Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Grrr . . .


I'm up waaaay past my bedtime.  Time to put the stylus down. :)

G'nite.

- Ark

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Wild Hair Lady WIP


In case anyone is interested, here is a sketch of a picture I've been working on.  I've been experimenting with Autodesk SketchBook Pro, at it is pretty nifty for sketching.  I'm not so sure about using it for anything else, but for sketching, it blows away Photoshop.

In case anyone wonders WTF is going on up there, I sketch in different layers and colors, so I can keep track of newer bits as I experiment with different sizes, shapes, and positions of things.  Eventually, I just take my favorite bits and trace over them in black, then blow everything else away.  This one still has a whole lot of work to do on it before I get to the coloring stage.

So enjoy, or not.  Your choice. :)

- Ark

Friday, May 11, 2012

That Man Is Playing Galaga


The Boy and I went to go see The Avengers today.  I must say, I'm not sure how you could make a more perfect comic book movie.  By letting Joss Whedon do a sequel maybe?  And the lines - wow - just great.  Robert Downey Jr. just lords over the screen.  Galaga.  Really.  Just Galaga, man.

;)

- Ark



Thursday, May 10, 2012

Yeah, That's a Pool on Top of the Tower


The evil wizard Chernobog's Tower must be quite an eyesore for his neighbors.  It's primarily designed to keep his teenage daughter Yazbella locked up and out of trouble.  It's way too high for even Rapunzel.  However, Yazbella did discover the concept of rope at a young age, so the poor evil wizard never had a chance.

I actually finished the strip on time again.  I owe it to the greatly shortened format - only three panels.  The top bit has undergone a change - the indicia, masthead, whatever the right word for it is.  Nicer font, I think, and not as obtrusive - but there if you need it.  Of course, my style continues to - morph?  Evolve?  Mutate?  Something.  Change.  That's the word.

And in case you missed it - I'm keeping Chartreuse in the strip.  I was bummed when she died in the D&D game, but I think I can go on with her alternate reality adventures in bizarro comic world.  After all, it appears she has fans, and we can't let the fans down, can we? :)

- Ark

Friday, May 4, 2012

Come, Come My Child


Come, come my child, come rescue your downed pilot and the glorious and loyal soldiers of the Democratic People's Republic of Glory will spank you until the heavens' turn red with jarhead blood.  Come, come my child, and enjoy your thrashing.

- Ark

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Dungeonspiration: RIP Chartreuse


Chartreuse, by Angel Urena

Chartreuse, my 5th level wood elf ranger died last night at approximately 11:45 pm in Crazy-ass Tim's 2nd edition AD&D game.

It's been at least 30 years since I played a character enough to reach such a high level.  Actually, Chartreuse was only 52 XP away from being 6th level.  Dammit.

I played Chartreuse as a ranger with an emphasis on 'range.'  She talked a big talk and rained horrible slurs down upon her foes, but she was allergic to melee something fierce.  If she was 20 yards away from combat, she was too close.  If she could be up in the tree branches, far above the party, she would be there.  She even slept in the trees.  She had a very nice hammock.  Any excuse to be away from potential physical harm was a good one.  I really enjoyed playing her.

Chartreuse Drinking
The only thing that would cause Chartreuse to actually endanger herself was to protect her sister Serendipity.  The campaign began with Chartreuse attempting to find and rescue Serendipity (as well as some other party relatives.)  Regretfully, Serendipity joined the party, so Chartreuse had to be on double duty - protecting her sister while staying out of harms way.  It was a difficult task, however, as Serendipity was such a awful mage/thief that she earned the nickname Seren-derpity.

Early in last night's session, Chartreuse has finally convinced Serendipity to go off and retire from adventuring.  Perhaps it was the new found sense of not having to babysit her sister - perhaps it was just something wrong in the air - but this one night, this one dungeon delve, Chartreuse wasn't as cowardly as she needed to be.

A room had been found containing a pack of beetles and an sadistic ogre assaulting said beetles with a whip.  Torvalds, the suicidal mage, dropped two burning hands spells on the roomular inhabitants, assured that he would clear the place out in a hurry.  Regretfully, the DM didn't have time to mention that these were 11 foot friggin long beetles.  And now, they were angry beetles.  I had decided to start calling them John, Paul, George, and Ringo, because that's the way I roll.

Chartreuse Drunk
As Torvalds was standing in the doorway, the beetles rushed him, knocked him unconscious, and went for the party.  They all picked Chartreuse to attack, because crazy-ass Tim hates me or something.  Who knows why DMs do what they do?  After being knocked down to 2 hit points, Chartreuse used her newly acquired ring of jumping 30 feet the fuck away to jump 30 feet the fuck away, back down the hall, and proceeded to arrow the beetles to death.

Two heals from the cleric gave her a whopping 3 hit points back.  That's when the ogre magi appeared.  Well, she was an invisible ogre magi, so appeared isn't quite the right word.  The hidden ogre magi sent a cone of frost down the hallway. Chartreuse failed the save in a major way and suddenly found herself at -25 hit points.  She turned blue, iced over, and shattered into a million little fragments.  In my mind, at least.

Ouch.

What's even more poignant is that Kaye, who has been trying to purposefully get Torvalds killed, survived with flying colors.  Of course, he had help.  When he was at -9 hp, the cleric maliciously saved his life.  Out of spite.  Really.  Torvalds has actually become one of the more useful and productive members of our party, but that hasn't stopped Kaye from hating to play him.

The End
Now I have this annoying sense of loss from the death of someone who didn't even exist.  It's interesting to see how it feels on the other side of the DM's screen.  okay, interesting isn't the word.  It sucks.  But I guess it doesn't suck bad enough to have some sudden burst of empathy and not want to kill PCs in my own games. :)

One big problem is that I have this alternate reality Chartreuse in my Rather Gamey Comic.  The intention was her to be a major character in the story.  Yeah, she's not the 'real' Chartreuse, so it really shouldn't really matter what happens in the game - but it does.  She's dead.  Right now, I dont' have any interest in having her in the story or even drawing her.  I just want to mourn her and move on.

Weird.

So here is to the characters that we play and how they inspire us to try on different personalities for other people's amusement - including our own.

Rest in Peace, Chartreuse.

- Ark

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Quote of the Game

Quote of the Game for Saturday's SWN game:

"Can we rewind back to 15 minutes ago?  If this were a computer game, I would have saved right before we entered this derelict battle cruiser and powered it up.  Right before.  Can we rewind?  Then we can go back and turn around and never look at this thing again.  This isn't going to end well.  This isn't going to end well at all."

-Merwyn, playing Captain Goodnight, as a giant mech controlled by a crazy rogue AI blasted them with a plasma cannon on the Engineering Deck, but missed with a natural '1' and accidentally shot full force into the meta-dimensional energy reactor.

- Ark