"Trouble on Mondays" Thursday March 27th, 2008

It seems like forever since I updated and I'm glad to be back. Before we get any further I want to let you know that the NS Ending movie can be viewed at any time by going to the Bonus section of the webpage.

Today's filler was meant to be the splash page for a manga concept I was working on. I salvaged the Trouble On Monday title from the short webcomic Joe and I threw together for a short while. It's basically a romance comedy story done in complete manga style. As you can see the art is a tiny bit different from the style you're familiar with from NS. I'll be doing it in B&W and in page format and not the storyboard format that I use for Ninja Spirit. I actually had planned on it being a parallel story that ran concurrently with the Ninja Spirit universe and timeline. My recent concept moves away from the Ninja Spirit connection a bit, but it still takes place at Kawasaki Senior High. I don't want to go into even a small plot synopsis in case I change anything. However it's sitting in the wings as a possible project once Ninja Spirit is done.

Speaking of Ninja Spirit, I have been using the past two weeks to work on the Spirit 400 Limited Edition Poster and I can tell you that it is about 90% done. I mean I don't really like to praise my own work, but I think it looks awesome. I really tried to sit down and take my time doing the poster and I think it definitely shows in the details. I mean the background was created from scratch and it took about as much time as the characters in the poster. I had originally planned to use the character designs from Chapter 5, but I actually scrapped that and used the new Chapter 6 designs for the characters. I make it a habit to change everyone's hair from chapter to chapter and that will as always be the big difference. Some characters had relatively minor tweaks like Yuki and Key and others well... yeah.

Okay now lets get into the good news/bad news section of the post. I'll hit you with the bad news first. I definitely will not be able to finish the NS Opening movie to celebrate the beginning of Chapter 6. The poster ended up taking a LOT longer than I had scheduled for it. I could have pushed back the beginning of Chapter 6 to get the movie done, but I think it's more important to get back to the story than it is to get a bonus like the Opening movie done.

The good news is that should nothing change, you should get the Splash page for Chapter 6 in the next update and the chapter itself should start the week after. The bonus good news is that the Spirit 400 Battle of Spirit Contest will open next week. The bracket will be revealed to show just which characters will be pitted against each other. The bracket will be able to be viewed online and a printable bracket will also be available. The contest entry form will also be up on the page and you will be able to fill out your entry through that form. the deadline for entry will most likely be until the actual Spirit 400 comic goes up, but the form details and rules will be available next week. As always, the Battle of Spirit contest winner will win a large 35x24 poster printed on high quality glossy finish paper. I thought the Spirit 300 poster was cool, but the Spirit 400 poster totally blows it away. The poster itself will be revealed when the Battle of Spirit begins.

Anyway thanks for bearing with me during this off time and I'm glad you're continuing to stick with me as we head into Year 6 of Ninja Spirit. I will see you back here next week and I wish you all a great weekend!!

River's Favorite 5 Bleach Zanpakuto
1. Hyōrinmaru - Hitsugaya Tōshirō
2. Suzumebachi - Soi Fon
3. Senbonzakura - Kuchiki Byakuya
4. Shinsō - Ichimaru Gin
5. Zangetsu - Kurosaki Ichigo