A lot of artists are upset at a gentleman who wrote a rather brief article giving advice to businessmen looking to hire an artist to work on a project. The article summarizes how to save money by avoiding the mainstream high-profile professional names and browsing social art sites like Deviant Art for very talented people willing to work for less. Artists are prone to emotional responses. I could quip that this sort of backlash is something you have to watch out for when you take a business attitude into a very unprofessional environment like a hobby artists' social network. But nevertheless, there's nothing unethical about a person trying to find someone who will work for less. You can find the article in question here http://kaitol.com/how-to-hire-an-artist/ after scrolling past updates and added commentary by the author.

No artist is forced to say yes to a contract. No artist should be upset that another artist may be willing to say yes.

We always owe it to ourselves to find the best value for our dollar and that's no different for someone running a business. When we shop for art supplies, we'll buy a cheaper book if it serves our needs. We feel no obligation to purchase more expensive products if we don't have to. Many artists happily lap up software at severely discounted student prices or even steal art software outright so they can have more money to put into electronic gadgets, games, fur suits, concerts, weekends with friends and whatnot. I'm not making a statement on the morality of software theft here, but I'm demonstrating the drive to save money in a way an artist who severely disagrees with this article may relate to. And if you're stealing Adobe CS5 because you can't afford it, maybe, as an artist, you should be reducing your rates for the sake of even getting any employment.

I see banners on FA advertising $5 sketches. I know a person fresh out of a prestigious art school taking $15 sketch commissions to avoid having their car repossessed. I can't tell someone like that not to take a $500 project out of a sense of "pride" because an experienced mainstream professional illustrator would make $3000 on the same amount of work. Someone scouring Deviant Art for relatively inexpensive work applicable to his project is offering a market to people who may greatly benefit from these opportunities. They may not have mainstream exposure. Their portfolio may be sitting under hundreds of other portfolios in large studios around the country, unused, unneeded, sitting idle. They may have not had the courage to even pitch themselves to the mainstream and they're just sitting around working a job they hate. Along comes a decent opportunity that contacts THEM, telling THEM that their art is at least marketable for something and it could just the jolt they need to get the courage to strike out on their own and get serious. And if the artist feels it's not a good contract, they can say "no". Enough "nos" and the person looking may change his tune. But as long as he finds one "yes" per project, he has no obligation to raise his offer. It's solely between him and the individual artist.

Artists who are upset at this guy are implying that commercial art should have a natural intrinsic value based on a mainstream average, and it's unethical to approach non-mainstream artists in the hopes of saving money. I can't help but disagree with this.

Imagine yourself doing very well, making lots of money, and you really want a laptop to help you be productive on the go. Are you going to buy the laptop from the guy who wants $1,000? Or are you going to buy the same laptop from a guy who only wants $700, whatever his reasons are? Both sellers have needs, but the latter offer is more value for your dollar.

And the bottom line is, if you ARE getting $5000 contracts, you can ignore this guy. If you're making $3000 a month doing commission work off of DA, you can ignore this guy. If you don't care to make any money on your hobby, you can ignore this guy. What's the problem? If you really want money and you aren't getting ANY contracts, and this guy approaches you, at least someone's seeing some value in your work.

The new (and free!) sketch blog is up and replaces the old one which is no longer being updated. Those with existing sketch blog accounts can still access it from the new entrance page to the blog. I'm leaving the old blog up as an archive for those who want to go in and pilfer/save any old files they want to, as wall as let those who check their account infrequently catch up. The new free blog will have my sketch work as well as updates and sneak peaks on comics in progress, along with the usual character development sketches and really scribbly layouts that may become fleshed out pieces, later. It may also contain commission roughs and rejected layouts.

I'm leaving the entries closed to comments because in the past when I opened my webcomics up to comments, people couldn't play well with each other. It's nothing I care to police.

You can get the new blog here: http://www.jaynaylor.com/blog.html

With the Trish project completed and released I can focus on my commissions some more. This week I've been taking things easy so far. I've been allowing myself to dabble in some drawings that I otherwise wouldn't have time for, old characters, idle musings, that sometimes turn into projects much later.

The commission list has been going slower lately because everyone stopped asking for sketches and started asking for color work. The current commission I'm doing is a full page color spread with progress ongoing, just in case anyone on the list was curious about whether I forgot about my list. I haven't! It's being worked on.

