Estranged

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It has been way too long since I updated this site and for that I feel nothing but shame! Thanks to all you readers/viewers who keep coming in to check the comics and the pages out - that means a ton to me and I shall hence forth strive to keep this an entertaining (and frequently updated) place to visit.

I'm in the process of wishy-washy-ing back and forth with whether or not I want to choose a different hosting service and giving the site a face lift, so I apologize for any haywire behavior you might be experiencing here.

Work on Savage is going nicely - I've been pumping a lot of 20 hour days into the project ever since I finished animating the music video for the talented guys at Texas Microphone Massacre. If you haven't seen it yet you can check it out here.

The Spellbook (by super awesome Escaping Westlawn Productions), a short film I lent my goofy acting abilities to will be available for viewing soon. The director, crew and the cast were all awesome and super talented people! I'll post a link for it here when it's available for those who are into demonically posessed toys and sorcerous evils (who isn't?).

Escaping Westlawn Reel:

Two awesome fellows who worked on The Spellbook (and also comprise PointShootRecord) also threw together a production for the Austin 48 Hour Film challenge and asked me to be a part of it - I excitedly and happily accepted. The link for that film should be up sometime soon, too. 

PointShootRecord reel:

TL;DR:

Computers. I mean, wow, man.

xoxo

Feeling Animated

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I've been slaving over a hot stove for the past couple of months and... wait - smell that? Freshly baked animated music video?? I'll get the butter!

 

The animated project I've been working on for the awesomely talented Texas Microphone Massacre is complete and available for viewing! The premiere at Elysium in Austin was a lot of fun and the band rocked the audience's proverbial socks off - thanks for coming if you made it out and if not, do not fret, the video can be viewed right here.

 

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming soon - thanks for all the patience and enjoy the video!

-Matt

Animayhem

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... 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

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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

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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

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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!

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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

How To Get Those Sexy Back Muscles

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Erp - Over a month since my last update on this project, eh? Heh, whoops... Who's counting, anyway.

Since this page hasn't gotten any love for quite some time, I figured some screenshots and a bulleted list of achievements (however small) were in order.

  • Fixed a few platforming bugs
  • Tidied up a lot of animations
  • Created code to handle many different weapons and weapon types
  • Created code to draw different animations based on weapon type
  • Started work on a melee combat system
  • Added weapons!!
  • Right and Left animations (our hero now has a dominant side instead of just mirroring the sprite)

As if there wasn't enough work to do, I decided to go ahead and draw different animations for when the player character is doing something with his (or her) dominant hand to the left or the right.

  

So, now the little barbarian jerk has almost twice as many sprites!

-Matt

 

We Can Make You Stronger

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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

Put Some Pep In Your Step

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Hello Everyone!  Today in Gray Skies, it is revealed to us that the Grays have a mysterious reaction to that familiar pink stomach medicine with the catchy jingle!  What does it do?  It gets them WASTED!!!!!! Whoooooooooooo! 

Unlike my inhumanly talented counterpart, I have not been exploring much in the way of electronic entertainment.  Why? That is because it takes me EVERY second of 168 hours to produce a single Gray Skies submission!!!!  Ok, so that's a lie and we'll be uploading three Gray Skies a week very soon.  Another lie, I just finished Suda 51's Shadows of the Damned.  It was freakin' hilarious and a ton of fun!

 

Thanks for reading or just checking us out!

-Eric

She (he) Dreams In Monochrome

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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

Saturday Squanderings

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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

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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