Yay, FA is back!

Status update! Vixen is almost done. The CG is pretty much finished, but I need to do something artsy for his background. I have another image in the works right now, but it's going slowly.

I also plan to revisit the Tank Rats after this. Have some thoughts about making them a bit easier to draw.

I just added a group pic of the Tank Rats. The heroes of the story, at least. Work is still ongoing with the four supporting characters. If you like them, leave a comment!

Next up, in theory, is the annual Vixen pic. I decided to just focus on Vixen because when I look back on the 2008 image, I'm not too happy with how he turned out. So I'll be redesigning him to be 150% more femmy. Yes, because with a name like Vixen, his girlishness has to reach Guilty Gear Bridget levels! ^_^

I think it's time to get back to drawing more. I haven't posted anything in the last few months, largely because I've been modding. But that's getting exhaustive. I mean, between work and that, it's overkill.

I've got a couple pics planned for the next few days and weeks. First is a group pic of the rats I've been working since August. Trying to get away from drawing so many scalies, I decided to try rats for a while and I'm pretty happy with where it's going. It blossomed into a whole story with multiple characters.

The second is what's going to become an annual thing - the drawing of my reindeer boi Vixen. This year, I'm going to emphasize that boi quality on him and pass the buff looks to another reindeer. Maybe Dasher.

So yeah, we'll set the count at two and see if it actually happens or not. X)

I haven't posted much lately as I've been working on my Half-Life 2 mod. It's quite an undertaking and it's eating up a lot of my free time, but the end result should be worth it. :D

For a while, I've been trying to figure out what to name the web comic, if not just the concept itself. As far as FurAffinity is concerned, I've just referred to it as the Cabal, knowing full well that Cabal was too common a name to take for myself, because I was holding out for the right name.

The working title was Deus Rexx, which I liked for its cheese factor. But at the same time, with an actual Deus Ex game coming out at some point, and the comic having nothing to do with cyberpunk, I thought it might be somewhat confusing. You could say that it referred to Deus ex Machina, but I digress.

For me, the ideal name should accomplish a few things. One, it should hint at the saurian nature of the strip. If you go by other dinosaur media, such as Dinosaucers or Dino Squad or whatnot, this is accomplished by having "dino" or "saur" somewhere in the name. Two, it should be somewhat corny since the tone of the strip isn't especially serious. And three, it would be nice if the name was agnostic - I'd still like to have the Cabal be the Cabal and the Sobek Knights be the Sobek Knights, or whatever I want my saurian actors to be. A name that doesn't lock me into a concept.

Various names came and went. Reptilia was a start, capturing the agnostic vagueness I wanted, but there's already an active web comic named that. Saurians of Fortune summed up the overarching concept, but it was a bit unwieldy and long. Dinosaurs with Guns was another candidate, except it's really only Cairo with the gun.

Yesterday was the day when I thought of a name that just seemed to click: Xenosaurs.

I couldn't get it out of my head. It sounds good. It looks good. It accomplishes all of the objectives I wanted.

There are a number of reasons I went with this name. First, with the xenomorphs of Alien and the concept of xenophobia, it's safe to say that "xeno" isn't an uncommon prefix for sci-fi concepts. Second, Xenosaurs literally means "strange lizards" in Greek, which Kidd very much approved of. Third, no one seems to have made this term their own! If you Google it, you have many results of actual xenosauria (which are a species of lizard in China), but little else. None of the domains were even registered for it.


So, the name is registered and maybe it will finally spur me to action. I took a short break from my scalies to focus on more furry things, but now I'm back.

Wow, 4,000 hits! Took a while, didn't it? After all, kyouryuu.net is at 47,000. :)

I should do an evolution image sometime. I've been working on a cute image of Kidd and Armada and I started going through some older artwork of them. Even within the FA gallery, which isn't a full record, they've changed a fair bit over the course of the last two years in terms of appearance - not so much personality.

I draw almost every night in bed as part of my pre-sleep ritual, so there is a lot of art that never sees the light of day. But there is definitely a slow evolution. :)

First post of the New Year, and hopefully it won't be on the front page by the end of the year, AMIRITE?

Anyhow, I have a few more drawings in the works. I have an image of Cairo that's a follow-up to the one I just posted of Kidd, and then a little tribute to a largely forgotten 16-bit furry.

Once the SDK for Left 4 Dead comes out, I suspect that's going to consume a fair bit of my free time as I assemble a campaign for it. I will definitely post screenshots as that progresses. I finished the 2D maps a couple weeks ago and I haven't poked too many holes in the plan since then, so that's a good sign.

Since a couple people have asked me about commissions and requests, I thought I'd make a general post about it. First, I'm honored that anyone would ask such a thing of me. I personally don't think I'm that great an artist.

However, I'm afraid that:
I don't do requests.
I don't do gift art.
I don't even do commissions.

It may sound strange, but art is something I do completely for myself and no one else. I have so little free time that I want to spend it doing the things I want to do, rather than the things I have to do.

I'd love to meet more furs! My IM is listed on my front page here at FA.

