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Blind Reboot
11 years ago
Hey, everybody. How are all you doing today? I got some important stuff to talk about today. Its been another long while since my last journal and it's nearly March so it's about time I post an update. I'll start with Demordicai Diamonds.
As you probably already know, it's been a long, LONG, time since I've managed to create any new pages and I've barely been able to make any new pages at all in the last year (I believe about 9 or so in the past 12 months). Life has been throwing a lot of curve balls my way and hasn't been very keen on letting up for long, sure, long enough for me to get a tablet but not long enough for me to really learn how to use it. My unemployment has been one big hamper on things, with little money, I can't get far away from my family to be able to sit down in peace and quiet and do art, let alone have money to afford my own place or decent food or much of anything for that matter. Thanks, Obama! On top of all that, it's been one of the worst winters we've had here in a while and the ice and snow only served to seal me away at home.
Anyway, having so much time away from Demordicai Diamonds has got me and Spaghetti-Mayhem (from over on deviantART) have been discussing on just what to do with it. It all started back in June of 2009 when I decided to give it a shot to see if I could even do comic work. I never anticipated at the time that I would be able to do comics but I had really no idea just what I was getting into and I've made my fair share of mistakes with the pages but I think I at least learned from a few of them. There are a lot of things about it that we aren't satisfied with, and being so long from it really brings those things to the forefront with us. Everything from plot to character direction to even work techniques like scripting.
So, we've been thinking about rebooting the whole thing this Spring if I can break away from my house and family for a while. Yeah, I know, it would be another massive undertaking but I believe it would be for the better. I may still finish DD Chapter 2 anyway just so I don't leave a project unfinished and we'll need some time anyway to get things in proper order unlike how things were when we first started Demordicai Diamonds. I can say that if it is in fact rebooted, I already got a few things in mind as to just what changes would be made.
One thing is fixing the “main character conflict” between Dalken and Rune. From a writing point of view, they seem to be duking it out over who is the main character and that's a bit of a problem now but will prove to be bigger later on if allowed to continue. In the rebooted version, Rune will be the main character and Dalken will be bumped down to an important secondary character (he doesn't like too much spotlight anyways, lol). Rune is a lot more active when it comes to getting involved in story so it would be a much better fit to have the comic follow her rather than be undecided and make a mess of trying to figure out who is leading the story.
A few other changes would include several things about Rune and her back story that will be told soon after the start of the reboot, unlike the original idea of revealing it in bits as the story goes along and then building on top of it. I won't get into exact specifics but this time around I think it would be better to lead off with these particular details about Rune and use them as a driving force of the plot and her motivations.
Of course, even if I do decide to go ahead with this whole idea of rebooting Demordicai Diamonds, there is the matter of making it. I'm techno-retarded when it comes to figuring out art programs with my tablet so it might be a long time before I ever implement that regularly in art, especially comic-wise. It's tough being the only artist working on it.
On to other stuff now! I'm going half-blind. Since I was a little kid, my left eye has always given me trouble but it's been slowly getting worse and worse in its condition. I guess I have a bad case of lazy eye or something, it tends to wander pretty far on its own and that makes me lose focus on whatever I'm trying to look it. It's gotten bad enough in the past few months that it's starting to make night driving dangerous for me. I got a few nasty scares with that, combined with being half-tired, when I was working with Toys-R-Us back in December. Besides its tendency to wander and screw up my focus, I'm already having trouble seeing things clearly with my super old glasses.
My sister was trying to hook me up with some free eye clinic thing but she ended up ignoring their calls until I found it suspicious that I hadn't heard back from them and I had to get a hold of them myself and figure things out days later. They asked a few questions regarding my function with my eye but I don't have any actual appointment set up and I don't know if I will. Even if I did and even if something can be done about my eye, I bet it would come down to surgery of some sort and I am skeptical as to how free that would be compared to an ophthalmologist appointment. For now, there isn't really much I can do with my stupid eye, maybe get an eye patch somewhere and give being a pirate a try might help me focus my sight better without my bad eye looking around.