I've gotten some requests about maintaining some kind of commission status thing somewhere other than FA. Really, as long as keeping it here makes it convenient for me and there seems to be no inability to obtain customers having my system here, then I'll keep it here. We'll see what I do in the future. I hear Inkbunny will be doing a commission system that's more involved, but the site needs to grow before it becomes a serious contender. As long as submissions are getting magnitudes of hundreds, sometimes a thousand times more attention on FA, compared to IB, this will be the place to be.

Looking at the difference between http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4185098 and http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4187355 I realize I should probably start posting larger versions of my images. I tend to just bring everything down to 72dpi for web viewing by reflex. But that's probably kind of old school, now. Most people have much better internet connections and larger monitors from when I first started saving things for the web. Sometimes the smaller images can minimize some nice details.

Some people were wondering about my iPhone 4 experience. Pretty much everything you need to know about it is on the web, but I went ahead and wrote up my personal experience for those interested.

http://fiskblack.livejournal.com/93605.html

There are some future things worth mentioning that will affect JayNaylor.com.

http://www.jaynaylor.com/images4/jn.....prev-sktch.jpg


First and foremost is a plan to take away the Sketch Blog subscription system and turn it into a publicly open, viewable sketch blog detailing the progress of character designs and works in progress. The blog is a good chunk of additional change at the end of every month, but I'm making up for it, and then some, by doing commissions. So I'm going to keep doing commissions for the foreseeable future. I'll make general character design work and experimental drawings public, along with comments and general art writings. I'm still working out a way to easily implement this over the course of next month, including a way to transition those with sketch blog subscriptions out of the system in a way that pleases them. For now, the blog will continue as normal. I have to chat with a few people about implementation and programming before I can just snap my fingers and make the change. The blog is also a clunky, old part of the site that I'd been thinking of ways to change and/or get rid of over the last few months. The main problem is it has a deadline schedule which always forces me to work around it. I do sketch work naturally over the course of a week, but some weeks offer more material than others. I don't have the freedom to simply burn through main projects, skipping sketch work, if I'm trying to finish a project quickly. It's one of those things where I have to provide material by a certain day of the week. After this change, that'll only apply to Original Life. I hope this will also let me churn out adult catalog projects more quickly.

I'll keep you up to date on this stuff as I find out more and start working toward my goal.

I have a rough, general kind of project list for the future. Going to write it down and see how it changes as I progress through the second half of the year.

Trixie's Creep - A story about Trixie and her creepy admirer who's actually a good friend stuck in the infamous FriendZone. It has a heavy voyeuristic theme and raunchy sex.

Cheaters - A conversation with a fan and commissioner actually had me thinking more about Brice and Sissy's relationship and the nature of their infidelity toward one another. I want to explore it. It has more than one taboo element to it. It'll kind of be like two comics in one as I cover Brice and then Sissy. I may release it as two projects if I get carried away like I often do.

Explorers - I want to expand on the universe where Red Riding Hood lives (and give it a name). I'll turn it into a whole fantasy world and I've thought of putting together an explorer's log from an expedition of female elves or something, covering all the debauched things they run across in this world. It'll have a lot of savages, new tribes of dogs, maybe cats, orcs (pigs), and perhaps quite a few devious monsters. This may be something that gets worked on over time in between projects.

Red Riding Hood 4 - Lots of ideas. Still fleshing out just what I want to do with this one. I want to leave the universe in a state of suspension at some point where stories can be drawn from the present state of affairs. As the universe expands, Red Riding Hood will become less of a main focus.

Heading to Anthrocon. I may or may not get much commission work done, so commissioners bear with me. The list will move again next week at the latest.

Genwyn's commission is taking a little bit longer than I thought mainly because I had a lot going on this week and also because it's a detailed comic page. My drawing mojo was a little off this week, as well, adding to a slower than usual level of production.

The list should start moving again before I head up to AC next weekend, though. Thanks for your patience.

