...and SPEAKING of people who come to the convention as part of their job.
And, appropriately enough, that's officially the FINAL page of Animazement material I'm doing this year. Sure took long enough, didn't it? Well, I'm gonna go get some sleep before jumping right back into those Otakon comics...
I mean, they're hardly the sloppiest drunks to be found running around a con... but most of those other people aren't technically there for work.
I still remember the time last year when some voice actor got so sloshed he couldn't find his badge to get back into the con, and decided that his inability to handle himself like a professional adult was the con's fault. (Incidentally, it's the convention CENTER staff who check for badges, not actual con staff) But I digress. The point i...
2018-08-26 10:54:34 +0000 UTC View Post
...and that's not even getting INTO all the cosplayers who were doing an "interpretation" of a Pokemon, which basically boiled down to ears and a tail atop normal clothes (of varying degrees of skimpiness).
And before anybody asks, I'm TRYING to raise them in the ways of Digimon too. It's just that Digimon toys were WAAAAAY scarcer than Pokemon ones back in the day, especially out in the boonies where we lived, so we barely have anything that's suitable for little hands.
I seriously have no idea why people are dumb enough to actually have me as a co-panelist on anything. I feel the the one thing I contributed as a panelist at AZ this year was making a pink bag to put over my head at one point.
That said, I suppose I AM being a little generous in my depiction of my illustrious colleagues' hard-working ways. I seem to recall this afternoon involving less editing video clips and more watching silly joke dubs on YouTube. You know, the essential s...
2018-08-26 10:32:04 +0000 UTC View Post
So, yeah, I was really, REALLY hoping to have this Patreon update and the first batch of Otakon comics posted at the same time, to really get a good "If you liked these, then go donate and enjoy MORE new stuff" plug with the last page. Heck, I was even working on a new Far Out There thing to post here too, just to hit this from as many angles as possible. And it really, really looked like I was gonna pull it off, too! ...right up until I started coughing, and suddenly I was laying in...
2018-08-26 10:23:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Heeeeeeey, who likes hearing internet entertainers talk about money and the business side of what they do? …if anyone out their said yes, then you’ll enjoy reading this a LOT more than I’ll enjoy writing it. I hate thinking about this stuff, all this stuff. Alas, current events are forcing me to do just that, and since it has the potential to effect comic production, I figured I’d better let you all know what’s going on.
So, if you’ve really been paying attention...
2018-08-06 22:37:04 +0000 UTC View PostThis is exactly the kind of thing I HATE doing, but apparently Patreon had some kind of snafu with payments and a lot of people's donations didn't go through. So you guys will probably wanna doublecheck whether or not your payments for this month actually went though. On my end, it's not saying anything was declined... but it's also saying that the take for this month is only a third of what it ought to be. I can't tell how much of that is Patreon not processing things, and how...
2018-08-03 04:17:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Well... this sure sputtered to a lame halt, didn't it? I'd hoped to have some kind of big crazy climax for One Week Friends, especially after all the delays, but with all the OTHER things not getting done and getting delayed, I really needed to get SOMETHING out and start moving forward.
But hey, resolving One Week Friends this means that My Hero Academia is now added to the queue, so that's something to look forward to in the future. And speaking of the future (well, the old futur...
2018-08-02 08:59:36 +0000 UTC View Post
No, really, it doesn't play into this show that much at all, and most of the times it does, it's resolved a lot more quickly than most of the shows guilty of this trope are. But there's the problem: there's SO MANY other shows that rely on "Character A didn't share information with Character B" to justify events that my tolerance for this foolishness was exceeded years ago, so even if the specific show in question doesn't even do it much, it still has to bear the brunt of all my built-up a...
2018-07-01 23:36:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Since I’m always cosplaying as Dr. Forrester, not a single con goes by where at least ONE person asks me about the new Netflix MST3k series. Four out of five of those times are really just an excuse for THEM to tell ME what THEY think of the new Netflix series, but that’s beside the point. The rare times the other person actually DOES want to hear my thoughts, I always tell the truth: I haven’t sat down and watched every episode enough times to form an absolute opinion, but ...
