New comic series starting soon!

by on April 21, 2018 at 5:44 pm
Posted In: Artwork, Other Projects

Ah-ah! Don’t panic! Nothing is happening to Antares Complex! I’m still making pages for this comic…as we speak in fact I’m making a planet for a new page.

It’s wildly different from Antares Complex, so I’m not sure how much interest is there for you. BUT, I don’t see the harm in letting you know what it is, what’s up with it and how it effects Antares Complex (it doesn’t! that easy).

Journey to the Skyline is the new comic, it’s launching withing a week or two. (ideally monday) It’s a light hearted cartoon adventure following cartoon animals…think old Disney cartoons I guess? Sonic the Hedgehog? Stuff like that, they’re on a quest which will be revealed in the story.

 

poster for comic

On a world filled with floating islands, the planet itself long told to be uninhabitable and space running out, the future is uncertain. Cora looks to the stars and sees the future, the only answer to the growing population. So, her and her robot friend Blip work on inventions trying to get that to that dream …between making cars for the city.

Things all go wrong when her latest prototype of a mech goes out of control and well, we’ll see what happens!

Why make a new comic? :
That’s a good question. Thing is I’ve been hearing for …years, that I should be making a cartoon-style comic. “Your cartoon stuff always stands out to me!” is what I hear when trying to get a critique for an Antares Complex page and they spot something I doodled around with. It’s something I wanted to try a few years ago but, another friend with ..eh fairly negative views put me off the idea.

But, that kinda got rekindled when I met some new friends in a comic group (Webcomic Underdogs) and despite knowing them a short while they pretty much started telling me the same thing I was hearing before. OKAY, FINE! You win, I’ll try it. I spent about a year developing the characters, story and here we are, soon to launching a new series.

Also, don’t think I’m doing this just because of peer pressure or whatever. I do like drawing and creating cartoon characters! Otherwise I wouldn’t have a deviantart that has plenty of that sprinkled in the way of fanart. I just wasn’t sure if I could swing it, anxiety is fun right? Either way, I’ll announce here, on my twitter and deviant art when the comic is going live, where you can see it.

Leave a comment by the way, I’m curious what you think about this!

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“The most memorable gaming moment”

by on April 14, 2018 at 12:46 pm
Posted In: Life, Video Games

So, on Facebook which I’ve been frequenting less and less for, oh, a number of reasons  which we’ll ignore, I saw a question on a group I follow and it made me think back to an amusing time…In retrospect.

This takes a bit of an explanation before I get to it, but it’s not directly the game that made it memorable…

Okay, so this is years ago. My brother and I were planning on getting an Xbox 360 when it was still pretty new. Dead Rising was just out and we were plenty eager to get it. But we kinda kept putting it off. Why? Well … One was it was expensive and the other I guess was, there wasn’t much else at the time out for it.

I dunno what year it was but, I got sick, really sick. I had mononucleosis and it was baaaaaad, I was exhausted all day, pretty much was in and out of sleeping randomly through out the day. I dunno how long I had it but I struggled to even drink and talk, nevermind eat. My throat was sore, my limbs were sore, I was in pain and it was awful. I had to drop out of college because they had some BS policy about only 2 days of absence were allowed, even with a doctors note. Infact I had to get a doctors note to NOT have to pay for the semester and – …AHEM …That’s another story.

So, yes, VERY sick. To the point where the doctor very concerned and insisting I get put into a hospital soon if I don’t get any better.  My brother, who’s normally has a kinda tough guy/confident attitude is on the phone and hanging/pacing around outside my room one day. Pokes his head in every so often then, walks away keeps talking, does the same. I was fairly delirious at this point from the pain, fading in and out of being awake and such but, he was checking up on me, so I didn’t really get that (till after the fact) Finally he walks in, puts the phone away;


“Hey man uh…I was thinking about getting the Xbox 360. How’s that sound? It’d give you something to do.” All I could do was give a thumbs up, but just laid there “looking like death” according to him. So “Yeah cool, alright, I’ll be back!” he leaves, comes back half an hour later”Hey bro! I got it and the game but, I gotta go to work, you can set it up right? Doesn’t matter just you know, we got it! Cool. See you!” he set the bag down with the new system in it, pointed it toward me and walked out.

