I've been a member of my current gym for two whole weeks now!! It's one of those trendy circuit gyms but the fees are lower and it's women-only, so I figured why not? So far I've done four workouts and a tai chi class (SLO-MO HADOUKEN), which is pretty damn good for me in every way. I'm really enjoying it; it's so much more social and personal than when I was a member of a certain giant gym chain, and I do feel like I've gotten my energy back. I realised tonight that I can't even remember what I did at work once I'm about a quarter of the way into the circuit... which is actually a good thing!

As promised, here are my highlights from Comikaze 09. What I really recommend is that you read every single one of them, because the quality this year was incredibly high! I laughed, I cried; in once case I actually laughed until I cried. So much wit! So many cool twists! People were being so darn nice and supportive to each other too... it was heartwarming to see. Thanks tedprior for convincing me to participate this year T^T

General favourites:

Pinn by tiny_monster - GAAAH IT'S JUST SOO CUUUTEE! (I like how all the working girls in the crowd make comics about work... but I also love reading them so nyerr)
(The Lives of Those Who Are) Not Us by Biccy Wong - cute art and a nice neat twist.
Exchange Day by Jen Breach and Trevor Wood - a hilarious concept illustrated well.
Hold On by Donna Morgan - absolute proof that 1. good writing makes for a good comic and 2. "I can't draw" is a pathetic excuse not to try making a 24-hour comic >:D
How to (Draw a 24 Hour Comic) by Nick Hunter - w-w-what is this guy he is amazing! And then I looked at his blog and his inkinggg aaa! He may be terrified of me when I say hi at Supanova but oh well XD
Cryptopher Rabbit by Jing - I love comics about eccentric weirdoes who just seem to be dancing to their own beat, and this is that kind of comic. Like many of this year's comics, it is also witty as all get-out. (Okay and she wrote stupid fangirly references to things in there too and I love that.)

Mature faves (requires registration):

Plush Love by C. Braes - I LOVE THIS and it is by a first-timer which blows me away even more. My hands-down favourite out of the lot, it's so solid and expressive and funny all at once!
Innocence is Bliss by Robert Raccoon - this is the one that made me laugh until I cried. The art's so simple but hot daaamn that is some witty writing under pressure.
Hidden Seek by Samantha Ee - oh man the aaart *argggl* and the story and pacing are nicely done too.

It seems like several artists/creatives on my flist are feeling a bit fragile lately, so here is a really inspirational blog entry I read this morning by Stealth Magazine's Mark Pollard. Wise words and well said!

The stars have aligned and therefore I have updated my website!

I think I've finally stumbled upon the right combination of design, CSS and scripts to keep it reasonably pretty and up to date now. In a fit of energy and inspiration, I reuploaded all six of my 24 hour comics... I'll try to track down some of my other short comics during the week and add those too. ComicGallery is so sensible and ridiculously easy to use. ;_;

Speaking of 24 hour comics, I spent most of last night and today reading them! This year's event was a bit lower key than usual but the quality of the entries was amazingly high... I am extremely impressed by what I've read, from veterans and newcomers alike. I will post a list of my favourites next entry! :D

Holy cow, I got to 24 pages with no title page and minimal cheap tricks. A few pages are kinda NSFW and while I started the comic in the General forum, evilhayama reckons I should have seen the porn coming a mile away and just started my thread in the Mature forum to begin with. We can hope, right?

I know exactly what's wrong with it but hey, when you end up with ten pages to draw in half as many hours you kinda... don't give a flying toss any more! Personally, I like what I ended up with.

Pulp Faction thread (may become registration-only when it gets moved to the Mature forum)
Folder o' jpgs for everyone else

Now to go get some sleep before dinner, I am wrecked. _o_

Have finished comic and slept on evilhayama for a bit. Still not entirely human. Going to get pancakes now. I didn't get to 24 pages, but I'm actually really happy with my comic this year!

http://forums.pulpfaction.net/viewtopic.php?t=3013

Goddammit Alex killed our entire quota last night and all I want to do read is comics... but... pancakes, I guess D:

Here is a lovely interview with Mike Patton. Games! Mike Patton! Two of my favourite things, in the one place!!