I started the latest Lumpkinville comic. I looked back at a lot of my old ones and the one thing they have in common stood out for me... they're old. Real old. Old styles. Old layouts. Old designs. Man. I hate looking back. But I like the way I'm laying out comics, now, and I'm ready to give Mary Ann and Trish another crack.

http://www.jaynaylor.com/images4/jn.....oodle-prev.jpg

Despite the preview picture, it's not about them lezzing up together, necessarily. Plain ol' lesbian sex has very little interest for me. It's an amusing story that's been playing around in my mind for a while, and has to little to do with Mary Ann, and most everything to do with Trish, a swamp witch, and Goat. I don't normally like to work within magic, but Lumpkinville is supposed to be nothing more than a cartoon universe where you don't really have to explain anything too deeply. I'll do this and then I'll either put together my Trixie story, or a little something with Sparky and Persia.

I had a real nasty unavoidable tax bill this year, in large part due to the success of the website. I can handle the new hole in my savings just fine, but that doesn't erase the fact that I don't like it being there. I have an aim to save up money over the years and I don't like backsliding. So I've decided to make up the backslide by working extra hours in a day, opening myself up to commissions. We'll see where these waters lead. If there's something you wanted me to draw, or just draw more of, short of a multi-page comic, the chance is here.

I'm handling the details on my Fur Affinity page ( http://www.furaffinity.net/user/fisk )

Details of the commission process are here. Do not ask for commissions in comments.

http://fiskblack.livejournal.com/92676.html#cutid1

I normally don't pay attention to things like this, because I don't do anything that I consider to skirt the general rules revolving around these kinds of sites (allowing for adult material).

I did glance this time, as well as take in a few little scraps of forum replies and questions on the updated AUP. I noticed some vague rules about offending races, religions and philosophies, the boundaries and determination of which was left undefined. One person did mention how it would impact "Draw Mohammed Day", to which the admin said drawing Mohammed was fine, so long as it wasn't derogatory. To a fundamental understanding of Islam, the depiction of Mohammed is forbidden regardless of context. So the nature of the "offensiveness" isn't up to the people claiming offense, but the admins' sole judgement. Not that it's an entirely bad policy, but if the purpose is to calm the waters, I think it does the opposite. It leaves a subjective definition of "offensive" up in the air. An artist may not know if their picture will come under scrutiny before he or she posts it, just by reading the AUP. On top of that, it opens a lot of seemingly harmless pictures to complaint from imaginary offenses and grievances, something I'm pretty familiar with. If I draw a hyena with his hat on sideways and his pants around his ass, am I being racially offensive? What's my intent? (I'm actually depicting a culture not a race, but the difference is lost on people who don't think). Or am I just illustrating a character? To some who are prone to dislike me, there's a difference in me drawing a character like that, and someone else drawing the exact same thing. Now, I didn't read the entire forum due to its size and the time I have available, so I'm not sure if all the little details were addressed. But it does bring up some thought on how much the admins would be "bugged" about images, for offenses so vague and subjective.

Mary Ann and Trish are, outside of flashbacks in earlier comics not on FA, supposed to be young adults out of school. Mary Ann has the same body model as Beth. But she's sometimes brought up as my depiction of an underage girl, because of her lithe frame and the hairstyle she wears. There's a style of drawing people "cutely" that gives them childish features which the human mind associates with cuteness (big eyes, tall forehead), giving human characters like Mary Ann and Red Riding Hood a "babyface" appearance. Someone outright accused me of appealing to pedophiles with Red Riding Hood, even when her figure is more voluptuous than Beth's. It's this level of subjective ridiculousness that makes some artists take a second glance at the AUP. If some sorry excuse for a mammal filed a complaint based on a Red Riding Hood sample page, how would the admins handle it? The AUP's not clear about whether it's something that is "undoubtably obvious" or just something that "can be construed to be a human under 18" based purely on a visual judgement. The latter reflects the judgement of the beholder, regardless of the intention of the creator. I've always held rules should be based on intentions, not reactions. Is the depiction of mature women with "babyface" features, or young men and women with lithe builds, going to cause a flurry of filed complaints and requests for deletion? Is the motive of the complainers to uphold AUP or just harass an artist with their subjective, hostile judgements?

I don't know the admins. I don't have time to forum browse for hours a day. But this isn't so much as complaint as a wonder, and an observation. Ultimately, they can run their site on their own judgement. It's their property and right to do so.

PS - This isn't an invitation to file your particular grievances in comment with me, about how the AUP directly targets your fetish. My concern lies with subjective and unpredictable judgement, not whether you're allowed to post Dexter and DeeDee engaged in coitus.

