http://io9.com/5574788/secrets-of-t.....a-world-reboot

A friend of mine is running the new Gamma World at a local game store this month. It got me to thinking about Gamma World and how cool I thought it was back in the day. I remember splitting the cost of the box set with a friend in 1987-ish and we were going to share it, switching out GM responsibilities. I think we may have played it once or twice and that was all. Life intervened, I got a girlfriend, then my hardcore RPG life was reduced to intermittent sessions here and there.

Being a huge fan of The Road Warrior and a total nuclear apocalypse junkie at the time the Gamma World game really appealed to me.

Now, I do really love D&D 4e. I think it is an extremely well thought out game. But I’m still a fan and lover of the older editions, much to the chagrin of my best friend (he is a die hard 4e zealot!!). If you know anything about GW you know it was based on the D&D rules. Apparently the new GW is also 100% compatible with D&D. Seems more or less like a sci-fantasy setting for D&D rather than a game unto itself.

Of course one of the great appeals of Gamma World for me and I suspect for other old schoolers on here is that furries were one of the possible types of characters you could play. I think you could choose a pure human, a cyborg, or a mutated beast. Samurai rabbits with sawed-off shotguns? Bring ‘em on.

Random thoughts on the topic at 4 AM.

Out.

One of my favorite videos ever. And a fucking awesome song:



Tried to embed, I suck.

BTW, I've been watching Adventure Time, trying to get my son turned on to it. That show is fucking awesome. I just love it. I love all the little D&D references and the balls-out enthusiasm they have for such a whimsical fantasy romp. Good stuff.

http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_sh.....ime/index.html

Holy fuck. To be a full time worker with two wee children and a wife I do draw a lot.

I always liked having that callous on my middle finger. The one thing I miss about drawing with traditional media is having ink and marker stains on my hands.

Well, DM #50 is fully inked. But I lack the fortitude and will to get it finished tonight. It is 2:33 AM and my kids will be up long before I'm ready to be up! Best turn in and post my 800th piece tomorrow.

I started drawing Dungeon Minds strips some time toward the end of July of this year. It’s now October 16th and I have 49 finished strips, over 100 more scripted, and I haven’t even slowed down long enough to think about what the fuck I’m going to do with this comic long-term. I usually have more plans, more evil schemes for long-term goals…but this time I’m just happy to be drawing comics like a motherfucker.

So fuck plans. I’m just going to keep on drawing the shit and let things shake out however they will. I do have www.dungeonminds.com where the official home of the strip is, and I do plan to pimp that site up more by adding character bios and maps and eventually maybe some printed stuff for sale. But none of that is a solid GO! right now.

Anyway, just observing the fact that in 3 months I’ve done about 50 strips (#50 is on the drawing board and will be finished this weekend). That’s more productivity and more fun than I’ve ever had doing comics in my life.

Finally watched Kick Ass. I gotta say I fucking loved it. I was hooked from the preview and the movie didn’t disappoint. I only expected to see a lot of nasty fighting and dark humor. For my money, that’s what I got.

Weird too. Like, the trends today in this post-Pulp Fiction world. What I like was the fact that the movie was simultaneously gratuitous and derivative while being absolutely honest and forthright about it. Hell, they even drop John Woo’s name in the movie. This flick was kinda what you’d expect to see from Tarentino and Woo’s lovechild who just turned 21 and got both a bottle of bourbon and a movie camera for his birthday.

I’ve been posting here for a couple of years and I watch quite a few artists and fave stuff all the time. One thing I have never done (knowingly, anyway) is un-watch someone. I guess I kinda figured it was rude and I don’t like to be rude. But I recently had to un-watch an artist because the content of his gallery really bothered me. I guess it would have been prudent and polite if I had simply looked at the entire gallery first and then made the decision not to watch. But I didn’t.

Anyway, I wonder how many people on here regularly watch and un-watch people? I don’t remember ever being notified that someone un-watched me. Is that something you get a notification about? Just curious.

Now back to my regularly scheduled morning drawing session. There are un-inked naked elves to be dealt with.

P.S. There is nothing in this post about candy or divinity.

Just unpacked my new pen tablet! After 2 years productively and happily using a 4x6 Bamboo I have upgraded to the 6x9 Intuos4! And man, that is a serious upgrade. I'm giddy.

Now to draw while I still have a few minutes before responsibility calls again!

Oh hell yes he did.

Yeah, see today was a big birthday for me. And I’ve been thinking for a long time that I need to tear down more barriers between me and what I love to do. One of those barriers is the idea of self censoring, keeping it remotely clean for some fucked up reason.

But I like drawing sexy, erotic, fucking stuff. So I’ll be posting that stuff here too and I’ll basically stop posting anything over at my  FireOpera login.

This came about mostly after I spent a few days brainstorming an idea called “Dungeon Minds Deep Penetrations”. You can fill in the blanks in your head on that one.