2018-06-18 19:15:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Well now, this is aggravating. I wanted to do another one of those Forgotten/Abandoned Plot Idea blogs, but I can’t for the life of me find any of the associated art to use as a header image. I know I had some, it was a character that I drew SEVERAL design concepts of, but they all seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth. Or, more accurately, got lost in the middle of the fifty million folders of old sketches I’ve still got sitting in boxes around here. And I’m alrea...
2018-06-14 13:29:05 +0000 UTC View Post
I tried to come up with more of a traditional "punchline" for this one, but it kept sounding really forced and tacked on. Honestly, I just really wanted to draw Saki hanging out with with Osaka from Azumanga Daioh and Yui from K-on! They seem like they'd all get along... in a haze of spaced-out obliviousness.
You know, it's funny. I have a deep-seated hatred for dumb or scatterbrained MAIN characters, but as a SECONDARY character they're almost always my favorites (Yeah, I kn...
2018-06-13 16:07:03 +0000 UTC View Post
*deep breath* …okay. I’ve dreaded writing this for a while. I’ve started this blog, wrestled with it for weeks, and thrown everything out and started over five or six times at this point. I really, really, REEEAAALLY don’t wanna write this blog… which is why I HAVE to do it. There’s a lot I’ve avoided confronting for way too long, and a lot of things that aren’t going to get better until I do. So let’s just get it over with. Let’s dump all this mess out in the ...
2018-05-24 10:35:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Well, it was a nice run while it lasted. And I was REALLY hoping to have Giant Gorg before Animazement, too...
Well, at least I have crushing artistic disappointment to go along with my poor scheduling. I know it's yet another play on general anime tropes (of COURSE a big, rosy sunset comes out from behind the rain once they've made up!) but I still really wanted to do a comic of God at a big weather control panel covered in post-it notes with which atmospheric conditions best acco...
2018-05-16 16:56:03 +0000 UTC View Post
AUGH!!! A Weekly Anime Comic came out an actual week after the last one! IT'S THE END TIMES! ...that, or I'm really desperately trying to have this series wrapped up before Animazement.
And yes, I know this is addressed in the show itself, but honestly, explaining it way only drew MORE attention to how trope0tastic it is for all the main characters to have a spacious, scenic, cinematic location all to themselves.
...I've been in an extra analytical mood for this series,...
2018-04-30 20:36:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Not gonna lie, I was really reluctant to actually use this idea. It's kind of low hanging fruit, you know? But, well, I'm clearly not awash with alternative comic ideas as the moment, or these would be coming out a lot faster than they are. So here we are.
...but seriously, they left the perma-blush splotches in place OVER full-face blushing? How does that even work?
It says something about the medium of Japanese Animation that "one of the leads loses memory of her friends every week" counts as one of the more plain and normal things I've watched.
Case in point: my original idea was to allude to one or two real anime, then start making up more and more ridiculous-sounding ideas than any real school-based anime to fill out the page. I couldn't come up with anything that wasn't clearly less ridiculous than an anime that already exists. Every sing...
2018-04-07 19:38:29 +0000 UTC View Post
After all that complaining I did about the cool, I really thought I needed to provide some context for just how out of character that is. Don't be fooled by the whole "born and raised in the South" thing, I'm not built for climates where the topsoil thaws for more than a month out of the year. Winters that are actually serious about being WINTER (once they actually start, that it) are one of the few things I actually miss about living in DC.
Well, that does it for MAGFest 2018! It ...
2018-03-25 00:55:31 +0000 UTC View Post
I mean, I still think those surround sound chair-speakers are cool, and I get why one would feel a need to crank a game's volume up to ten in that game room, but still, that HURT. I actually had to spent the whole game leaning so far forward as to negate the whole purpose of a chair, just to make sure the next missile strike didn't rupture an ear drum... maybe it was one of those things where they rig up the game to cause actual physical pain?