It probably took me 5 minutes to get out of bed and over to the chair it was on, 20 minutes to set it up…or more. But I had this unbridled, insane excitement that was buried under fatigue, soreness and all that. I’m a huge tech nerd so the new hardware had me thrilled, nevermind the zombie massacre to come later (the game is actually really hard so, it was more ME being massacred). I didn’t get to play much, didn’t have the energy. But it was a nice gesture…

It only really occurred to me, thinking back on it that it’s the only real time he’s ever SHOWN that level of concern and care. I don’t mean that he’s not cared or been concerned for me. He’s always had my back and I’ve always had his, he literally saved my life when I was a baby from drowning and when I got injured as a kid and was covered in blood head to toe, he ran me to the local store looking for a medkit. So, he’s always had my back but …I dunno if I’m being clear here, it’s just I’ve never seen or felt that kinda thing from him. Usually it’s been more direct and instant. Despite it being a god awful week+ for me, I really do remember that whole thing in a positive way. Everything is a bit hazy about that but I think when he got home he wound up playing a bit for me, finally getting to play the game we were hyped for so long.

But that day he made my week. Is it the best gaming day? I can’t say, but it was pretty memorable for me.

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No update this week. Technical issues.

by on April 12, 2018 at 2:52 pm
Posted In: Antares Complex, Updates

I’m not going to be able to update the comic this week, not even sure I’m going to be able to stream on Thursday. I apologize for this, but it’s out of my hands.

I had to reinstall windows to correct some errors going and it’s been a nightmare since. I had to reinstall all my software and some of it I had to dig up out of bins buried in my closet since I moved rooms recently. Lost my fonts and had to dig up where I got them then the password for the account, serial numbers for the software.

Half my settings are missing despite backing them up.

And, to top it all of Microsoft released an update on Wednesday that made drawing impossible. A brush stroke would also move the canvas. It seems to be a wide spread problem if twitter is to be believed too. So, that was hours of fun to try to fix.

Hell, even when taking a break things were giving me problems. Agh.

In short, I can’t get the update out on time and a stream might be off limits tomorrow if I can’t get my settings right. I’m sorry, I didn’t think there’d be this many problems.

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A Game Boy Advance project and story!

by on April 5, 2018 at 5:41 pm
Posted In: Other Projects, Video Games

I dunno what brought this on but, I decided to give the GBA SP I had a makeover. Some purists may scoff at this but, it was a project that was challenging to do but worth it in the end I think. Giving my ol’ GBA some TLC and a new better look.

The GBA is a platform that was quite an interesting rollercoaster of hate, love, quality and questionable decision making. The original lacking a backlight brought both many a frustration and many a questionable…odd accessory that would be found laughable in today’s world. Followed by the GBA SP something that should have been the obvious base model, with a front lit screen (yes, front lit) to it’s folded design to protect the screen, it was something that I, and many wanted day 1. Infact I sold my GBA the day it was announced and sat, waiting with a preorder ..so I could finally enjoy the games I bought without relying on sun or crappy accessories.

 

 

I vividly remember buying Golden Sun day 1 with my friend and sitting in his living room (which had only lamps and no ceiling lights of ANY kind) and playing it. Loving a fully realized RPG on the go …But…as the day went on we found ourselves desperately leaning toward the huge window in the back, more and more trying to get every last bit of light we could! Till we had to give up and play something else as night fell but our excitement peaked.

Finally I got my GBA SP and got to play a boat load of games any time I wanted with a freakin’ backlit screen (something my Game Gear sported years before, but yes that’s apples and oranges in terms of tech, we’ll talk about that some other time maybe). It’s one fatal flaw being, predating the iPhone‘s decision to ditch the headphone jack. Yes, you needed a freakin’ adapter to listen to your tunes in stereo! …AHEM …

What does this have to do with the project I mentioned in the title? Hell if I know, but it’s a fun bit of backstory to the GBA history, me and this GBA SP I decided to refit for the modern times. This GBA SP I got a few years back through a friend who managed to track down a AGS-101 which, if you’re nerdy enough will know is the backlit version of the GBA! Fancy, ass, shit.

