Greg Woronchak Rocks!

It was decided several weeks ago that I was going to enter Neomyn into the competion over at http://zudacomics.com/. To do this, I needed to go back and re-write the first 8 pages to make them more "grabbing" and turn that section into a kind of pitch piece. I needed to get across as much of the story and conflict as possible to grab potential readers' attention and interest while still leaving the flow of the overall book intact. This wasn't too hard as I'd written the opening sequence with just such goals in mind; all I had to do was edit out some of the page-lengthening segments and action fillers.

After this was completed, I needed to contact my artist--the amazing Greg Woronchak--and pitch the idea of Zuda to him. It turned out that he'd already done a piece for a previous month's competition for a friend and loved the idea of the site as a whole. I asked him if he'd be interested in redoing the first 8 pages of Neomyn (of which he'd completed 6 standard pages and would need to rework those into the format required by Zuda's media player) and he enthusiastically agreed. Less than 2 weeks later I had all 8 pages in two e-mails, penciled and inked and ready for me to color.

I've been busy with work and moving Jennifer to Illinois over the last several weeks to a month. The amount of O.T. I've been doing at work has left me with one day off every 3-4 days and, at 12 hr shifts, this leaves me rather drained of the energy required for anything save video games. That said, Neomyn had fallen to the weighside recently.

Well, yesterday--after spending the previous day showering my son with attention--I'd bucked up and sat down with the intention of getting at least one page completely done. Of course, the first page in the book was the hardest for me...I've never colored a fully rendered cityscape and, well, that's what I'd written as the opening shot. Several hours and some learning later, I came up with this...

And I must say, I'm pretty damn impressed with how it turned out. Needless to say, Greg's pencil (or stylus work if he uses a tablet, lol) is front and center of what makes this page awesome. I like the way the windows turned out and the glare off the brass ball in the bottom left. I was also happy with the choice of typeface and colors for Cera's monologue. If anything stands out in Greg's work above anything for me, it's the fact that he so faithfully sticks to Ruthie's character designs...wich, of course, you can't see here...but in the following pages (which I'll post as I get them done) you'll see that he replicates her designs perfectly. On top of that, his choice of panel layouts really makes the action pop off the page. It's interesting and unique and I'm a huge fan.

Anyway, keep a lookout for more pages here as well as the whole 8-page story to show up in ZudaComics' July (hopefully) competition!

Later!

Console Wars Hit the Home Front

Okay, so I've had my Playstation 3 for a few months now and I'm about to utter something I never thought I'd say out loud (well, technically it's not "out loud" per se, but I digress)...

I think I may leave my Xbox...

Now, don't get me wrong...I still love my 360, she'll always hold a special place in my heart. And, well, we'll still be friends and hang out on the weekends.

Okay, okay. In all seriousness, though, I am becoming more and more impressed with my PS3 with ever game I play on it. I've always said that there was no doubt that the Big Black Beast could put out more Pretty Power than the White Goddess, but I'd always sprayed forth the usual Microsoft-loving arguments about how the system doesn't have enough exclusives to hold it's own and that Sony doesn't really give a shit about gaming as much as multi-media entertainment (BluRay movies and music and shit like that). And, for the most part, I'm not entirely wrong. Sony still has a fundamental lack of exclusive titles for which I can justify scorning the Achievement Whore within my skull and they're focus still seems to be more about making money than making good games.

That said, however, there are more things about the PS3 that I'm loving than there are things that I think the good ol' 360 does better. These things include:

Free online gaming in the form of Playstation Network. I mean, c'mon! Brilliant! Why should I have to pay a monthly fee to play with my friends online and then turn around and pay MORE for content that I can ONLY get if I pay the aforementioned fee for which to play with my friends? Sony, as far as I can tell, simply taxes its individual content and sets you loose with an abundance of options that you have to get past Microsoft's velvet rope by showing your Gold Membership card to their surly semi-bald bodyguard.

Direct purchasing of downloadable content. When I first dove into PSN with my hold-it-at-arm's-length-cause-it-bites attitude, I was upset that Sony taxed their content forced you to buy content separately (or in a bundle, I later discovered). I was like, "Maaaan, Microsoft taxes you once and then you pay the "price" you see right there." Under further scrutiny, however, it quickly became apparent that this was a much better and consumer friendly method. Now, instead of spending $6 for 500 points to download a game worth 350 points--leaving me with 150 that I'll never be able to spend on anything other than a theme or gamerpic--I can just spend 1.99 (about 2.15 after taxes) for that extra character I wanted and be done with it. No more of the Hotdogs vs Buns scenario.

No Red Ring of Death. 'nuff said.

On top of those two specific things, I'd have to say that there are a few minor things like better graphics and the USB controller charging and, not to mention, the new Trophy System that I like more. All of these things combined have led me to the decision that from now on, unless it's an FPS (cause, let's face it, there's just no way around how awesomely comfortable the Xbox controller is) or a game that offers multiplayer for which my friends and I are interested in playing together, I am going to be buying multi-platform games on my PS3; seemingly starting with Batman: Arkham Asylum.

That is, of course, unless Sony releases a controller with off-set analog sticks. Then it's game over, man...

Be back soon with my thoughts on inFamous; a PS3 exclusive that was "shocking"....

Get it...

Later!