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  A* Vampires and Zombies!Oct 30, 2009 10:41 PM PDT | url
 
The conversation wasn't going anywhere anyway... ;D
 
Zombie Mick says: "Happy Halloween!" Poor guy.
 
Vampire Vero is currently winning the Pick Vero's Best Halloween Mask poll, which will run through the weekend on the forum.
 
Added 2 new A* comics:There are super-big renditions of art from both of today's daily comics in the gallery (click these small ones for the big ones):
 
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  Feelin' Good!Oct 30, 2009 12:36 AM PDT | url
 
Mick sees the light! Or he's just big on Core Sys' health care plan. Click for the large version in the gallery:
 
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Added 3 new A* comics:
 
 
 
 
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  Poll: Pick Vero's best Halloween mask!Oct 29, 2009 2:41 AM PDT | url
 
While trying to work out Vero's mouth positions for an A* drawing today, I found myself absently scribbling out silly alternate mouths for him. I guess it's around Halloween, and they're sort of like costumes, so, which one do you think is the bestest look for ol' Vero?
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Vote for your favorite on the A* forum! The poll will run through the weekend.
 
Ooh yeah, while on the topic of possibly funny things, I put up a new One Off comic today! It's about hoses! And cats! How could this possibly be unfunny? Come see!
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 64 - 66Oct 29, 2009 2:18 AM PDT | url
 
Today's last line might be a thoughtful one to use on your dear old [insert beloved elder here]! Vero's such a sly flatterer.
 
Added 3 new A* comics:
 
 
 
 
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  What?! That took a lot of work! :pOct 27, 2009 9:00 PM PDT | url
 
Added 2 new A* comics:Do "accidents" usually have thirty-second countdowns? ;)
 
Anim rough-up showing various arm and mouth positions from the first daily's shot:
 
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  Never forget not to do thisOct 27, 2009 1:13 AM PDT | url
 
Ah, amnesia: one of the worst hacks of the hacky writer, right up there with time travel. I would never, ever inflict something like that on you guys. Soooo...
 
Added 4 new A* comics:And just because I liked the way it looked before being filled in with detail, here's a giant silhouette of Mick (okay well you have to click this moderately sized version to get to the giant version in the gallery):
 
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  Fish, Fruit, and...Friends?Oct 23, 2009 8:22 PM PDT | url
 
Thanks to a night of decadent fruitiness (note to self: never ever eat a whole papaya in a single sitting again o_O), I've got just this single comic for you today!
 
Added 1 new A* comic:If you're relatively new to A* it will seem like Mick's just a guy happy to see an old bud, and Vero's being a cold fish. However, Vero's "thought I killed you at Tempus" line on the way to Mick's place last week wasn't just blowing smoke; their last meeting ended anything but amicably! That was in episodes 3 & 4, which you can read or watch, and then you can start to place bets as to just what's up with Mick here—and if you look carefully, you'll notice his attitude isn't the only thing that's changed about him. :o
 
 
 
 
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  Ducks, Ninjas, and NumbersOct 23, 2009 5:27 AM PDT | url
 
Being featured on Drunk Duck yesterday seemed like a healthy thing as far as site traffic on the main A* site was concerned; between that, an opportunistic ad I threw onto a brand-new and momentarily undervalued ad space on White Ninja (one of the few comics I've been reading regularly for years! check it out), and of course you my existing lovely dedicated readers :D, I got a new daily high of just under 20K page views (19,787 if you must know). Cool! I don't know if my average is the 10K where I said I'd inflict ads on you yet--I'd have to do math to figure that out (;P)--but it's getting close I guess. At least once the ads are up, you'll be able to see at a glance how much traffic the site gets--since the ad service I use, Project Wonderful, is all about transparency in advertising--so I won't have to keep mentioning it in news, and can just cut straight to the comics which is why you're really here! Numbers are silly anyway.
 
Added 2 new A* comics:You can't tell from the daily comic, but Mick's face and stuff was all drawn in, because in the animation I'll probably have Vero starting to back out of that fearsome clinch. So, here's Mick without Vero being in the way (click for big version):
 
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He's just a big teddy bear, isn't he?
 
 
 
 
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  A* picked as a featured comic on Drunk DuckOct 22, 2009 4:04 AM PDT | url
 
A* was chosen as a featured comic today on the huge free webcomic hosting site, Drunk Duck. Drunk Duck hosts over 14,000 webcomics, and chooses just two of them per week for their front page feature articles, so getting "featured" is pretty cool! They wrote a news article about A*, in which their administrator called the comic "exciting" and "addictive" (in a good way, hopefully!), and A*'s picture and link gets to stay prominently placed on the busy site's front page for the next few weeks.
 
