Things have been quiet lately, as they have been with most folks. During the pandemic shutdown I have been working from home and routinely checking in on some local friends. In short, I'd like to be able to say that I've been awash in free time to devote to my projects, but I've actually been pretty busy.

But! I have been making some progress. I've done a ton of the lineart for page 6-2 of the comic; the thing is, this particular page has a lot going on in it, it's an outdoor, daytime scene taking place on the Las Beggas Strip. I want it to be a good, lushly-detailed vista that helps set the tone of a frenetic and colorful setting. Okay, maybe it's not THAT great... don't wanna set an unreasonable expectation... though I am pleased with how it looks so far, now that I'm well on my way to completing it. Might put up a preview on Twitter, or even in my scraps, I haven't decided yet. Regardless, I don't think it will take too much longer.

Also! I've cleared a major hurdle I'd run into with my game, TrooperCabra. A while back, I got discouraged when I wasn't able to program the projectiles' interactions with hard surfaces. I put the project down for quite a few weeks and just recently came back to it with a fresh perspective. Stubbornly trying to implement object-oriented programming in BASIC, which is not object-oriented. Well suffice it to say, I figured it out! Now I can hopefully move on with adding enemies and obstacles, and then, level design and boss battles.

In short, I'm really looking forward to having some cool stuff to show to you all soon!

Stay tuned!

It's your 23rd day of your extended vacation. You arise at 12:30 in the afternoon and decide to do something productive. You finally get around to making a breathing mask for yourself, from memory, according to some plans you'd seen on Facebook. Until now it had seemed too silly, but lately everybody's been recommending you do so, from your local shock jock down to your little cousin. You take a relaxed stroll to the closest corner store you know to still be open. Pressing on the door with your elbow and donning your face mask you carefully stride in. Then to your chagrin you realize: The last several months had been a dream. It's still 2019 and the clerk is calling the police. Also, you're 4 hours late for work.

AdvanceNotice! ....hehehehe.

So, I've been doing some stuff. Yet, I've also been kinda all over the place.

I think I mentioned before, I started the next page of RileyAdvanced, but for quite a while I've suffered a massive lack of motivation. So for now the page sits at my office at work. That's the other thing, work has been so freakin' insane... I know what they say, the busier the day is, the faster it goes by. Well that's true, but more often than not, I get home from work and my evenings end up going by too quickly as well. Plus I've been having to do extra work from home lately.

Anyway. Lately, coding has been capturing my imagination. I've been doing a lot of work on this TrooperCabra game and am close to having a working demo. Almost. I briefly got sidetracked figuring out how to do a sort of Mode-7 graphics (think oldschool Mario Kart or F-Zero) in DOS, contemplating doing a satirical TrooperCabra racing game just for laughs. But that's a side-side-side-project.

I had basically been anticipating hitting a wall in my game development, and I just recently hit it. Getting everything on the screen to interact with eachother, it's difficult to do in a procedural programming language like BASIC. Doable, but highly paradoxical. I'm currently taking a hiatus from that to figure out my strategy of attack... in which case I might actually get back to drawing again.

If it ends up taking too long to do more RileyAdvanced, I might just upload the work-in-progress of the page I'm working on now. Just so you can see what to expect. Until then, I have a few casual sketches I'll upload, nothing too involved.

I love you all... thank you for your patience and your continued willingness to tune in... and as always, stay tuned!

Peace 'n woof,

-Al

November 18th, 2019: Redeemed Giant reward points for a free frozen turkey, placed in freezer.

Nov. 27: Put turkey in fridge to thaw.

Nov. 28: Had Thanksgiving dinner with family and relatives as usual. Different turkey.

Nov. 29: Cooked and served my terko to a couple close friends at my place. Only ate about 30% of it.

Nov. 30: Shrink-wrapped the rest of the turkey carcass.

Dec, 5: Finally carved remainder of meat from bird, made sandwiches. Stayed up late boiling carcass down into broth in big pot while drinking wine.

Dec. 6: Boil concluded at 2:40 in the morning. Discarded bones. Refrigerated broth. Got up at 6:30 for work. Hung over or possibly still drunk. Went to work. Ate sandwiches.

Dec. 10: Purchased carrots, celery, onion (mirepoix) and added to leftover terkobroth along with remainder of meat. Bought ginormous Tupperware container for 2 gallons of soup. Stored in refrigerator at work.

Dec. 11 - 20: Ate soup every day for lunch. Saved approximately $35 in lunch expenses.

Dec. 23: Soup tasted more sour than usual. Figured it was time to throw in towel. Dumped remaining gallon down work toilet.

Dec. 24: Returned huge Tupperware tub to home. Filled with hot soapy water. Spent the night at my parents' house. Disregarded kitchen.

