Comic update for Antares Complex and Journey to the Skyline

by on October 30, 2018 at 10:08 pm
Posted In: Antares Complex, Updates
Since I’m sure most are unaware or not following my patreon, (which you can find here www.patreon.com/Gx3RComics ) I figured it’d be a good idea to post an update here on what’s going on with comic updates as of late:
Hey everyone,Everything is okay and fine. What’s going on is this; I’m a bit buried with side projects that have taken up a lot of my time.

One of the things holding me up a bunch is I’ve been trying to get Journey to the Skyline’s first issue ready for 2 things:

1- For selling digitally on Comixology. I wanted to get everything ready for exporting as well as include some extras for those who buy it. There will be NOTHING story related in there. Just extras like concept,  a mini-joke comic and some extra art.

2- I’ve been trying to get the comic exported for Line Webtoons which has it’s on …odd format which requires panels to be exported on 800×1280 image sections. Which sounds easy, till you realize each panel has to be quite large and the font even larger because this is all scaled for mobile. So there’s a lot of tedious, repetitive work that’s gotta go into this.

Why are you doing line webtoons?
Because, everything I’ve experienced over the years and such tells me that having a main website is good and all? But going to a networking site that has a system for all this is drastically better to get your comic viewed.

Are you doing the same thing for Antares Complex?
Absolutely not. I have no plans to do that at the moment. The workload would be way too high for Antares Complex specifically, especially with the earlier issues being VERY jank with how the files are structured in the file. There’s no easy way to do that. My plans for Antares Complex? Comixology when I get the chance.

What else?
For my business (Context: I own a small business with my brother selling some hand made stuff) I’ve been working on getting our site prepped for selling shirts, which I’ve also had to devote attention to. Also, holidays are coming up and there tends to be a surge of sales so I need to make sure that our inventory is buffered enough and we have all the supplies that are required for going into that. There’s 2 people in our small business, my brother and me so there’s a lot of work for the two of us to cover ourselves.

PANIC!
The comics aren’t going anywhere, if anything I’ve been pushing them harder than ever. I’ve just been sidelined pretty hard with work and family and all this having to reformat things.

Nevermind that I have a LOT of the art done to varying degrees for both Antares Complex and Journey to the Skyline. The comics are fine. As we speak I’m adding wordballoons to issue 02 of Journey to the Skyline and I’m sorting some plot stuff for Antares Complex. AC’s issue 14 is already 90% done, it’s just the wordballoons that have to be added in. Which, isn’t hard but it’s tedious and slow.

Anything else?
Yes, I’m also hopefully going to be able to sell some shirts on our store that are comic related. I just want to get all of our music related shirts up and on the site before I think about my comic stuff since it is a store that my brother and I own and I don’t want to pad the site with my personal project stuff..

I’ve been also trying to think of how to restructure my Patreon. I’m not sure it’s well done, that’s what I get for being shy eh?

If you have any questions, fire them over to my Twitter via direct message or comment below. Want to throw me a tip/donation? Well patreon or my ko-fi can help out a great deal!

Patreon: www.patreon.com/Gx3RComics
Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/snotnarok

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Nintendo’s online service is …awful.

by on September 15, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Posted In: Video Games

I’m seeing a lot of people tying to explain this away with “Well it just costs $20” but I don’t think that’s a fair assessment . I want to get my thoughts out in full on this really, really dumb online service.

Two things:
1-Saves are hidden on the Switch and there’s no way to back them up except Nintendo’s online service which is paid. So, for no reason, you want to safe guard your saves, something you’ve been able to do as far back as the Game Cube and can be done on their competitors hardware- you gotta pay up.

My problem with this is, I don’t have any use for their online except this feature and yes $20 year isn’t so bad- I don’t care. Why is a basic feature that everyone enjoys everywhere else sporting a fee? Especially when hackers have made software to do this already. Cheaters? Who cares, they’re gonna do it anyway as we’re watching right now.

2- They just announced very pricey NES controllers that are seriously limited to only NES games (I can think of a few indie games they’d work with just fine, but what do I know?). What does this have to do with online? Mike, have you lost it? Are you just bashing for the sake of bashing?

No, the reason I bring this up is because you need the online service to purchase these things and they’re already $60. I saw one defend this as “Well this will stop scalpers” no it won’t. It’ll just make these things MORE expensive when they sell them. No one has done this. Is it to make the online service more appealing? Is it actually an attempt to stop scalpers?

Look, I got a Switch, it’s honestly looking like it may be my favorite handheld. But Nintendo is handling this online thing so bafflingly stupid it’s incredible. Their competitors figured ALL this out years ago, but they’re insisting on going this route? I mean, as far back as the Gamecube you could back up your save games with them- and as far back as the SEGA CD you could back up games! So what are they doing?