Yay! Thanks, Drunk Duck! This is the first time one of my comics has received outside publicity like this, so it's pretty exciting. :) I've been mirroring A* comics on Drunk Duck since July--the start of episode 5, which was also the start of the dailies--and have also been fortunate enough to receive nice feedback from some of their readers from time to time. There are plenty of comics there that are much more popular than mine, so go check it out if you're looking for more comics to read; they've got tons of good ones. Just to name a few that I've come across and enjoyed recently there:
  • Acrobat - comic-book-style adventures of an acrobatic high-school super hero
  • Orbit - a new comic with humor featuring Earth, the Moon, and other large characters from our solar system!
  • Ted the Terrible Superhero - the suspect doings of Ted, who's really bad at being a superhero, but thinks he's awesome
Huh, I guess I still like superhero comics! Anyway there's pretty much not just something but tons of somethings for everyone at Drunk Duck, so yeah, check it out. A*'s there, so you know it's a cool place.
 
And if that still isn't enough for you, A*'s "about" page has links to more A* mirror sites that also have scads of other comics waiting for you.
 
 
 
 
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  Tip: lazy airlocks for dramatic entrances!Oct 22, 2009 3:32 AM PDT | url
 
A proper airlock probably wouldn't spew vapors all over like Mick's front door did today, but hey, it lets his guests make really dramatic entrances. Mick is ever the considerate host, you know! Click this tiny version to get to the really big version in the gallery:
 
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Added 4 new A* comics:
 
 
 
 
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  Supermarkets and Other Black HolesOct 21, 2009 4:21 AM PDT | url
 
The comics that went up today are from what will be a panning sorta shot. I put a version in the gallery that shows the full background at once, plus a quizzical Mick moment that occurs between the second and third of today's dailies. Click this small version to get to the big one:
 
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If you've visted the A* art gallery interface before, you'll notice a few upgrades when you're in there, including a daily comic-style browsing menu, and the ability to pop in and out of the episode gallery thumbnail view without losing your spot.
 
Added 3 new A* comics:(As I was typing out the long form of my URL to put in that gallery image, I accidentally typed "supermarket" instead of "supermassive." Hm... Maybe this is a sign I should take a break and get something to eat. :d)
 
Since I like quoting Spencer, I'm going to end with a passage I came across today in which he's describing a close encounter with a dreadful whirlpool (the fictitious and allegorical "Gulfe of Greedinesse," specifically), but it almost sounds like a black hole! :o

They passing by, that griesly mouth did see,
    Sucking the sea into his entralles deepe,
    That seem'd more horrible than hell to bee,
    Or that dark dreadfull hole of Tartare steepe,
    Through which the damned ghosts doen often creepe,
    Backe to the world, bad liuers to torment:
    But nought that falles into this direfull deepe,
    Ne that approcheth nigh the wide descent,
May backe returne, but is condemned to be drent.

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.XII.6
 
 
 
 
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  Masks and VaporsOct 20, 2009 4:11 AM PDT | url
 
I think I was a little punchy Friday evening, because I forgot to draw Vero's breathing mask on his face after he got off the tram. That has been stealthily edited now, so nobody will ever know he was holding his breath all weekend.
 
Fun with masks and vapors continued today. I smurfed up some of the alternate animation art--vapor clouds, alternate poses, etc--into a few artsy pieces that are now in the gallery. Click these small versions to get to the big ones:
 
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There's even gonna be a dramatic cloak billow in addition to some depth-of-field tricks as the mists clear to reveal Mick's house close up, as I attempt to show in this onion-skin of the cloak's movement:
 
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Added 4 new A* comics:
 
 
 
 
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  Of Art, Comics, Traffic, and FacebookOct 17, 2009 2:36 AM PDT | url
 
Here's an alternate and large version of the scene in today's second A* comic (click for the real big version):
 
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Added 2 new A* comics:This was kind of an exciting week for me since site traffic hit a new daily high on Tuesday, at just over 14,500 page views--pretty good jump over the previous high from a week or two ago, which was just over 10,000. It's probably mostly due to some new ad campaigns with new ads that I've been running, including a very tiny one with this new Princess and the Giant ad I whipped up on Monday
 
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So, welcome new viewers! I hope you'll stick around, there's much more to come.
 
