.  I mean, I still have to drive a lot to get any place around Raleigh, but at least here the cars mostly MOVE, and there's usually alternate routes available when one does b...

Conventional Wisdom: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018 - page 3

Every trip down to Atlanta, I'd always strongly conciser carving out some time to head downtown and take some touristy pictures with Servo and Scribbles.  Inevitably, there'd never be time (plus the prohibitive logistics of both getting downtown and handling both a puppet and a plushier without help), but this is exactly the kind of stupid nonsense I would have gotten up to if I did.  You KNOW you've thought this upon seeing Peachtree Plaza, every child to ever grow up on the state ...

ConventionalWisdom: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018 - page 2

Yes, then first "Atlanta landmark" I thought of when I started drawing these was a fast food restaurant.  Look, you gotta remember that Atlanta honestly doesn't have THAT many big old visually impressive historical sites, thanks to one General Sherman... oh, who am I kidding.  If I tried to do this same set of comics about Washington DC, I'd totally think of that one Burger King with all the movie memorabilia before any of the iconic national monuments.  That's just how I roll....

Conventional Wisdom: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018 - page 1

Yeah, so much of my comic notes for AWA were wrapped up in the whole van camping experience that I didn't really have much left for Patreon comics OR anthropomorphic cartoon animals.  Also, with my "no more hotels or out-of-state cons" rule going into effect, this will almost certainly be the last batch of Atlanta-themed comics for a while, so I need to get all these references out of my system while I can.

Also, how DO you spell out the Braves' chant?

2019-01-10 19:10:44 +0000 UTC View Post

The Obligatory 2019 Blog Post

Well, it’s a new year, so I guess it’s time for a new splurge of indulgent self-examination and vague speculation about the future. Don’t worry, I won’t go so far as to make any resolutions or anything like that, but there are some definite changes in store for 2019 that I want to keep everyone in the loop on.

First, a quick recap: If you remember that looooooooong blog I wrote last year about why everything was taking so long to get done (or better yet, if yo...

Far Out There: Character Soundtracks - Tabitha

Well, we talked about the musical tastes of Avatar last time, so this time around let’s discus one of her biggest fans, Tabitha! Between the giant boots and black gauntlets and general Hot Topic vibe she generates, you may have already guessed that Tabitha’s something of a metalhead. But, if you’ve been paying attention at all over these previous blog posts, you know it can be as simple as that. We have to pinpoint what KIND of metal Tabitha likes. Mall-kid emo metal?...

Conventional Wisdom: Giant Gorg - page 3

You thought I'd forgotten about this stuff, didn't you?  I wouldn't blame ya, I was hoping to get a few extra pages of Patreon stuff done before the December crunch started... but you just need to take one look at the AWA comics to see how that went.

But on to the point at hand: yet another reason I'm so glad to be watching a not-new anime right now.  Sometimes, it's the little things that make the classic stuff interesting.  The little bits of grit and debris on physical...

Far Out There: Character Soundtracks - Avatar

Well now, this a challenging one: what kind of playlist would Avatar have? As a person who’s supposed to posses the entirety of all recorded human knowledge, wouldn’t she be sick of every song ever by now? But seriously, what DOES a person like Avatar listen to? Really complicated and disorienting math rock? Seven or eight complete symphonies at the same time? Audiobooks rendered entirely in binary code? Naw, she listens to Jpop. Bright, sugary Jpop with a healthy side portion of lush 70s di...

Conventional Wisdom: Giant Gorg - page 2

Oh, Japan, you and your wacky xenophobic racism.

I mean, dude on the boat here isn't even the worst case of "ways you really shouldn't be drawing black people" in the first episode, Yuu's trip through New York has several even more cringe-worthy examples.  It's just that he's literally one of the first things we see in the show, right after the intro wraps up.  It's a worrisome first impression, wondering if I'm gonna have to tiptoe around THIS for 26 episodes.  But thank the me...

Far Out There Character Soundtracks: Layla

Last time I made a big, huge deal about how innocent and naive Trigger is, and how he’d listen to bright, happy music as a reflection of that. Well, now we’re talking about Layla. Layla is many things, but “innocent and naïve” are not among them. Smart, sarcastic, clever, ruthless, and slightly terrifying, maybe, but none of that hippy-dippy peace and live crap. Still, Layla and Trigger DO share one thing in common: they both drop direct, in-universe close about their musical tastes, so...

Conventional Wisdom: Giant Gorg - page 1

Okay, so I'd PLANNED to not start up the next set of anime comics until after the last of this year's convention comics were finished, on the assumption that dividing my attention would drag that update out longer than it ought to take.  Well, guess what?  It's dragged out anyway, to the point that I really NEED to take a break and work on something else, if only for the morale boost of actually FINISHING something.

And you know what?  It just might be the best decision I've eve...

Far Out There Character Soundtracks: Trigger

I’m glad I didn’t have the idea to make character playlists until after I’d decided Trigger would crush on Skye and go all flower child. I can’t even imagine what I would have had him listen to when he was just a kid who smiled a lot and liked to break things. A bunch of technical audiobooks, maybe? As I said before, there’s a lot of SECONDARY characters who don’t have soundtracks, but a central character like Trigger not being musical would have pretty much sunk the w...

Far Out There Character Soundtracks: Ichabod

(First off, some housekeeping: since posting the intro, I’ve been clued in on a VERY helpful site that checks the geo-restriction status of videos, so I’ve been able to start going through and swapping out stuff that’s blocked in half the world with stuff that isn’t. That’s turned out to be a lot, actually. See, when I first put these playlists together, I tried to rely on the videos automatically posted by YouTube Music as much as possible. They generally have better audio quality...