Things are going pretty well at the new job. It has been eating into my free time, obviously, but I have made it a point to draw every night in bed. Lately, I've been revisiting the designs of the Cabal as I said in my last journal update. So far, I like where things are going. Last weekend, I even wrote a short story, which I'll probably get to posting here soon.

I have some vague plans for a Left 4 Dead mod as well, depending on whenever the SDK comes out.

I've started updating with stuff I've done throughout the month of October. Originally, it was planned for use in an eventual web comic that, for now, has been put on hold. If all goes well, I begin a new job the Monday after next, so I'm taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to how much free time I'll have.

Four pages of the comic were completed in some form and it was good practice, if only to reveal some of the shortcomings of the character designs.

Some observations...

- The size difference between Armada and everyone else is pretty extreme. While I've always loved having Armada be the "big guy" of the team, it's troublesome to frame both Armada and anyone else talking to him. The difference really needs to be toned down.

- Cairo's long neck makes his head difficult to frame. I like to have some shoulders or upper body visible in a typical talking head panel, but Cairo makes that hard to do. There's also the issue of Cairo being the guns expert - yet with that long neck, I'd imagine it'd be tough for him to look down a sniper scope, don't you think? XD

- Lack of expression! I think a lot of this has to do with the boring, tired way I draw eyes. I've started drawing eyes in a new way, as you can see with my avatar. It's toonier, maybe more "Ratchet-fied," but I like it. Unfortunately, it has some retroactive side effects! If I do this again, I'll need to update their appearances.

So, anyhow, it was a good experience. But I'm moving on for now and we'll see what happens.

I added a new image of the Cabal to the Scraps folder:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1525664/

Also, the Half-Life 2 map shown here...
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1169891/

... is finally completed! You can get it from:
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/.....7-half-life-2/

w00t!

I like to decorate my cubicle with scaly things~

Thing is, I'm having a hard time trying to find some nice dinosaur figures, especially raptors. Has anyone seen some neat anthrosaurian action figures lately? :)

Besides the Extreme Dinosaurs and Spiderman's Lizard, I haven't had much luck finding any.

Darn you, Storm Hawks, why couldn't you make a nice Repton figure? XD

How's the level going? Pretty well!

A month ago, when the last screenshot was taken, it was around 2.8 megs. Now it clocks in at a hefty 6.2 megs.

Lots of new geometry and prop placement are the main culprits. The basic structure of the level is pretty much finished, though, so I've been adding props and lights. After that will come the actual gameplay scripting.

Moar to come soon!

Added a couple new scraps ( http://www.furaffinity.net/scraps/kyouryuu ) of Wahl and Kuma, a couple new characters I've been playing around with.

I just got over a two week battle with the flu. Man, what a bust that was. Used up almost all of my sick time at work. I even had a flu shot last year. Apparently the flu shot has been really ineffective this year. I think I've mostly caught up, but the unfortunate part is that the extra time we got for the project was all but swallowed by the flu. Grr!

On another front, I've been drawing a couple new characters. It started with a rather buff looking narwhal (look it up) and then followed with a slender polar bear boi <3. I had a thought about doing a comic with them, but a much smaller one. Like, five or six pages. An experiment not just for practice, but as an alternative format for Deus Rexx.

Up until now, I've envisioned Deus Rexx as this sweeping epic of sorts. But maybe a much smaller, more episodic format is the way to go.

Along with all of this, being a level builder, you have to understand that whenever I'm down because of illness or vacation, I have the "itch" to build something. So during those two weeks, I restarted my Half-Life 2 single player map. Basic floorplan has been laid and I plan to work on it more this weekend. I think it's a vast improvement over my last attempt at it. Once I seal things up and properly implement the sky and a few props, I'll post screenshots.

Jyane~!

Ah, Presidents Day weekend. A time to relax a little before the stress of work kicks in again. The end of the project got postponed again, so we have more time to complete it. But, the downside is that it means I have to keep pushing off working on the webcomic!

Not that I'm disappointed. The more time passes, the more tweaks I make to the story and the characters. Course, the issue there is that all the character art I did over Christmas looks a bit outdated now. Eep! But, better to make changes now than midway through the project, ne?

Come to think of it... this post had nothing to do with cheese. >.=.>

2008 is almost upon us and hopefully I'll remember to update this Journal so I won't be reading this next December. XD

It's going to be a big year. Right now, I'm using what free time I have to work feverishly on the web comic. Yes, it's definitely going to happen. I've been focusing on the web site. I've taken care of all of the characters, the main header, and all that goodness. Now I'm working on the side images that will decorate each page. So, even though it looks kind of vacant here, I've got a barrage of stuff to show in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned!

- Kyo

A couple new sketches have been added to my SCRAPS folder!

Right now, we are nearest alpha on the current game project, so I don't have very much time to work on artistic things.

Nevertheless, my free time has been divided between the planning for the web comic and now BioShock. If you have an Xbox 360 or a PC capable of running it, you owe it to yourself to go out and buy it. It is truly an amazing game!

Peace!

- Kyo ^._.^

Hey, I just want to let everyone who comments here to know that I really do appreciate it. Even though I'm often too busy to reply to everyone, I do read everything that is posted. Apologies for not being able to reply to each one. Know that I do care. n..n

- Kyo