Okay, so I finally drew some EarthBound stuff. I did some drawings of two different enemies from the game. The first is the Unassuming Local Guy (with original sprite for reference). His signature attack is "Become friendly and affectionate", and there is a small chance he will drop a Toothbrush when defeated. Totally normal. The other one is the Worthless Protoplasm, who is just kind of awesome. There may be more where this came from, as drawing these was kind of fun.
Now for an update on Weasel's Logic Puzzles: Nobody's responded. I guess this means normal people don't like this sort of thing, and I'm just a puzzle nerd. Fair enough. The picture will stay up for the time being because I don't have anything prepared to replace it. Feel free to solve it at your leisure.
-Hlavco
Whoa. I have been trapped on Cracked.com for like the last two weeks. The tabs, man, the tabs! Literally nothing has gotten done, due to their bevy of interesting articles that I won't link for your own good. Needless to say, any EarthBound-related drawings will have to wait until next week. This reminds me of the last time I failed to meet an EarthBound-related deadline. Story time!
It was about four years ago, and I was taking this class on writing for video games. One of our assignments was to write a "game narrative review" about any (presumably story-based) game we wanted. But it wasn’t just a normal assignment. The professor was going to be submitting all of the class’s work to some national judgement panel. The best entrants picked from across the country (I forget how many, it was like twenty or so) would be invited to the Game Developers’ Conference in Austin, Texas, where they could show off their review to the guests and fancy developer-types down there.
Much to my surprise, I received an email from Ubisoft writer Richard Dansky telling me that my EarthBound review had been selected as one of the outstanding entries and I was invited to Texas. There was just one requirement: I had to design and print an EarthBound-themed poster to display alongside my review.
I was given about a month and a half to do it, which for a normal, productive person should have been plenty of time. But in the end I did not make a poster, due to a combination of summertime procrastination and lack of inspiration. Because of nobody but myself, I missed a huge opportunity to share my favorite game (not to mention my art and writing) with whatever important people were going to be attending the Game Developers’ Conference. It’s something I still regret.
One day I plan to go ahead and make the poster anyway, and just mail it to them with an apology or something. It won’t have as much impact now that the game has been announced for a Virtual Console release, but it’ll still be a load off my conscience.
-Hlavco
That's right, this website is now giving you homework.
Okay, let's explain. In case you weren't aware, Weasel is the site's infrequently-seen mascot. Why is an infrequent character the mascot? Because Nintendo doesn't own him. Why does that weasel look more like a squirrel? Because shut up, that's why. I wanted to get the April Fool's Day comic off the front page, but I was out of town last weekend and didn't have time to prepare anything, so I put this together instead. I've always liked these sorts of process-of-elimination puzzles, and have been making a bunch in my spare time lately. I thought maybe some other people might have fun solving them. As a little motivation, I'll give the first three forum members to PM me a correct set of solutions a special badge and maybe some forum credits. The first three non-forum-members to email me a set of correct solutions will get a congratulations and an imaginary pat on the back.
Answers will be posted once people have had time to submit, or once I make a better front page picture.
In other awesome news, EarthBound (the best game ever) was announced for the Wii U's Virtual Console last week. This is really great, as people have been on Nintendo's back to release this thing for probably close to a decade now. Again, I was out of town last weekend and wasn't able to do anything special, but maybe I'll try to get some sort of EarthBound-related art going for this weekend's update. Also, I was going to take down the site to protest that CISPA thing that's going on, but I didn't know when the big blackout was happening and I missed it. Ah well.
-Hlavco
I still haven't put together anything to replace the April 1st comic on the front page. I suppose I will just have to keep confusing visitors for the next couple weeks while I scribble up a filler comic.
Maybe you've noticed a change in the site's background. It scrolls in parallax style now! Why? Because I saw it on some other sites and felt the need to add it to my site. No functional reason at all, I just think it looks cool. It combines well with the footer skyline, actually.
How about some actual content? Here's an extremely happy lucario on an underdeveloped background. I've actually had this mostly done since last May. I never posted it because it just wasn't looking right. Finally last week I got tired of it sitting on my desktop (I keep most of my works in progress there so I don't forget about them) and made a bunch of changes and added the background. This is not a completely unusual workflow for me. For instance, I started drawing the next comic in January of 2012, and it's barely halfway done. Maybe because I didn't save it to my desktop?
-Hlavco
Duh.
-Hlavco
I think I've figured out why I haven't been motivated to make comics more often. There's a lack of emotion, passion, and drama, that really keeps me from getting engrossed in the plot. To solve this, effective immediately, the comic is being re-tooled as a romance.
I've always thought that Eevee and Skippy shared a special sort of chemistry, despite never having directly addressed one another a single time during the previous 79 comics. But what will Pichu say?