I type this up because I’m immensely frustrated that I can’t back up my saves. Someone sits on my Switch, it gets stolen, random hardware failure? All my RPG save data is gone. And I’ve already suffered through that before due to outside problems.

Agh, Nintendo, please make this article out of date and let me back up my saves, please don’t be this thick.

 

 

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Hiatus ends 9/17

by on September 10, 2018 at 11:30 am
Posted In: Antares Complex, Uncategorized, Updates, Website

Hey all, I’ve been hard at work trying to get things ready and it’s taken a bit longer than I expected due to a change in art style and formatting, also …ya know, work. I think things should be moving smoothly from now on.

I was up for like 52 hours trying to get stuff sorted out for my job, nothing I feel like chatting about just know that it made things a lot more tedious than it needed to be…. BAH anyway,

Here’s a look:

Boom! Shit gets real in issue 14!!

As you can see the style has taken a large turn and I think it’s for the better. I honestly fought against this change internally for a long time because… Well I was crap. I wasn’t doing things 100% digitally and I, for the life of me, couldn’t figure out how to get nice, clean, lines on traditional. I’d scan pages in and paint them in photoshop and I thought that the painting style that I did in previous issues fit the more traditional inks in those pages. I did used to make comics like this with more crisp lines and such …but I made all of that in vector/flash/illustrator and that’s a story for ANOTHER day…

What do I mean by formatting change, I looked this up ages ago for a standard comic page size and there were a few options. What I decided here was to go with what I found with Comixology. I’d like to one day get these comics up there and sold with some extras so it’s good to future-proof  I s’pose.

For now;

It’s time to move on to a style that suits me and I think, the series better. Hopefully you’ll all enjoy this and I’ll see you on 9/17 for Issue 14: Electric Bill

If you want to support this comic and get:
-Early access to 2 pages from two different comics a week
-Early access to various comic art/fanart
-Live stream recordings.
-Exclusive artwork.
-Status updates and more!

You’ll also get your name on the donator wall and in the comic on the supporter page where it will STAY even if the book gets printed!

Hit my Patreon for all these bonuses:
https://www.patreon.com/Gx3RComics

 

 

 

 

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After issue hiatus, don’t panic!

by on July 30, 2018 at 7:44 pm
Posted In: Antares Complex, Updates, Website

I know I already said this in a description of the last page but since I know most don’t read that kinda stuff on youtube it’s safe to assume the same here. Maybe.

Okay, so issue 13 is complete, so I’m going to take a month off or so- that’s not a holiday, I’m working on getting pages ready for posting. There’s a lot to be done with a full page comic. If you keep an eye on my deviant art stuff, you might see some other art to keep you busy. OR if you want to check out my NEW COMIC that I haven’t made any post on here yet, you can check out Journey to the Skyline who’s first issue is still going strong, updating every thursday. I’ll probably have a more formal post soon- I totally don’t have a draft just sitting around that I haven’t posted because of anxiety, nooo that’d be absurd.

And, as usual if you want to support and get to see stuff early, check out my patreon where I’m posting all sorts of stuff early. Throw me a tip to help support my work, you’ll get your name on the current running issue and on the donator wall. My patreon or ko-fi for tips.

As I say every hiatus I take, no this isn’t the update that ends the comic, I have a buffer of pages but they need some finalizing and this lets me catch up and have more pages at the ready.

 

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No update this week. Sick.

by on July 14, 2018 at 12:39 pm
Posted In: Antares Complex, Life, Updates

Not sick as like “Nice work man, that’s sick!” no I mean my nose is leaking into my throat, which is now sore because of that. Taking something for it but it’s drying me up and making me lose focus on what I’m trying to do.

I worked on the comic for a bit and only managed 2 panels in pencils in the time it should have been probably the whole thing. I can’t keep focused to the point where I started trying to remake the background for the site and I was like “what, am, I, doing??”. There’s other things site-wise I’d like to get done, new character profile images, finishing character bio’s that aren’t on the damned site as it is. Or just filling out more info in the database.

Annoying that I also feel pretty okay then suddenly 0 energy. Go lay down for an hour. Okay, better, then randomly later egh 0 energy. I’ve already had a similar (but far, far worse) experience with mono years ago-so it’s a familiar annoyance.

Egh. Either way, I’m sorry but I’m not getting an update out this week. I know some might be thinking “But Mike, why don’t you just shut up, relax and play a game?!” because I’m a workahaulic. I played an hour of Tales of Xillia, is that good enough for relaxing?…. Probably not.

Also, I managed to smash my freeze-y mug. You know those cups that have water in the lining? Bloody smashed it on my fridge on accident. There’s one xmas gift in the bin. Two bins actually. :\

Anyway, some good news is … Sonic Mania’s expansion is coming out soon and I’m eagerly awaiting it!

 

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