By the way, if you're new, you might not know that A* (aka me) is on Facebook; drop me a Facebook friend request (and I do accept pretty much every and all Facebook friend requests...because you're all super-duper! yes) and you'll get A* news, comics, and meanderings delivered directly to your Facebook wall. There's also a pretty much brand new A* Facebook fan page that you can "become a fan" of to show your friends who the cool kid is (hint: you). (And there are also fan pages for my two other comics: The Princess and the Giant fan page, and the One Off fan page--the One Off comic itself (single panel humor) is here.
 
We're currently having extra fun on Facebook because I'm dropping nightly doses of my own bad poetry on peeps. Yep! If this is what I do to my friends, just think of what I do...to my enemies! Rawr! D:
 
Actually I don't really have any enemies I guess. |: Maybe if I get famouser.
 
 
 
 
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  A* - Vapory with a chance of vaporOct 15, 2009 8:52 PM PDT | url
 
Today's Canyon 22 forecast: vaporish!
 
Added 2 new A* comics:
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 37 - 39Oct 15, 2009 4:07 AM PDT | url
 
Added 3 new A* comics:Put together a small rough version of the tram moving, preview was 300k so I'm hiding it behind this static version, click to see it move:
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The final version will have the front of the tram actually moving down the track, and moving vapors on and ground and in the sky, yah.
 
In other news, I did a "One Off" comic today, check it out if you're in need of a cheap chuckle!
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 35 - 36Oct 13, 2009 8:39 PM PDT | url
 
Added 2 new A* comics:Don't read too much into that hand motion, it was just fun to draw. =p
 
This is the last of the Auri's bar scene, tomorrow we go back outdoors!
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 32 - 34Oct 12, 2009 11:13 PM PDT | url
 
Added 3 new A* comics:When I went to onion-skin the art in the first comic there to help draw the second, I accidentally created (click this for the larger gallery version) Ringwraith Vero! :o:
 
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Mi-iiiiick...
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 30 - 31Oct 10, 2009 6:01 AM PDT | url
 
Added 2 new A* comics:Now, if you combine parts of both of today's comics, you find that Auri just likes to groove out (click for the larger version in the gallery):
 
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On that note, have a nice weekend!
 
 
 
 
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  NASA: smashing stuff into the Moon since '71Oct 09, 2009 5:15 PM PDT | url
 
NASA's intentionally crashed their LCROSS satellite and rocket booster into a dark Moon crater in the wee hours of the morning, hoping to kick up hundreds of tons of lunar material in a six-mile-high dust plume from which they could take detailed spectroscopy readings, looking for traces of water ice. They hoped the flash from the twice-bullet-speed impact would be seen by amateur astronomers on Earth.
 
But reality hit simultaneously, and there was no dust plume, and no visible flash. The best they got was a fuzzy little dot on infrared:
 
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This is not, however, the first or largest things NASA has hit the Moon with. Back in '71, they smashed Apollo 14's rocket booster into the surface, leaving an impressive 115'-wide crater and generating "moon quake" readings read by seismographs that had been placed on the Moon by the Apollo 12 crew two years earlier:
 
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That image was captured this summer by NASA's new "Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter" satellite, or "LRO," currently orbiting the moon and taking snazzy pictures.
 
I wrote up my impressions of NASA's live broadcast of the impacts, possible results, details on the LRO, and interesting stuff from the glory days of the Apollo and Mercury missions, including the grisly tale of accident-prone astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, survivor of malfunctioning explosive bolts on a Mercury mission, and commander of the ill-fated Apollo 1. Check it out alongside more nifty space race pictures in the full article on the A* forum.
 
And I owe thanks to Sonia Gee for reminding us of the impending smash on Facebook. Thanks, Sonia!
 
 
 
 
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  Plot twist?!? & Dailies, surprise art, etc.Oct 09, 2009 12:40 AM PDT | url
 
Added 3 new A* comics:What's that supposed to be, a plot twist or something? ;D
 
Auri tellin' fools how it is (if you're viewing this via A* on Facebook, you'll need to click it to get it to animate):
 
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Here's the final version of the sketched surprised Vero that I put up yesterday (click to get to the big version in the gallery):
 
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Compared with the preliminary sketch:
 
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The final version is also the "mouth closed" frame from the shot in today's last daily--after a bit of cropping and moving the figure and the vapor behind him, anyway.
 