Marvel heroes, movies, and comics, have often had a sense of being produced by the mind of a 14 year old who thought he knew all about the world. With some exceptions. The characters are often as much victim as they are hero. They're bewildered and coping with their own powers, with flaws that are tacked on in an effort to make them even more tragically human. If they're not the product of a shadowy government operation that treats them like expendable property, they are being ruthlessly hounded by one. I would think at this point, the shadowy government operation, or the double-dealing mega-corporation, as main bad-guy would be so cliche... so... Marvel... nobody would use it. Except Marvel. And a plot twist that lead to the revelation of such a twisted conspiracy is so common, as not to be considered a plot twist any longer.

But Iron Man 2 was surprising. I went in with low expectations, despite the fact that I liked the first one "well enough". I'd read a few "eh" reviews of the movie from some others beforehand. What most surprised me was the undercurrent that caused the problems with the tough-guy villain to truly get out of control: The Government's interest in seizing Stark's property, the product of his mind and work. It wasn't a shadowy, immoral, unaccountable government entity that took Stark to task. It was a Senate committee, represented by Senator Stern. The concept of them just taking a man's property because they think they really need it is so ingrained and even accepted in our society, that Marvel didn't have to conjure up a fake quasi-legal shadow operation bent on going beyond the law to get what they wanted. The real villains exist right there, in congressional seats, backed up by expressions of public need, using political pressure to try to get their victims to give up what is rightfully theirs. I liked Stark's line, in his defense about how the suit was the same as him. I don't know if the writers of the movie thought deeply enough to know how this truth extends to all property, but it was good enough for me, considering the source. Justin Hammer, competing defense contractor and the man with the most pull within the Senate Armed Services Committee, is Stark's Orren Boyle. He's Microsoft's Netscape. Unable to compete freely and openly with a man of Stark's competence, he uses his government connections and influence to push for making Stark's technology available to him, and when that fails, he resorts to deceit and crime. He might have had more luck if he'd worked with the FTC instead of the SASC.

Otherwise, Robert Downy Jr. makes a great Tony Stark. And Scarlett Johansson is a very foxy operative. Plus, there are enough references to the future Avengers projects to make the average Marvel fan cream in his nerd slacks. There are some picky things I noticed. With the exception of War Machine, the suits and drones in the film looked a little plastic in the close-up shots. Captain America's half-completed shield looked very plastic as parts wobbled and vibrated when it was being manipulated in a brief comical scene where it was employed. Considering what it was, they should have done a better job on this.

And as always, stay through the credits.

I hope everyone's done harping over the last Rachel sketch. Looking over it again, I can see some cause for alarm. It's a more detailed sketch than I realized after throwing it up. Because it didn't contain anything I don't normally draw, I actually breezed through it in quick time. So what may look like a lot of "heart and soul" poured into a hate-piece, was really a way to fill up some time between tasks during the day.

I didn't expect to reap over 500 comments. :3

But I know why it was shocking to some. I sort of understand the appeal of Rachel from a "girl who'll do anything" standpoint, but she really was ugly to me, which is why I never revisited her. Women like that don't really gun my engine, to be honest. That's why the last time I wrote about a woman like that (Sissy in "Rumors"), I did it from the standpoint of teenage rumors, instead of actual events. Red Riding Hood's complete conversion is the closest I will come to that line, I think. The adoption of one new kind of life while discarding the other, instead of backstabbing as a lifestyle.

I didn't mean it to be a tasteful image, because it depicts an untasteful subject. So to everyone who mentioned it was untasteful, I know. As with anything that gains a lot of attention about me, Shawntae reared his head. Getting comments on FA from Shawntae is like being an adult alone in the house when someone else's kid loads his diaper. You sigh and get the handiwipes and powder. You can't reason with it. It's a turd. You can't "discuss" it into being a sweater. It is what it is. And it stinks. It can't be ignored. It has to be dealt with by an adult.

There's a special place in my heart for him. It'll always be there, reminding me of the difference between those who think other's opinions are crucial to their well-being, and me.