Drawing is fun. Drawing fantasy art and comics is fun. Drawing fantasy art and comics with naked wimmin is funner than hell.

Thanks for watching, commenting, and all that jazz!

Ordered a new Intuos 4 today...

Rock on.

I'm finally getting ready to cross the 5000 pageviews threshold. I'm told at 5001 I learn a new spell: Improved Sword Fingers of Death or something cool.

You know, it seems that if you post stuff in the evening there are simply more people online and looking. But I am an early morning person. I have a couple of hours before the sun rises that I can do this kind of stuff. The rest of the day I'm Mr. Workin' Fer The Man and Daddy and Hubby and all that cool stuff. I don't have time to do this in the evenings, usually.

But that's all cool. I'm here, I'm diggin' it, I'm making lots of art. That's really all I wanted to achieve. I've struggled all my life to be cool and productive with my work. It seems like the past couple of years have been a real breakthrough for me. I'm embracing the stuff I love and letting go of the stuff I don't love. I'm doing art that makes me happy and I'm dropping all the baggage about it.

I am what I am, and that's very cool with me.

So onward to new spells, better swords, and more wicked looking women!

It is the first day of Fall. I love Fall. I love Winter too. Hell, I love all four Seasons! As long as I’m drawing breath I can’t imagine not loving life.

I’ll tell ya…as I get older (and fuck if I’m not getting older, dammit) I just appreciate being alive more and more. My kids are endless sources of joy for me (even when I want to strangle the life from their wee bodies). I have a decent job. I’m not entirely unhealthy. And I am being more creative and productive with my art than at any point in my life.

I like to ring in new Seasons on a positive note. So this Fall I’m just going to be extremely thankful to the blind, cold, relentless forces of the Universe for having the decency not to kill me yet.

I'm not a negative guy. This is just some stuff I really don't care about. Because sometimes we need to think about shit like this.

Televised car racing.

Tobacco products.

Eric Clapton.

Gospel music.

E.

Most sports.

Baseball in particular.

Any new album from Van Halen, Jethro Tull, or Aerosmith.

Ketchup chips.


Now, its not that I hate these things. I just don't give a fuck about them. If I thought about them enough I might hate them, or I might not.

I thought you needed to know this because I've been up since 3 AM drawing comics and I am probably fucked for the day.

Dungeon Minds is up and running pretty well. I'm still going to be working on it over time, of course, but it's fully functional as far as a webcomic site goes. I've got all the current strips scheduled to post so now I just have to focus on finishing more strips and staying ahead of the curve.

At some point my live posting at the site and my posting here will come together. Or maybe I'll always post here first, not sure yet. I'm a pretty fucking random kind of guy.

Ok, so www.dungeonminds.com exists, as I said last time. Now I have a basic layout in mind and have begun working on it.

Nothing shocking. I'm just going to use a WordPress template with some additional features. It'll have the comic at the top and an updating gallery of 400x600px pin-up chicks below that. Plus a blog and some small ad space. Simple meat-and-potatoes sort of thing.

I'm listing it as a randomly updating comic. Fuck all the M-W-F shit. I am simply not cut from the right cloth to maintain a schedule and I'm tired of trying to pretend otherwise. I post as I finish stuff.

For you Zyn Dweomer readers I apologize for the long delay in updates. But honestly Dungeon Minds is the natural evolution of that idea. It satisfies the exact same itch for me plus the additional need to draw sexy chainmail chicks. In short, it has taken over that slot in my brain that Zyn Dweomer used to dominate.

But fear not. I actually have written a handful of Dungeon Minds strips that sort of reconcile the two comics into one over-arching thing. Basically, if I must put it into specific terms, the city of Zyn Dweomer exists in the same setting as these new strips are taking place. Probably a short trip across the sea from Gnarl. And yes...the scripts do involve characters that link the two comics intimately...but more on that later.

I done went and done it:

http://www.dungeonminds.com/

Just a placeholder right now. Working on the layout and content and I'm in no rush.

Now back to work on strip #20: "Blood Kegger"....

Obviously the new strip is called Dungeon Minds. I'm digging it, having a great time. Still no firm plans in place as far as where this will end up being primarily published. I do plan to get it in print. The Gnarly comic book idea is still on the table, so it probably will go in there. Or this could be a thing unto itself.

For now I'm just zoned in, doing comics. I'll deal with that other shit later.

So, the Zyn Dweomer stuff has stalled. This is not shocking. I go in cycles. I’ll pick it back up. It has been the most consistent thing I’ve ever done, followed by Pan-Gea.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of these fantasy strips for a comic I’m calling Gnarly. Mostly humor stuff, leaning toward the T’n’A side of things.

