"Welcome to 2008" Thursday January 3rd, 2008

Hello to all the NS fans out there and welcome to NS in the year 2008! I have officially changed the update status of the comic to an every Friday update schedule since that's what it's been for the last two and a half months. I hope you don't mind. As a bonus, I think the extra time I put into each comic shows a bit more. I think I still make mistakes from time to time, but I think I make less of them now. Although I did forget to draw Yuki's Hyourinken in P2 so I ended up having to add it in afterwards. FAIL!

Anyway it looks like Yuki has once again gone and done something completely off the wall. It was hard as hell trying to get what I was imagining in my mind on to the paper and then just as hard trying to find the right CG effects to use to complete the effect. I'm not 100% sold on what I ended up using and I might end up tweaking it with further usage, but for now I have to say it didn't come out half bad. I do realize it's kind of confusing as to what is going on, but hopefully you got that Yuki ended up seeing this strange scene in which he notices someone attacking Kimen, then noticing it was himself that was attacking to actually being behind Kimen ready to attack, to attacking Kimen. Just how this happened, why it happened, and the effect shown in his eyes are all linked and will be explained in the future. I know Yuki looks kind of bad ass right now, but don't think Kimen is out of this fight just yet...

In other news I ended up going up to Albany this past weekend to see Tom while he was back in the states. We hit Tahou's on Saturday and the plates were fricking great. A solid 8.5 out 10. Tom even stepped up to the plate and ate two plates which he hasn't done since college. BONUS! I was supposed to go to his house afterwards, but I ended up crashing hard when I got back to Syracuse and ended up sleeping in Rob's living room for 4 hours or so. All in all it was a superb trip and I managed to even hammer out some more details on my NS side project. Although it's doesn't really involve any characters in NS, it does take place in the NS universe and so you can consider it an extended universe type project.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great Holiday season and are having a great 2008 so far. I'm looking forward to the start of NS Year 5 in March as well as the big Spirit 400 sometime around then. There will be another NS Battle of Spirit popularity contest and Spirit 400 contest. The prize will be as always a special edition Spirit 400 poster. I have begun sketches of the poster and chances are I will be recycling some sketches I made for a project that never got off the ground with the band formerly known as Hyjinx. It should be good stuff so look forward to some more information on the game and contest as we hit Spirit 395 or so.

Here's to a great 2008 and another year of NS action! Thank you once again for sticking with me and this humble webcomic and I hope you continue to enjoy the trip!

River's Top 5 Cool Things I Got/Found in 2007
1. My first San Francisco Giants game seen live (Even thought they lost, I won't EVER forget it)
2. One Manga (Ichigo 100%, To Love Ru, Mx0, D. Gray-man, Pretty Face, Midori no Hibi, Bitter Virgin, Nana, Hatsukoi Limited, etc.)
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (The added bonus of being a Otakon 07 memento. Go GZA and Michelle!)
4. IPod (I use this EVERY day)
5. Nintendo DS (Jump Ultimate Stars & Elite Beat Agents are my fave games)