Rant #040 Sunday, June 6, 2004

There's some new stuff, in addition to this week's update.

First off, we've got a new Frequently Asked Questions section; which should provide better explanation for various parts of the site.

Second, Lynx and I put together this Flash animated introduction to the site . Kinda cheesey, but hey... it's been a long time since I've messed around with Flash, which is a shame considering how expensive it was... but hopefully there will be some more Flash stuff in the future; maybe a whole section for Flash stuff.

There's some brand new 2214-theme avatars in Binary Vibrance now; the old ones were getting kind of stale.

If you have any additional questions that should be added to the F.A.Q., please e-mail them to me and Lynx or I will answer them in there.

Last, the Choccy Fish T-Shirt is available in the online store now.

Rant #039 Monday, May 31, 2004

Rain Delay

Or, rather, make that really big storm delay. We had some semi-tornadic weather here Sunday night, so about halfway through finishing page 75 I had to shut everything down, unplug stuff, and head for the basement. I'm still in the basement with the laptop at the time of this rant; the storm appears to be ending.

New stuff's been added...

There's a new Vehicles Section with information on the Hovercrane and Shockshadow. Also, Page 6 has been re-drawn. ^_^

Page 75 should be complete mid-day Monday; sorry about the delay.

Speaking of storms, though, it's just another reason to make sure you have backups of all your work. I use an external firewire hard drive to keep an extra copy of all original drawings, art, and other stuff just in case... I brought that drive into the basement with me during this storm. Backups are crucial.

Rant #038 Saturday, May 22, 2004

Back on schedule; so far, so good.

Page 5 is re-illustrated now, and it conveys the emotion of the page far better than it did before. Also, notice how it magically changes from daylight to dusk in a mere four panels! Chalk that up to randomness.

Also, there's a nifty new gallery art bit in the CG'd art section. Take a look if you have time.

Page 74 should be ready on time; Sunday night. I'm actually still in the process of arranging the page's storyboard (derived and adjusted from the main 2214 script), so hopefully the art will begin soon.

Rant #037 Thursday, May 20, 2004

Illness

Ugh. Apparently I picked up some nasty flu-like virus while I was in Chicago. For a couple of days now, it's been pretty hard just to stand up.

There's a small report on Acen in the Extras > Conventions section, check it out if you like.

Hopefully this virus will be beat before the weekend; so page 74 will be done on time, but I can't make any promises quite yet. With the re-draws and all that need to be done, there's quite the backlog.

For those of you who are new to this site, 2214 is updated every weekend; usually on Sunday night, and the first Chapter (and the first half of the second) is in the process of being re-illustrated. Right now, just the first four pages have been re-done; the goal is to have all of Chapter one re-done in a couple of months. I must warn you that the original art for chapters 1 and 2 isn't nearly as refined as the current art style.

Well, I'm going back to bed and taking some medication to hopefully get over this stupid flu thing :/

Rant #036 Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Sorry about the outage Tuesday. Some important modifications to the server were being made, and some settings were out of whack... Fortunately, the server admin straightened everything out and now it should be fine. Outages of this magnitude should be few and far between.

Page 73 is up early; this is next week's update, since I will be at Anime Central all weekend and won't get a chance to draw then (unless someone asks me to do a quick sketch for them, which I will gladly do for anyone who asks!).

Also, I've finished re-drawing the first four pages of Chapter one. This project is coming along at a decent pace, considering these are complete, full-colour re-draws of each page, which involve as much work on the art as creating a brand new update.

So... yeah. That's all for now!

Rant #035 Sunday, May 9, 2004

Whew!

The server was down all day Tuesday... and I'll have more info about that long outage in the next rant. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The first four pages of chapter one have been completely re-drawn, and, contrary to what was announced before, they are done in full colour. It seemed that if I was going to go to all the work to re-draw them, they should be done correctly, with no shortcuts.

Four pages were done this weekend (three re-draws and page 72), but the marathon continues as page 73 needs to go up before Friday.

I'll be at Anime Central this weekend on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so find me if you're going there and say hi. ^_^

That's all for now!

Rant #034 Monday, May 3, 2004

Face Lift

After planning on tackling this task for more than a year, I've finally come up with a plan for replacing the rushed, unrefined art that I did for chapter 1 and the first half of chapter 2. Originally, I'd planned on creating fully-shaded art for the re-makes of these pages, but the size of that task was more than the schedule would allow.

Rather than re-make those first pages of 2214 in full colour (like the current pages), I'ma compromise and re-draw them as sketches, in the original fashion but with better quality. Specifically, to form the geometry of everything more accurately, and get rid of that horrible obliquing (read: lop-sided!) effect that plagued the early artwork. The end result should make those first pages a little less painful to see after reading the current ones.

This will be an on-going project in the next month or two; amid all of the projects I've put on hold, this is one that should take priority, eh? There's still the whole music and video project, but all in due time.

Also, I hope to see you at Anime Central on May 14-16 in Chicago. Once again, no table in artists' alley this year, but you'll know who I am when you see the hat. It matches the header of this site.

Later!

Rant #033 Wednesday, April 28, 2004

The animation project has been put on hold, just like Omnitemporalis. With the full-time job and the freelance work, it's a bit hard to squeeze into the schedule right now.

However, there are some plans for chapter 5, regarding art style. The most major change involves the angles used, and perspective. As in, more variety of camera angles and better background detail.

I am also looking into creating a new skins system for the site... more on that as it develops.