A news post about projects in progress, as well as future ideas. It's been a while since I've updated about anything!

http://fiskblack.livejournal.com/92239.html

In the past couple of weeks, there were two pages of Original Life that didn't update on time, despite being programmed to do so. There was no missing file or anything obviously broken, like that. The comic display page just continued showing the previous page entry. When I checked the software, it showed that the new page had loaded just fine. Re-saving the entry, manually, caused the new comic to finally display as it should. Since it didn't fail consistently, I took some time in noticing it would happen more than once. Turns out there are a lot of scripts set to run on the same machines at around that time (midnight) and it would sometimes cause the update script for my comic to time out. Instead of re-running the script a few minutes later, it just never got back to it. I had to wake up the next day to find out the latest comic never displayed.

The quickest work around was for the friend who handles the server-side things, to reshuffle some of the scheduled scripts, and slightly change the time which the comic is programmed to update. So, from now on, Original Life will update at 00:15 EST, Monday and Friday, instead of 00:00 on the nose. This should clear things up and not have so many things competing for server time. I hope an extra fifteen minutes won't be too much to bear.

A big hunk of text.

http://fiskblack.livejournal.com/91746.html

It's been a while since I've had a news update. There's nothing earth-shattering to really talk about, other than some speculation about future projects. My schedule is pretty clear for this year, and I can say that I'm going to be doing a quick project next, and it's going to involve Lucy and Tommy. I'm going to rely heavily on a POV theme, possibly trying to show most things as occurring from the point of view of Tommy. I know people have done those kinds of portfolios before, but I haven't seen any comics with sequential beginning-to-end sex depicted this way. It'll be an adventure and a challenge, and it'll involve drawing at some odd angles. I hope it'll be good practice. After that, I should be over this big early-year convention hump and have some more free time to plunge into the third and final installment of the Red Riding Hood story, which everyone seems to love. Red Riding Hood 2 was the highest performing release on the catalog and gave me my best month. And then, I still want to go back to the Haukaiu series after fixing up the way I present the stories. I just hope it isn't too far removed from the way I used to draw.

There's all the buzz hitting the street about the new iPad. There's a mixture of reactions. I think a lot of people in the artistic community were hoping for a touchscreen computer with OSX (this was the rumor I first heard as far back as a year ago). I try never to get worked up over rumors and speculation about "what would be cool", to avoid just this kind of disappointment. It skews our perspectives and doesn't allow us to look at a release objectively for what they are. We end up comparing it to what we thought they would be, or what we wanted. People criticizing the iPad because it isn't an OSX computer, aren't being fair, in my opinion. Although, I think an OSX touchscreen would be lovely. As far as I understand, touchscreen tablet-style computers are sought mainly by the artistic community, and not a wider consumer base, so Apple may have decided to just focus on something slated for mass appeal. With things like inexpensive tablets, and expensive plug-in touch monitors from companies like Cintiq, Apple may just have figured not enough people would want an "artist's computer". I'm not sure how well tablet/touchscreen PCs sell as an overall part of a computer company's line up. But then again, I've never seen anyone handling a MacBook Air outside of an Apple store, but they still have them for sale.

To really assess the iPad, you have to take it for what it is, and compare it to it's competition. I remember when I first got my PSP and found how nice it was to buy the biggest memory card I could and load movie files onto it for travel. It was a portable media device, as well as a portable video game system. There are also portable multimedia internet devices that aren't video game systems, like the Archos handheld machines. The point of them is to have all your digital media (music, movies, whatever) on a single portable electronic device, smaller than a laptop, and bigger than a phone. There are also people who are heavily into reading; so much so, that they purchase expensive electronics that do only one thing... store and display books for reading. As neat as this might be, I've never wanted to spend a lot of money on an electronic device that serves only one function. But I suppose if you read that much, it could be your version of a portable video game system. Anyway, the iPad is wading directly into these waters, not the tablet-PC waters or even netbook waters, and we have to compare it to existing ebook readers and portable multimedia devices, in order to treat it fairly.

I will have to be honest. At first it was fairly exciting, and then I analyzed my day-to-day and saw the "gap" the represents the "need" between my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. That gap is a very small one, and I don't think it'll justify my purchasing an iPad. It will be interesting to see it evolve in the next few years, though.

Mahrkale --> got a Droid and I had a bit of hands-on time with it. I decided to compare it to my iPhone and I did a little write-up on the experience here:

http://fiskblack.livejournal.com/91320.html

It's lengthy and has no cute pictures to go along with it.