It's like how starting to tear down you Artist Alley table triggers a sudden surge of customers: deciding to head back to your room and change costume causes more people to want to take your picture, doubly so if it's an obscure/weird costume that nobody was getting in the first place.
And the staffer lady even said she was relieved I actually DID turn out to be a Gravity Falls ...
2018-03-25 00:35:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Zero embellishment on this one, we were really that bored without at TV... or more like bored AND tired from our various trips to DC.
As an aside: despite my well-established preference for camping out on the floor, I'm not a fan of inflatable mattresses due to the noise. Not so much the inflating, but all the squeeking every time you shift your weight on those things. It's probably fire for people who don't fidget around as much in their sleep as me, but MAN do I wake myself up a ...
2018-03-25 00:24:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Figures that, after all the rigamarole of actually getting a room, there'd be stuff wrong with it, right? I'm not enough of a tech-head to comprehend all the things they were saying about that TV, I just know that even slightly fiddling with the options on the Switch caused everybody's ears to bleed and nobody could do anything about it.
This is the part where I go on a t...
2018-03-25 00:13:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey, if I settled for doing things the EASY way... these comics would probably get done a lot sooner and have a much larger audience. And WE CAN'T HAVE THAT!
But seriously, apologies in advance for these comics having just as erratic a schedule as Konosuba and Anohana did, at least until I get the rest of the Conventional Wisdom stuff that needs to come out this month finished.
It’s kind of amazing just how much stuff I forget that I’ve done. And I don’t just mean all the times I’ve forgotten about a load of laundry after starting the machine, which is a LOT. Like, enough to make me genuinely worried about the state of my brain. It happens a LOT. ...what was I talking about? Oh right, forgetting about stuff. Far Out There turned ten years old this year, and that’s a lot of stuff to keep track of. I have to go back and re-read older stuff quite ...
2018-02-23 23:56:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Just a quick little blog, and even more self-indulgent than these things usually are, but inspiration hit pretty hard after my celebratory Far Out There day off, and I didn’t wanna waste it.
Remakes, reboots, and sequels are everywhere these days. They’re ALMOST as omnipresent as people complaining about how many sequels and reboot and remakes there are these days. I’m not gonna contribute to that choir here, partially because I gave up any misguided hope of huma...
2018-02-15 01:55:41 +0000 UTC View Post
There's GOT to be lots of fanart out there of Aqua and Hestia having goddess fights, right? I mean the Danmachi and Konosuba anime debuted within a year of each other, there's NO way I'm the first person to make this joke... but I'm also terrified to actually look it up, 'cos you just KNOW most of the results would be wildly NSFW.
Well, anyway, THIS sure took a lot longer to wrap up than I expected! That'll teach me to throw in an extra season for free. At one point, I'd thou...
2018-02-13 04:34:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay, if there's one good thing to come from all the delays this set of comics suffered, it's the ending. Believe it or not, I was originally going end the whole thing on page 15. Yup, THAT was going to be the final image everyone I wanted everyone to walk away with. It was... a flawed plan. Thankfully, amid all the down time, I realized we needed something to re-humanize Pattie a bit, plus one final reminder that, yes, Mooney really IS a jerk who had it coming. Als...
2018-02-08 04:26:55 +0000 UTC View Post
BEWARE THE QUIET ONES
...what am I saying, "quiet"? Pattie hasn't shut up this whole time. Look at how huge the speech bubbles are in this page. That's not by design. I was just so used to leaving space for HUGE GOBS OF PATTIE DIALOG that I drew them five sizes too big automatically.
Gee, this isn't getting dark at ALL.
Alternate comment: I can't imagine why Layla doesn't get along better with Pattie. She's so warm and personable.
For all the problems that came from letting this set of comics get so STUPIDLY long, I'm still really proud that I somehow managed to come up with an epilogue for The Killer Station of Deadly Doom AND still incorporate both the zither and detective fiction into it. Yay me!