We has a 24 hour comic gathering! With a webcam!

A bunch of us are here including arabel, comixnut, sb_mcinnes and caleyndar. iodinesoup is doing his on the plane because he is awesome, and we're expecting more people to drop by during the day!

I kinda fled without posting about it much, but we ran away from the city for most of this week to stalk wildlife and get my creative juices flowing again. :D We stayed in a place that was a lot like Hotel Dusk, but in a good way...!

( Aminal photos! )

I'm torn between finishing off two porny comics (one old, one new) during the Comikaze24 session tomorrow, or just drawing a new 24 hour comic that will probably be fit for public consumption. I don't know what to doooo! D:

Speaking of Comikaze24, we'll be running a webcam again this year but this time we're using the EyeToy hooked up to my Mac. This way we don't need to interrupt transmissions if someone wants to use the computer for a while.

And here are two webcomics I'm enjoying a lot at the moment, though you may have to be a y!Gallery member to read them in their entirety:

Honeydew Syndrome by Nuu
Poisonous Kiss by Moshi no Bo

We have another week of holiday left, how awful! ;D

Woogh, full weekend for once.

I bought Cooking Mama for Wii yesterday so now the Wii is my friend again! It's still a little frustrating, but I think that's always going to be tied to its silly control systems. In one sense the supremely bad translations delight us (there is one voice actor for everything, and she is a Japanese girl, and her English coaching is a little lacking in places hee hee) and on the other hand I am facepalming at the inconsistencies that will probably stump someone with lesser food knowledge. "Mochi" morphs into "rice cake" and back. You cut up a "tuna" at the beginning of the sushi recipe, but later you are asked to make "maguro" sushi. Sure I know all these things, but isn't it being mean to the Japanese-food-impaired?

Also, you cannot have ever watched Iron Chef if you can't translate オマール海老 correctly (Homard lobster, you fool, not "omaru shrimp"), which means you're not worthy to translate a cooking game! At least get someone who cares to edit the text after translation! D:<

The game does look really nice in 480p though. ;_; And kinokofry, I added you to my Wii friendslist - my code is in this entry.

Hayase! today was pretty awesome, and the cafe is hinting that we should do another exhibition there at the end of this year. Maybe we should just go for the games theme after all, yeah? And here's a bunch of random sketches since I'm trying to design a business card in the next week or two and also need to put something in the Hayazine...

( Worksafe but manservicey. )

While I'm on comics, the Comikaze 24 hr Comic Challenge is happening real soon! Still deciding whether I should register since I know I'll get an absolute ton of inking done that weekend, but having so many drawingpeople around usually drives me to do at least 8 pages.



As for work, the annual report should be going to the printer at lunch time! I can't wait to see the end of it. >_> And in anticipation of never seeing those damn files ever again, I caved in to a desire I've been harbouring for more than a decade now... pyjamas by Peter Alexander.

( Read more... )

The order is being sent by courier (!) so it should be here in a few days. Hooray! ;w;

Bhuh, I survived another 24 hour comic, pushed everyone out the door at 10am (thank you for understanding), fell into bed and woke up at 4pm. Thank you heaps to everyone who turned up: natesoehardi, caleyndar, iodinesoup, arabel, benjamonster, tachikoma, kyarra, mirness, comixnut (plus Lisa), stikmancomics, mrtang, ladytigerlily27 and soliloquoy. This year we ran a webcam too! Sorry if you had to look at my mug a lot, the thing is part of my laptop and I was uploading our pages from it.