Long involved journal post here:

http://fiskblack.livejournal.com/90971.html

With a cute little picture with it, as usual!

This week begins a rather busy period. This weekend I'll be venturing to Chicago once again to attend MFF. There are several friends who I'm used to seeing who won't be going this time, which is a shame. But there are still some more. Without people to hang with until after hours, there's a chance I could continue a steady stream of work during the daytime hours. After that I'll be spending Thanksgiving in sunny Florida. Mahrkale is visiting college friends down there and it'll be a splendid time to make sure I remember how to swim. There's also a slight chance I could be spending part of December in New York, but we'll play that by ear. Either way, I'm going to get as much work done as I can.

http://www.jaynaylor.com/images3/jn.....eads-sktch.jpg
The project I'll be doing next is a simple one. I'll probably do a nice detailed black and white number as a bit of a break from the full color exercise that was my last project. I decided a new Flounce and Persia project should win out over the little Beth story I've also had batting around in my mind, since it's been longer since I've done anything with them. After drawing one muscly wolf after another, a slim mouse is a welcome departure.

The holiday game blitz is on, and I've decided not to feel rushed about it. Normally, there's so much good stuff coming out you want to partake of it all, but I'm refusing to let it bite into my work schedule, especially with all the travel going on. I'm sort of building a little title collection that I plan to work on throughout the beginning of next year. At the recommendation of many people I've started on Dragon Age and I can tell it'll be a game that can soak up a lot of time and part of your soul. It's one of those games I can easily put aside and do something I can beat in a week or less, and then go back to it. Assassin's Creed 2 takes place during one of my favorite historical periods, so I'm interested in seeing how well they've smoothed out the problems with the first game. And then it's probably Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2... Modern Warfare 2 can wait. For some reason I feel no huge drive to beat that game, even though it'll probably only take two days. I still wish games didn't lean so heavily on the multiplayer aspect. Oh well.

A news journal post that's probably too long for FA. But also with a cute imbedded scribble!

http://fiskblack.livejournal.com/90297.html

I completed Uncharted 2 last night and really enjoyed it. It's one of those games that's so good, I'm tempted to buy another PS3 controller and invite Bonk over to co-op some missions. I'm rarely impressed with games, and I've always wondered how much longer I can be entertained and surprised by games with linear plots and action sequences you can't really deviate from. Well, I guess if they're very well done, if they're developing some neat characters and telling a good action story, they can easily grab me for that "interactive movie" sensation. For such a thing, a sandbox game isn't really appropriate. So far, Uncharted 2 is the best 2009 release I've played.

First off, the characters are a bit more developed in this game, than in the previous game. They've got hints of history and surprisingly enough, you sort of begin to give a damn about the game's main characters. This is a rare experience for me. The main villain is fairly one-dimensional. He's a cruel, ambitious, callous Russian war criminal commanding a personal army of Russian bad-asses. That's right, the swarthy hordes from the first game are gone. They present some very entertaining challenges. I've always said that Uncharted took the Gears of War cover system and perfected it, adding in melee elements to combat and making the enemy AI better. When you hide, they get annoyed and flush you out with grenades. They move to flank you, lay down covering fire, while soldiers wearing heavy ballistic armor move in for the kill with devastating shotguns. You rarely get the time to camp in one spot and pick off soldiers at your leisure. They've added more diverse ways of handle combat areas. There's a greater emphasis on action-stealth as an option in many areas, and there are battle areas that have pathways up and over obstacles as an option for flanking fortified opponents. And it wouldn't be an Uncharted game if the enemies didn't just keep coming out in huge numbers. Just when you think you've taken care of things and you're collecting ammo from dead bodies, their buddies show up in squad strength, pouring out of doorways and alleys, often with grenade launchers and GAU mini-guns.

The graphics are really outstanding. The combat controls are some of the most natural and easy to master I've ever felt in a video game, especially the grenade controls. Grenades are now a handy, appreciated tool in your firefight tool box in Uncharted 2. They aren't the difficult-to-master, hard-to-aim, maybe-you'll-get-lucky pains in the ass they are in most games. The pacing feels just right, and the character tension feels pretty natural for a video game. There's a palpable fear when you're climbing something that's slowly falling apart, dangling over a cliff. There's a real sense of terror and hopelessness in being chased by a T-72 through a Nepalese village, and the tank isn't acting like a boss in a boss fight in a video game. It's acting like it has a crew that has the full intention of _killing you_. Other than that, I think I appreciate this game because I can relate to a wise-cracking Nathan Drake, who seems to like the female ass as much as I do. There are several references to this peppered throughout the game, and they only served to draw me closer to the hero as the kind of person I'd like to kill a few beers with.