 
 
 
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  The official episode 4 trailerOct 08, 2009 3:38 AM PDT | url
 
Caught up on trailerifying previous episodes; here's the trailer for episode 4.
 

Not enough episode 4 trailer action for you? How about the one starschwar made a while back? :D
 
Still not enough? Go nuts and play them both simultaneously! 8o
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 23 - 26Oct 08, 2009 12:03 AM PDT | url
 
Added 4 new A* comics:Thought I'd show a drawing process sequence for today's last daily:
 
Starts with a silhouette of the main character.
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Using the silhouette as a mask--so I'll be able to animate or fill in stuff behind it later--the face goes in.
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Finished up the black and white details for the character, and the curve of the wall behind him; after this will be all the gray stuff.
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If it's a scene where I won't have to do a lot of fill-in or moving of the image, I may draw more organically, ie not breaking things down in separate silhouettes before drawing their interior, but instead just drawing both all at once. This is a rough layout for a shot that will appear as a daily comic tomorrow; I liked the rough energy of the sketch itself so I threw it in the gallery, and you can get to it by clicking this tiny version:
 
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Tomorrow we'll see how the final version turns out! And maybe what will be making Vero's eyes go all big and round like that, too.
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Daily 22Oct 07, 2009 4:04 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* comic:Swapped two storyboard around today, so one comic that I drew I can't put up yet because I still have to draw a few more in-between! But I made an art-ish thingy out of the drawings of Auri I made for it; 8 frames of him to show the combinations of his eye, mouth, and shoulder movements in the shot (click this tiny version to get to the really big version in the gallery):
 
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  Comics direct via the RSS feedOct 07, 2009 3:58 AM PDT | url
 
I've updated A*'s RSS feed to show the daily comics right in the feed, instead of just links to them. So, now you can get all the comics straight from the feed and never have to come to the actual sight and help out my page hit numbers. ;_; ;) But if you should want to, the feed also has the A* site menu, right inside it!
 
And the comics should show up in the news articles that get pulled through to A* on Facebook (no I'm not smart enough to have a "fan" Facebook page for it, I just use my own page ;D); they might be slightly tiny-sized there due to Facebook's shenanigans, but you can click on 'em to jump to the full glory version if you like. The feed of A* on LiveJournal will be similarly imagified once it decides to update itself.
 
Likewise, the Princess and the Giant RSS feed and the One Off RSS feed now have those comics right inside them as well. Feed, feed, feed.
 
A big thanks to Tom Dell'Aringa of Marooned for a recent study he did on comic reader preferences regarding RSS feeds, to the helpful writings of Calamities of Nature's Tony Piro, which revealed the useful ways in which one can big-up their RSS.
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 19 - 21Oct 06, 2009 12:47 AM PDT | url
 
Added 3 new A* comics:Animating sloshing beer walking through a crowd--that could be tough! :o
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 16 - 18Oct 02, 2009 8:32 PM PDT | url
 
Added 3 new A* comics:That's a wrap for this week in A*! See you next week with more...beer?
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 14 - 15Oct 02, 2009 2:32 AM PDT | url
 
Added 2 new A* comics:Some alternate sleeved versions of Auri, when I was trying to decide on the details of his ensemble:
 
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The short T-shirt sleeves were too boring, and the rolled-up ones were somehow way too effeminate--I suppose the pose in that shot didn't help in that regard =p. So no sleeves it was!
 
(This one wasn't quite right either. Ahem.)
 
 
 
 
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  A* Episode 6, Dailies 12 - 13Oct 01, 2009 12:34 AM PDT | url
 
Added 2 new A* comics:Still experimenting with ways to take advantage of this amazing gray-scale technology (omg 256 shades!) that I started incorporating into the art last episode; I'd already done a close-up of Vero's eyes in his hood this episode, for instance, so for today's even-closer-up I switched over to a more realistic rendering of his eye, and more subtle lighting, and made it so I can animate it: in the movie version he'll reach up and pull his hood down over his eyes, and the main highlights on his eyes and the illuminated skin around them will dim as he does that, and the fuzzy shadow of the hood brim will advance down his face. Should be cool? Well until then there's a larger version you can check out in the gallery, get there by clicking on this tiny one:
 
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If you're starved for more of my comics (I know, I know =ppp), you might also be interested in the new One Off comic I put up today, and of course there was a new The Princess and the Giant comic that went up over this past weekend. (Plug plug plug!)
 
 
 
 
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