I was thinking of allowing some Zyn Dweomer to mix with it. There is no aesthetic reason I can’t. I have it in the back of my head that whatever world these are taking place in is the same world where the city and surrounding lands of ZD exist. So having Westwood Company show up in a dungeon gag strip would be a hoot!

Making progress on getting the strips into print. I laid out issue #1, which covers the first 50 strips in a fairly packed 21-page standard format comic. Of course they don't print comics in 21-page formats so naturally I'm adding some extra stuff to round that up to 24 pages.

I'm going to include a Worldbook section that lists spells, items, and characters from the comic RPG-style. Something that's been on the agenda from day one. The jury is still out whether or not I'll include rudimentary RPG stats that will relate to the inevitable Zyn Dweomer roleplaying game.

Still have the cover to do, though. And those are a challenge for me. I'm not as comfortable doing larger pieces like that. But it should be fun.

I'll post more as I get closer to having this wrapped up. I plan to list it with ComiXpress as a POD book so if you like the webcomic you can have something tangible to hold in your wee hands. I mean, that's why I'm doing this...I want to have print comics again like the old days. I used to publish print stuff all the time. I miss it, dammit!

Still behind on the comic, but I'm not stressing about it. I kind of realized this year that keeping a rigid schedule is not my thing. I lack that part of the brain that handles regular updates. I'm more of a spurt kind of guy (god, that sounds nasty).

So lately I've been rehashing my Blood Red site: http://www.bloodredcomics.com

I haven't been producing much new work due to various time constraints and what-not, but I hope that will change soon.

So yeah, I've been in a slight funk lately. It happens. I'm behind on Zyn Dweomer, I'm obsessed with another comic idea, and I'm sort of in a leave-me-alone mood.

But hey, I'm still vertical and drawing and that's always a measure of positive cosmic vibes in my book.

Should be returning to normal schedule with ZD on Monday. If all goes as planned that is...

Meanwhile...

Ok, if you dig the comic then go to www.zyndweomer.com and leave a comment or vote for Zyn Dweomer on one of the webcomics lists!

Now that I've successfully stuck with this comic for over a year and I have a consistent update schedule its time to start beefing up the promotion, trying to get eyeballs on the pixels if you know what I mean.

I can use all the help I can get!

Plans:

1) I'll be releasing print comics soon. I'll start with collecting the first 50 strips into one issue that will either be a "year one" special or it will be the actual Zyn Dweomer issue #1. I haven't decided yet how I'll do that. I'll be using ComiXpress for the printing and it will a Print on Demand product. Their books look fantastic so I'm hopeful this will be a nice thing to have on paper.

2) The first goal of this project was to see if I could do a webcomic for a year and keep a fairly stable schedule. I had a few dry patches but on the whole I accomplished that target. The second goal is to make the comic pay for itself. Thus the promotional push.

...is back in fashion.

Yeah, I really gave it the old college try doing Zyn Dweomer in black and white. It was good. It was fun. It wasn't enough.

I have always seen this comic in color and even as I draw it in black and white I still see it in color. So I'm going to listen to my instincts on this one and return the strip back to its Technicolor™ glory.

As always, rock on.

...is going great! I actually just finished up page 9 of the first official issue. In strip terms, that would be #79, so I'm working pretty far ahead of the webcomic updates. This week I stepped it up to twice a week and, if things continue to go well, I hope to make that three times per week soon. But we'll have to wait and see.

Bigger plans include putting together the printed collection of the first 50 color strips. Following that, the release of issue #1 of the "official" series.

At some point I need to start focusing more on promoting the comic. I sort of do this so far underground its amazing that anyone sees it at all. I'm like a fish out of water when it comes to promotion so if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!

I’ve been tracking my progress toward keeping a robust daily routine I call “Dragon Hour”. It’s working quite well. I set a target in the form of a percentage of a page I want to complete each day, Mon-Fri. I track it daily and try to keep it above 100%. I know that sounds geeky as hell but it has been an effective way for me to reign myself in and get some real comics finished.

The other element has been switching the format of Zyn Dweomer. It has shifted from a color web strip to a black and white print comic (with pages being posted here, chopped up appropriately). This works for me. I like the look, I’m more comfortable with the style, and I can finish more pages. Plus I’ve always wanted to do a full size comic book series and I’m a self-publisher at heart.

Anyway, it’s going well. I’m over my 100% target at this moment.

Soon I hope to start making announcements about the first print comic. I’ll probably put together a “year one” collection of all the color strips as a sort of issue #0, then follow it up with the first issue of the proper series. The print comics will feature color covers, which I am really looking forward to creating. Also, I plan to include a back-up “worldbook” feature in each issue to give you a sort of classic RPG-inspired catalog of all the stuff that appears in the comic.

So here I am winding down another year of my short little life and I find that I'm still vertical, breathing, and drawing pictures for fun and catharsis.

I have nothing to complain about, Universe.