So, the project? Well the AGS-101 came in a variety of ….three colors (black, baby blue and metallic pink), and I got the second worst of the lot…baby blue. Turns out on ebay there’s sellers offering a ton of options of shells that are surprisingly accurate and authentic to the original…down to selling stickers that say which version of the GBA you got. I grabbed one for the princely sum of $15 bucks which included the shell, battery, a glass screen cover, screw drivers (including Nintendo’s favorite tri-wing screw driver), stickers to tie it together and some minor extras.

Lemmie tell you, if this sounds tempting and it’s got you excited to fix up your ol’ GBA SP? Yeah, it’s totally worth it but the difficulty of doing is possibly more than you want to do it. 90% of it went smoothly but just ONE bit of it took a while. We’ll get to that shortly!

Ahh…Glorious. On the bottom is my original SP, a bit scuffed from it’s previous owner but about to get a new lease on life! All the parts are included that you need, but you’ll have to take some like the screen, mother board and, most importantly the hinge mechanisms from the previous unit.

Disassembly was mostly easy. You unscrew things, just remember where the screws went and how it went together. The problem points were the ribbon cable connecting the screen to the mobo and …the hinges, oh, my GOODNESS the hinges! ….

Look at that, all the parts have penciled in signatures! Which I’m sure are for quality control and …alright alright FINE. Hinges. Yes, they’re the biggest fucking problem with this swap out. They are the ONLY THING that keep me from saying “this is TOTALLY worth it!” because they were the biggest pains in the ass ever because you need to remove them from the old case and slap them into the new one.

Let’s put it this way, on youtube, I found 3 tutorials  and ALL of them either broke the GBA SP shell trying to remove them or they broke the hinges. Mind you , they all were trying to incorrectly force the hinge mechanisms out but holy crap they are so small and the area to get them out is even smaller. Trying to get them into the new shell was also a problem as …I’m not sure I can even describe it. They had these really hard to see slots that you needed to fit your tools into to remove them. They have little, tiny clips that you gotta work in while pushing the hinges out. I screwed this up once, my brother (who was helping THANKFULLY) screwed it up as well. So, you guessed it we were spending a while trying to get them out of the new shell. You gotta remember the angle and which side they were on. Making sure they go in how you took them out (open or closed).

Or, the better idea, look on ebay for a new set of hinges and spare yourself the torment. Because it’s NOT worth that headache. It’s 5 bucks. Had any of these videos shown the full process I’d have bought them up.

…Oooo! Look it’s done!

 

Seriously, look at the detail these shell clones go into. You can literally pick the AGS-101 (backlit) or AGS-001(front lit) stickers for the back, it comes with the nintendo logo for the shell otp. They aren’t screwin’ around. It feels a bit different, lighter I guess but it doesn’t feel any less durable. From the outside? It’s nearly impossible to tell. I mean if you’re a REAL maniac you can use a heat gun to remove your original sticker to slap on the new one. But me? I’m satisfied with this. It was apparently a bit beyond my ability, my brother coming in offering up another set of hands to hold parts while we assembled it and of course ….the fucking hinges!! …Ahem, yes. So, in the end it worked out nicely, cleaned out any goop that build up over the years of it’s use and it’s like a brand new unit.

Years of service and still dishing out fun. This is a DAMN fine handheld that lasted years and would have been fine if I wasn’t so picky about the dumb baby blue shell. It looks great, has a new lease on life and I already beat a game on my ‘new’ GBA SP (AGS-101, I GOTTA BRAG SOMEWHERE DAMMIT), Metroid Zero Mission! My favorite 2D Metroid in the series.

Ahh…Well that was an interesting project and diversion! Pain in the ass for sure but worth it. Love the new look and I’ll be using this for many years to come. I’ve got another retro project I’m looking to talk about but this blog post has gone on WAY too long as it is. So, for now I’ll say…

See you next mission.

-Mike

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Early access for comic pages and stream recording!

by on March 23, 2018 at 12:16 pm
Posted In: Antares Complex, Updates

Early access to a new comic page and stream recording to patrons
https://www.patreon.com/posts/early-access-13-17697458

Nothing is locked behind my patreon, it’s there if you want to support and if you want early access to comic pages, art, stream recordings and the like. It helps me focus more on the comic and get content out faster.

Thanks for your support!

 

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