Comic for Thursday April 24th, 2003

I'm finally getting the stuff I ordered from my webcomic's online store. It's coming from Cali so I figure it'll take another week, week and a half. Two mini poster prints and a pretty sweet bumper sticker. Hopefully the stuff looks good and I can fully endorse it to my friends and faithful readers.

I'm a capitalist pig.

Actually I'm not really cause I didn't mark up any of the stuff at all. What it costs is what it costs the site that makes the stuff to make profit on. I get zilch. Which I don't mind at all cause the alternative is I have to make my own stuff. Tried that for FS and that was a nightmare.

I will admit now that I miss running Fighting Spirit. It got pretty big near the end with around 10-15 players or so. It's weird though the game got so big in the end it was like it's own little TV show or what not that anyone who played could talk about for hours on end. 

Even though I wasn't a player, I miss seeing what the players would do. I miss writing what happens to Markus Corriveau or Jennie Branford. Characters that sorta have this life all to themselves. Like a good book.

Book size it was too. I printed out all the old summaries and man that in itself comprised close to 500+ pages in miniscule 10 pt roman font single spaced with the margins practically nil.

I truly wish there was a way for me to run it and be able to keep up with the work that's needed to do so. However the work needed eclipses even the amount I need to do for a bi-weekly webcomic strip. The comic can be run on my schedule, but FS needed to be run on a even schedule between me and the players. As numerous people have mentioned in the past it's simply grown to big for one person to run. At this point, it'd probably take at least 2-3 people to run smoothly. 

I would like to say right here though that I thank Mr. Kuroki for all his work on the Open Battle System that never really got to stretch out its legs before I pulled the plug. he really put a lot of effort and time into it and I'm sorry I couldn't keep the game going a bit longer just for his sake.

In other news, the other night I sat and talked with The Kelly about how my old house on Long Island had been set up the entire time I lived there. I'm talking about which room used to be what, who slept in what room, etc etc. It's surprising how much you remember and what things you are surprised to remember. 

And then Spirit Twelve. This is really the first action scene in this comic. It'll be the first of many to come. Staying true to the mange roots with speed lines of course. I was mixed on what to do with the background during such scenes and settled on a neutral gray with some altering to fit the action. Initially I only used a monochromatic noise in the BG, but have since switched to the multi colored gaussian noise. You'll see in the next comic.

Speaking of the next comic, be prepared faithful readers for the first special edition of Ninja Spirit. We're talking an additional double sized panel for the action that takes place. So be sure to tune back in! 

River bites off more then he can chew.