There are only a few gripes. They are quite minor. I'd like to see Drake with some more appropriate hand-wear, if he's going to be climbing by the tips of his fingernails on some of the least hospitable terrain on Earth. I don't ever want to see another visible laser beam on a gun in any video game or movie, ever again, for as long as I live. They are the stupidest things I can imagine, and only a shoulder-biting retard would ever put a visible laser beam on his gun. I would be content with seeing red dots appear around my character when I'm being targeted, and leave it up to ME to determine where they are coming from, as best as I can. That is, as long as you insist on giving "snipers" laser target systems, which are usually only fixed to weapons for short-range fighting. That sort of thoughtlessness makes me want to roll up a newspaper and bop the game developer on the nose, while saying "No!" repeatedly.

Otherwise, if you have a PS3, and you like third person action games, this game is your thing. Get it.

The new site look is complete. All the pages are in line and working and we've tested things. If you notice any little bugs we've missed, during your regular browsing, let me know either in a comment here, or in an email. So far the response is very positive. I have to answer some questions, though:

The WIP page is gone. I'm just going to put updates on what I'm doing every so often in Livejournal, which will show up as a news post on the website's home page. I don't have time to do New Worlds, so I'm not going to tease everyone by having links and banners to it sitting around, anymore. I apologize to all the fans of that comic, but I did mention this was the case several times in the past, when this redesign was being planned. The old "index.html" page is gone, so if you have that in your saved URL links, get rid of it and just go with jaynaylor.com or "index.php", if you must. If comic pages display with broken images in the older format, you probably still have cached information in your system. Hit refresh or control-f5, and things should show up properly.

The new site was done by my neighbor, who runs http://www.5thhubcap.com/ and he did a good job.

The new site setup is mostly complete. All the pages are uniform, with the exception of the catalog page. This will take some extra time and will likely be ready tomorrow night. There are a few other things worth mentioning.

I've basically reduced the amount of upkeep I have to do on the site to a minimum. This means the gallery link goes directly to FA, which is the most extensive archive of the stuff I post freely. The Work In Progress page is also gone. Instead, I will be posting things about the project I'm currently working on in the News section (which is my Livejournal page, reflected on the JayNaylor.com's site's main index).

Speaking of work in progress, I'm thinking of revisiting and finishing off the Haukaiu the Hero series before plunging into anything new next year. I would be doing it in the new comic format, so there'd be more pictures, less text. I hate to just leave a story hanging like that, and a lot of people seem to like the little Lutrai fellow.

In other news, I spent the evening trying out various martini recipes of the traditional gin-vermouth variety. I found I really like martinis and the lovely and gracious Mahrkale got me a cocktail mixer and four martini glasses for my birthday. With some leftover vermouth, a gigantic bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and some olives, I played around all evening until I could barely feel my fingertips. I found I enjoyed a 4-to-1 gin to vermouth blend, shaken, over the various other combinations I tried. Enjoying mixed drinks where every ingredient is an alcoholic beverage, must mean one is getting old.

I want to thank everyone for the birthday well wishes. I had a really fun weekend and got some really nice presents from my friends and sweetheart.

The site is coming along. We can expect the new look to be laid in this week, possibly even before Wednesday, if all the testing goes smoothly. The site will actually look like something I didn't cobble together in an assortment of .html editors and some leftover .php. I'm pretty excited about the long overdue makeover. Some changes that will be made are minor, like some button names. Better Days will be indicated as the Better Days Archive, since I still get questions about whether I'm going to update it. The Catalog will change to the Adult Catalog, so people don't go there hoping to buy baseball caps. I'm no longer going to be updating a separate on-site gallery, so the gallery link will simply link to my FA page. The front page should show the latest Twitter, as well as the opening clip of the latest news post on Livejournal. Oh, and the background color will no longer be a pink/lavender blend.

For now, work. Thank you all, again.