Yesterday, I had the amusement of watching my brothers drive my dad's truck into the muddy field and get it horribly stuck like a bunch of knuckleheads. I had already gotten my truck stuck earlier in a much more shallow spot due to the ground being super saturated (my driveway consists of a few rocks and dirt, no pavement whatsoever) so it's not like they didn't know that much of the ground was bad for driving. So they go and take my dad's truck and try to loop around the driveway by going through the field where my brothers got stuck something awful. Then they stepped on the gas and dug themselves deeper!
By some sort of crazy luck, some guy in a giant Ford F-350 (one of those big 6-wheeled pick-ups) was driving by and decided to help them out by getting a chain and towing them right out of the mud. I don't know who this good Samaritan was but he came right in the nick of the time to help them out.
One last thing to mention. Quite some time ago in some journals of the past, I once talked about the idea of making a tabletop RPG out of Demordicai Diamonds. I do have some good news on that end, it's now finally starting to take shape after numerous revisions and a few drastic but unique changes for the better. Me and Spaghetti-Mayhem still have a lot to go over with it but it's now playable in its most basic form, combat included. I'm thinking the next piece that were going to be working on next is the roleplay attribute elements since we got the core stats pretty much worked outwith a few little exceptions that we'd like to test a bit more.
I'm not going to make any promises about when I'll be able to do some art will be. I'd like to be doing some as soon as I can but problems of all sorts keep popping up and getting in the way. Still, at least the winter weather is letting up and the roads and my driveway aren't iced over anymore so I can get out on the main road again. Now if only I could do something about the basement being flooded, that's a whole other mess to deal with.
As you probably already know, it's been a long, LONG, time since I've managed to create any new pages and I've barely been able to make any new pages at all in the last year (I believe about 9 or so in the past 12 months). Life has been throwing a lot of curve balls my way and hasn't been very keen on letting up for long, sure, long enough for me to get a tablet but not long enough for me to really learn how to use it. My unemployment has been one big hamper on things, with little money, I can't get far away from my family to be able to sit down in peace and quiet and do art, let alone have money to afford my own place or decent food or much of anything for that matter. Thanks, Obama! On top of all that, it's been one of the worst winters we've had here in a while and the ice and snow only served to seal me away at home.
Anyway, having so much time away from Demordicai Diamonds has got me and Spaghetti-Mayhem (from over on deviantART) have been discussing on just what to do with it. It all started back in June of 2009 when I decided to give it a shot to see if I could even do comic work. I never anticipated at the time that I would be able to do comics but I had really no idea just what I was getting into and I've made my fair share of mistakes with the pages but I think I at least learned from a few of them. There are a lot of things about it that we aren't satisfied with, and being so long from it really brings those things to the forefront with us. Everything from plot to character direction to even work techniques like scripting.
So, we've been thinking about rebooting the whole thing this Spring if I can break away from my house and family for a while. Yeah, I know, it would be another massive undertaking but I believe it would be for the better. I may still finish DD Chapter 2 anyway just so I don't leave a project unfinished and we'll need some time anyway to get things in proper order unlike how things were when we first started Demordicai Diamonds. I can say that if it is in fact rebooted, I already got a few things in mind as to just what changes would be made.
One thing is fixing the “main character conflict” between Dalken and Rune. From a writing point of view, they seem to be duking it out over who is the main character and that's a bit of a problem now but will prove to be bigger later on if allowed to continue. In the rebooted version, Rune will be the main character and Dalken will be bumped down to an important secondary character (he doesn't like too much spotlight anyways, lol). Rune is a lot more active when it comes to getting involved in story so it would be a much better fit to have the comic follow her rather than be undecided and make a mess of trying to figure out who is leading the story.
A few other changes would include several things about Rune and her back story that will be told soon after the start of the reboot, unlike the original idea of revealing it in bits as the story goes along and then building on top of it. I won't get into exact specifics but this time around I think it would be better to lead off with these particular details about Rune and use them as a driving force of the plot and her motivations.
