MOVING!

First off, for you awesome handful of fine folks who keep visiting the site despite my appaling delinquent lack of updates - Thank You So Much!! 

The site is not dead (though, perhaps on life support for the past, what, 7 months?? Yikes), but is definitely, finally, going through a bit of a transition.

Planet Tobor started out as something entirely different from what it's become, and I can't help but feeling like I need to shed some skin and start the process of replacing it with a newer, shinier, more personal coat. That said, I'll be moving some things around, redesigning and moving to a new domain name: www.grinningmonster.com, which is already associated with planettobor.com.

The Planet Tobor comic strip will remain intact and see a lot more love soon, thanks to me finally getting (relatively) comfortable with the development of Savage. The game is one thing that has been moving along full speed ahead and I'm excited to finally post some progress on it in the form of some videos and new screen caps.

More updates to come, and thanks for sticking around!

Animayhem

... Not to be confused with anime-hem, which is or is not something I just made up. Whew - now that that's cleared up I wanted to take a moment to talk about the animated short I'm working on.

It is a music video. A cartoon animated music video for Texas Microphone Massacre's upcoming single, "In Your Dreams". Give them a listen - great tunes and I am so excited to be working with these guys!

The video will premiere at Elysium, in Austin TX on July 21st, so if you're in the area mark your calendar and come check it out!

On a more nitty gritty note, work on the video is going well despite an artform I'm not too terribly familiar with. But, babysteps toward the elevator...

Challenging, rewarding and interesting. Eadweard Muybridge was right - moving pictures are neat!

-Matt

P.S. More comics coming soon!

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program

I sincerely apologize for the lack of a real update today, but I wanted to take a moment to alert everyone to the fact that the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty quiet as far as the comic is concerned. I was recently commissioned to do a short animated project and that's going to take up quite a chunk of time - but the strip will be back to the five day a week update once the project is well underway/finished.

Thanks for reading and I'll have more strips coming very soon!

-Matt

Hooray Social Media Things

As the title suggests, I've been trying to wrap my head around Twitter (which until recently I thought was some kind of extensive digital library of exotic bird mating calls where, universally, the time honored 'tweet' was the goto favorite), creating a Facebook page for this guy, and lumping the comic feed and news feed into one comprehensive RSS feed - Mission (I think) accomplished!

You can now seek Facebook's approval in liking us and such - and following our Twitter, should you feel so inclined!

So for those that prefer feeds and such, it's all back up and running. To the best of my knowledge.

I may just be conquering my fear of the social network boogeyman. Scary.

-Matt

P.S. Check out these awesome T-Shirt designs created by my one true love, why dontcha?

New Art... And Stuff

I thought I'd throw a little mention up on here about getting rid of the RSS feeds littering this site... in that I have smote them down upon the mountain side (most of them). Having so many on here seemed a bit cumbersome to me, so I decided to leave just the one sort of catch all feed in the form of the News feed. I think.

I don't know - all this web/computation machine mumbo jumbo gives me a rage induced headache the size of a bantha! So, here's a pretty new picture I made between strips (no pun intended) that's part of a concept piece for a project I've been wanting to get off the ground for some time.

IMAGE PROBABLY NSFW

(No, it's nothing raunchy despite what the scantily non-clothed magic wielding harlot in the illustration might suggest)

But with Savage in the works, Warpaint on the back burner and Planet Tobor kicked into a 5 time a week update schedule, I might not see this project for some time. That's ok! Being too busy is a good problem to have, right? ... Unless that causes me to miss out on too many of my kid's little league games or school plays.

But I don't have a kid. Problem solved!

-Matt

Oops. But No Longer!

First (completely unrelated to 'Oops'), Planet Tobor is switching to a Monday through Friday update schedule. 5 days a week you'll get a brand new page! Now, onto the oops:

It seems like there were some dead links and images not displaying for a handful of pages in the Planet Tobor comics as well as some pages numbered with goofy inaccuracy. Fixed! I'm sure there are still some dead links floating around the site after the redesign, so I'll try to get to those as well. I guess I was putting a bit to much faith in the Force and went and switched off my targeting computer.

And what's with Gray Skies not getting updated this or last week? Gray Skies is getting it's own shiny new website, that's what! Along with the launch of a new Gray Skies site, Eric is also going to be launching his own hub site to house all his awesome artwork and creations. He's a very crafty man.

Details forthcoming forthwithly!

-Matt

We Can Make You Stronger

Maybe not faster, but certainly better looking. Arguably, at least. Or at the very least give you something you can argue about. I don't know - excuse the minutia(e).

I have another update for the Planet Tobor Comic - and yes, yes I know; What happened to Nocturnal Transmissions, you ask? Somebody? Please ask? It's the same thing! Me and my wishy washy ways have decided to go back to just calling the comic Planet Tobor because I liked it better. But from now on, you have my word, Planet Tobor will remain just that - Planet Tobor... the comic.

I thought it was appropriate to rename the comic (again) in light of the shiny new site overhaul I did last night. Let me know what you think of the new layout - if it rocks, blows, just sits there, or whatever.

And hopefully I can wrap my head around a better navigation for the comics pages in the coming days.

Until then, live long and prosper.

-Matt

She (he) Dreams In Monochrome

Slowly but surely, I'm gaining some ground on the color front.

Please excuse the wonky navigation. Our scientists are hard at work devising a new system that will (maybe) knock your pragmatic socks off!