Dec. 27: Dumped tub of tainted soap water and replaced with more hot soapy water.

Dec. 30: Finally gave terko tub a proper scrubdown and set out to dry, finally clean.

Dec. 31: ????

Jan. 1, 2020: Profit!

Hey folks!

Well, it's been a crazy year, and though I've been pretty frazzled I believe it's ended a little better than the previous year.

If you're following me, you know that it's been nearly a month since I posted a page of my Riley comic, the first one to be in full-color. While I have started work on the next one, I really regret not being able to add to the comic more frequently. As you can probably imagine, color does take more work than the old greyscale pages, but the big problem has been that I just haven't been motivated. I can never get myself to do any significant work while at home, either because I'm cleaning, entertaining or just binge-watching youtube. I'm terribly inefficient. I currently have the pencil-and-paper rough draft of the new page hidden amongst my paperwork at the office, but work has been so hectic lately that I'm lucky if I get to it at all.

The other thing is that my mind has just been in other places lately. The big thing with me for these last few weeks has been a new action game, TrooperCabra. It's fairly ambitious for me, and I've been gradually filling a notebook with various concepts and facets as well as running some programming tests to make sure I'm actually capable of making it all work. I've also been drawing a simple portrait of it's hero, which I hope to have done soon. So there is a silver lining to all of my apparent inactivity. On an unrelated note I was also thinking about developing a new operating system, but that's neither here nor there (Probably not gonna happen)

So, yeah. Still intent on delivering more of the ol' Riley content. Sorry it's coming along so slowly. It actually kinda hurts to think that with all that I'd had planned for the series, I will likely never get around to all of it in one lifetime at this pace. But I figured I'd rather have the comic continue at a snail's pace than not have it at all.

Good things are coming in 2020! I promise!

So I think I'm gonna take the plunge and challenge myself, I think I'm actually gonna participate in Inktober this year!

I downloaded the 'official' 2019 prompt sheet to use for inspiration if I can't think of anything else to sketch, but of course I'll be doing a lot of my own stuff too. I'm also kinda thinking that I might just do these on Twitter ( Riley_Advanced ).... either that or upload them only as scraps here on FA. Any thoughts?

That's right, I've actually been drawing lately! More than just that, though, I made a video of the whole process, check it out!

33 is an interesting age to be right now, because I remember substantial parts of at least 3 decades.

As of right now, I'm making some (modest) advancements in my career while still pursuing my arts with mixed results.

10 years ago today, I had just graduated from college and was in the process of leasing my very first apartment.

20 years ago, I had just recently created the Riley universe and was spending a lot of time daydreaming, wishing I lived there. I was also just beginning to dabble in anime.

And 30 years ago, about this time of year, was my earliest memory: going to see Peter Pan when they re-released it in theaters. Also, All Dogs Go to Heaven was just about to come out on home video and become my favorite thing in the world.

And no, today isn't my birthday, that's not for a few months yet. Just meditating on silly sentimental things.

I'm sad to say that the end of 2018 has left mw in somewhat of a funk. I just don't know what I'm doing.

I'm still trying to work on the Riley franchise in some form or another but I'm just not feeling it. At the same time, I'm reluctant to just let go of it all. Still hoping to at least wrap up chapter 5 soon. At the same time I'm hungry for something new, but my mind just keeps bouncing back and forth between several half-baked ideas... None of which really grab me.

I know I probably sound like a broken record right now, but I really want to be able to please. And even more broadly and selfishly, I more than anything else, I just eant to have an ongoing thing to call my own. Without that, my life is kinda going nowhere. But I worry that 2019 won't find me much better off than this year did.

I just don't know. I don't mean to be a downer, I'm still somewhat hopeful, but just... I'm feeling more and more like my eccentric lifestyle of creating stuff hasn't proved very sustainable.

Anyway, happy New Year. Hope it's good for you folks.

Hey folks. I've been working on the next story for Riley Advanced, but as you can see, it's been a long, long time.

I really appreciate all the positive vibes you folks have given me, and I wanna provide more stuff, but inspiration has been a major problem. I HAVE been working on it... I have part 5-2 on a USB drive on my key chain at all times, so I can at least try to work on it at the office, but my mind just keeps going other places.

I've gotten back into doing some programming and amateur game design, which if you know me, you know is an old hobby of mine. I'm not very good at it, but it's just so exciting that it kinda sucks all the air out of the room.

So this is just a heads up for you all: I may be posting some of my crappy game-related stuff up on here, but make no mistake, I still absolutely will be uploading the next installment of Riley before too long. Thank you all for tuning in, I wish you all the best and hope to be able to keep entertaining you.

Peace 'n wuff,
-Al