Lost and found: a phone, a Nintendo DS Lite, a yellow double pencil sharpener, a thermal mug, a towel, a Freeloader disc and er... a comic page in the scanner... are we getting old or are we just more tired than usual?! XD;

I wasn't going to do a comic, but some ridiculous banter with arabel landed us with an eleven-page collaboration. mirness is totally responsible for the Braveheart quote and the bad pickup line and benjamonster may or may not be responsible for the snake-in-sporran idea? Correct me if I'm wrong. The comic was written by arabel, I inked over her thumbnails in Painter and she lettered and shaded. I drew leg hair, which is a first.

( Not too dialup friendly or worksafe )

I usually try for coherent, but you know what? Every year I read plenty of incoherence in 24 hour comics. I have even paid and traded for many incoherent comics, accompanied by varying levels of regret (mostly depending on how good the art is). I think I'm overdue for some incoherence. Besides, I inked seven pages of a "real" comic while I did this.

A few of us agreed that the random inserts made doing the comic far too much like homework, and we've all either finished uni or have enough homework. Today's items have a lot more wiggle room than yesterday's or even Friday's... here's hoping the organisers (who did an awesome job otherwise!) can tweak things and bring back some of the magic next year.

Now to go read through the other entries... how am I supposed to be functioning and stable for work on Tuesday? I wanna eat something greasy...

Edit: yesterday was my LJ's third birthday and there need to be more guys with British accents on The 1UP Show.

Man, I'm liking this two weeks of leave thing. I don't want to go back to work!

I've told people before that evilhayama is my muse; today he confirmed this by noting that I hadn't done nearly enough work lately and taking my Macbook to play Dungeon Siege 2 on it. He also modelled a pose that was giving me grief at one point.

I pencilled ten A3 pages in seven hours. XD TO WHAT DO I OWE THIS WONDERFUL MUSE?

Now that the 24 Hour Challenge prizes have been posted at saveded I want to enter it now! And the Mature category prizes are better than the General ones, in my opinion, so it'd have to be mansmut ohnoz!! I don't know how I feel about the multiple items though (but I do approve of that system being brought in; I'd heard rumours of cheating in past years too). Is it cheap or sad if I wait to see what the items are before entering? :D; It can't possibly be any worse than waiting until the prizes are announced.... right?

A life drawing venue opened around the corner from us, but it's in what used to be a titty bar lololol. I might check it out once I'm done pencillinginkingtoning up this storm.

Right, so we had a bunch of people visiting over the course of the 24 hour comic thinger the other day: arabel, whatwouldbendo, zpxlng, stikmancomics, monkeydan, natesoehardi, mrtang, mirness, leenabeans and comixnut (plus one). evilhayama was around because he lives here too, so he spent most of the time distracting people with video games.

I dunno what happened to our motivation this year. It was zpxlng's first year so he was totally ready to do 24 pages, but for most of us it was our second or third time so we just set a goal that tended not to involve the term "24 pages" and went for that instead. In some cases it was "let me get to 8 pages so I can play me some games", in other cases it was "let me finish this goddamn story". I proooobably lost a lot of time doing things like making tea and yakking on about nothing, but it was worth it for the more relaxed mindset.

After it was all done, we heard half of zpxlng being interviewed by The Australian; it was fucking hilarious. I wish I'd taped it because they're almost certainly going to cut it. They did ask if we used illicit substances to make the comics, which cracked us up (no pun intended). After everyone left I fell asleep on evilhayama's lap for four hours, sitting up only to babble at him incoherently in my sleep and fall back down again. I felt far more human this morning after having twelve hours of sleep and a long hot shower.

I've also managed to play a lot of Digital Devil Summoner in the last day and a half, go me. I LOVE LOVE LOVE GALE AND HEAT.

If you missed my last entry, my comic is right here. You can (and should) also view the absolute crapload of entries at the challenge website; I spent a while yesterday and today going through them all and commenting whenever I could. If I haven't said anything to yours yet, don't get offended! Each year I actually work through the forum threads, oldest to newest, trying to bump up comics that haven't been commented on but are worth a closer look. I'll get to the rest of them tomorrow night but right now some more sleep looks like a good idea...