Meanwhile, I'll be turning toward a piece of software that just maybe has diverted my addiction from Taleworld's black tar heroine of a game, Mount and Blade.

Two Worlds.

I know! It's badness is practically legend... for those who only stuck with it for about fifteen minutes. I was guilty of the same moments after I snatched it off the digital shelves at GOG.com. I found the presentation down right insulting, and listening to that dialogue had me squirming uncomfortably in my already butt-numbing-ly uncomfortable computer chair. Like when you're watching the A-Team, or some similar show, and somebody says something goofy at the end and protagonists A and B have a hearty chuckle at protagonist C's antics. Freeze frame. Totally embarrassing stuff.

Seriously, it's like they paid the voice actors a pool of 5 dollars to lay a sprawling minefield of "Forsooth"s, "Aye verily"s and Mayhaps"es across the span of the game.

Despite all that, somehow, somewhere, the magic kicks in. Once you get past the janky animation, horrible pre-rendered cutscenes and laughable (yet somehow not completely cringe worthy) ren fair voice overs there is a good and vast game in there. I promise. Or I'm a blue assed knave's unle.

Aye, forsooth.

-Matt

A Long Time Ago...

... In a late news post far away:

In all seriousness, please excuse the lateness of this update. I have no good excuse what so ever (whatsoever?) for my tardiness. But please, do enjoy another fancy pants page in the Warpaint saga of space... of the outer variety.

-Matt

Same Bat Time

... same Bat channel. Here's another.

Looks like Marty has made a new friend... in color.

-Matt

Manic Monday

Kind of. Too early to tell yet, I think. Manic or no, here's this:

And more where that came from throughout the week!

-Matt

Saturday Squanderings

It's that time again.

I spent my Saturday morning rockin' out to some minibosses and other random youtube video gamey music interpretations... which led me (completely on accident)  to this. I had no idea that a sub sub internet culture existed solely to glorify Guile's theme song.

I suppose if any track were worthy enough to beat every single other piece of music in past and future history to a pulp it would be His.

Birthmark, indeed.

-Matt

Scheduled Updates are for Wieners

Oops! Typo-city. What I meant was, scheduled updates are for winners. Anyhoo, feast your peepers.

I'm starting to catch up with coloring all the old black and white Nocturnal Transmissions, so I'll have some brand new ones on the way soon.

Catching up - yes - despite our recent obsession with that show, Jericho. Thanks Netflix (and Eric for recommending). And yes, I'm usually the one who's late to the party. But what a party. I was pretty satisfied with where the series ended (or, according to most, violently and prematurely ripped from the womb) and I am looking forward to finishing up the journey in comic book form (aka Jericho: Civil War).

Sweet post-apocolyptic cancelled early goodness aside, expect colored updates on the old stuff every Monday and Wednesday... maybe even Friday if I wake up feeling extra saucey.

Heheh. Wiener.

-Matt

Noc Tran Update (or insert witty play on words using color synonym)

Voilá, as they say.

Pixel by Pixel - More Saga!

Sorry for the late update, but another page of Warpaint came through un(mostly)molested!

Celebrations ensue.

-Matt

Titanic Tint

More fun in the sun indoors!

And, of course, any good bit of embarrassing tom-foolery is based on a true story.

-Matt

Hellbent Hues

Yup - more color.

Slowly but surely we are getting all the old comics up to speed. More Warpaint and Gray Skies on the way, too, so don't touch that dial... er... left mouse button?

-Matt

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Just in time for 'em with a new Warpaint:

Man. Typing up that title brings back a warm squishy wave (or at least a mild slosh) of nostalgia (kinda sounded like I was talking about some sort of unusual fluid problem), remembering trying to drag my elementary school weary husk out of bed early enough to catch Saturday morning gems like Exosquad and The Tick. All while cramming my face with over sugared balanced breakfasts and toy commercials.

Where have all the good cartoons gone? And I mean those bizarre-high-drama-but-still-made-for-kids-and-to-sell-action-figures shows like Batman: The Animated Series, or X-men. Have all the Westerners been replaced by Anime? Maybe their like still exist and I'm suffering from a bout of Ignorance brought on by an extended lack of cable TV.

Maybe it's time to call Time Warner, purchase a box of Capt'n Crunch, find couch and a TV somewhere.

... Sort of makes my next stop sound like prison, actually.

-Matt

Colours Are Magic

And I have proof:

It looks like there will finally be an update schedule I can commit to (who says dudes are incapable of such feats as this) thanks to Eric - weaving his magic wand all over the dry erase board and whatnot.

Mondays and Wednesdays will see new Nocturnal Transmissions comics (as soon as we inject some pigment into the old hags) - huzzah!

-Matt

Back On Track

Ok - first off, I'd like to say that I will endevour to update this dev journal for Savage much more frequently and on schedule (which I'll get to later - probably every Friday). That will keep me going on this project and force me to produce a playable demo very soon. Cautious optimism is my bestest friend.

Anyhoo, on to the updates! (in bulleted form for now, with some screenies)

• Completely scrapped and redesigned the engine with more efficient code and to make everything more feature friendly

• Fine tuned and added new animations (new attacks of all kinds and states, lifting, carrying, pulling, pushing, skidding)
• Added a humble lighting engine where a "fire" object illuminates and casts shadows
• Created a player naming system
• New text system with dialogue trees
• Started on a melee impact system
• Widescreen format
• Ramps, stairs, ledges
• Created and added some menu and dialogue box sounds

      

So, there we have it - ugly untiled graphics and all. More to come soon!