Of course, even if I do decide to go ahead with this whole idea of rebooting Demordicai Diamonds, there is the matter of making it. I'm techno-retarded when it comes to figuring out art programs with my tablet so it might be a long time before I ever implement that regularly in art, especially comic-wise. It's tough being the only artist working on it.
On to other stuff now! I'm going half-blind. Since I was a little kid, my left eye has always given me trouble but it's been slowly getting worse and worse in its condition. I guess I have a bad case of lazy eye or something, it tends to wander pretty far on its own and that makes me lose focus on whatever I'm trying to look it. It's gotten bad enough in the past few months that it's starting to make night driving dangerous for me. I got a few nasty scares with that, combined with being half-tired, when I was working with Toys-R-Us back in December. Besides its tendency to wander and screw up my focus, I'm already having trouble seeing things clearly with my super old glasses.
My sister was trying to hook me up with some free eye clinic thing but she ended up ignoring their calls until I found it suspicious that I hadn't heard back from them and I had to get a hold of them myself and figure things out days later. They asked a few questions regarding my function with my eye but I don't have any actual appointment set up and I don't know if I will. Even if I did and even if something can be done about my eye, I bet it would come down to surgery of some sort and I am skeptical as to how free that would be compared to an ophthalmologist appointment. For now, there isn't really much I can do with my stupid eye, maybe get an eye patch somewhere and give being a pirate a try might help me focus my sight better without my bad eye looking around.
Yesterday, I had the amusement of watching my brothers drive my dad's truck into the muddy field and get it horribly stuck like a bunch of knuckleheads. I had already gotten my truck stuck earlier in a much more shallow spot due to the ground being super saturated (my driveway consists of a few rocks and dirt, no pavement whatsoever) so it's not like they didn't know that much of the ground was bad for driving. So they go and take my dad's truck and try to loop around the driveway by going through the field where my brothers got stuck something awful. Then they stepped on the gas and dug themselves deeper!
By some sort of crazy luck, some guy in a giant Ford F-350 (one of those big 6-wheeled pick-ups) was driving by and decided to help them out by getting a chain and towing them right out of the mud. I don't know who this good Samaritan was but he came right in the nick of the time to help them out.
One last thing to mention. Quite some time ago in some journals of the past, I once talked about the idea of making a tabletop RPG out of Demordicai Diamonds. I do have some good news on that end, it's now finally starting to take shape after numerous revisions and a few drastic but unique changes for the better. Me and Spaghetti-Mayhem still have a lot to go over with it but it's now playable in its most basic form, combat included. I'm thinking the next piece that were going to be working on next is the roleplay attribute elements since we got the core stats pretty much worked outwith a few little exceptions that we'd like to test a bit more.
I'm not going to make any promises about when I'll be able to do some art will be. I'd like to be doing some as soon as I can but problems of all sorts keep popping up and getting in the way. Still, at least the winter weather is letting up and the roads and my driveway aren't iced over anymore so I can get out on the main road again. Now if only I could do something about the basement being flooded, that's a whole other mess to deal with.
If you do need any help with art programs or the tablet, I'd be more than happy to help out where I can if you like, I wouldn't mind providing help for you in that regard.
It sucks to hear about your eye problem though, that would scare me a lot. Hopefully you can talk to someone about that and see if there is something you can do about it.
I'm also happy to hear the rpg is still being worked on, that could be fun and I think it'll be col to see how it develops.
I spent yesterday figuring my way around GIMP a little. I'm starting to get the hang of it but very slowly. I've figured out some of the basic brushes and a few other little things but nothing too fancy just yet. I did a little coloring with it too but it took me hours to get anything even decent-looking. I'm going to need a lot more practice before I can effectively use it. At least now it's somewhat less overwhelming to use.
Awesome, glad to hear it. It will become less overwhelming the more you play with it, so you'll get the hang of it. Look forward to seeing what you can do when you show off.