Mystic Revolution--Mondays and Fridays

Comic pushed back

1970-01-01T00:00:00-06:00

sparrow writes:

Saturday we put together my new computer, which kinda bled into part of sunday due to power supply problems (it turns out the new huge motherboard I have has a totally different power setup, and sadly, old power supply couldn’t stretch to where it needed to be). As of right now, I have windows 7 all installed and set up, and am now engaged in the laborious process of reinstalling all my old drivers, programs, and files. Yaaay.

In other news, I start grad school tomorrow! Super exciting/terrifying. For those not aware, I’m going for the Arts and Media Management program at Columbia College Chicago, and am ironically one of the small minority of people actually from chicago (compared to the Academy, which was like, 93% chicago-ites). So yeah, that crazy-frustrating online accounting class I took was part of a pre-req for the program, so now I can focus on doing….more accounting…. *cry* But I hope to get some more business-sense out of it, so here’s hoping I don’t flunk out miserably XD

Anyways, page will be up Friday! Also, for those who pre-ordered book 3 with the extra sketch card on sharkrobot, the sketch part is done, so hopefully i can get it all mailed out this week. Hopefully ^^;

Bigger panel

1970-01-01T00:00:00-06:00

sparrow writes:

Soooo, in case you wanted to see what the last panel of Monday’s page looks like without the vision-fading effect, you can peep the original over here. Fun with messing with things in photoshop!

Also, my computer as it is is very slowly dying–we suspect either processor, ram, or mb issues. So since I need an upgrade anyway, we opted to just replace all the parts rather than narrow it down specifically. Alas though, installing a new motherboard is well beyond my scope of understanding, but luckily my buddy’s coming down this weekend to hook everything up for me. Once equipped with the newer, faster, upgraded Felicia (its name), I was thinking of livestreaming coloring the comic, like some other people do. Not really sure how well I’d be able to respond to people in the chat (as I only have the one monitor, but maybe I could bring my laptop in here or something), but hey, you can see the incredibly inefficient way that I work and make fun of me behind my back–always fun XD

Finally, I saw Piranha 3D this past weekend, and was genuinely surprised by how thoroughly entertained I was. The beauty of this movie is that it recognizes how ridiculous the premise is, and then goes out of its way to make it as insanely over-the-top as it possibly can. Warning though: Its really modeled on the old school exploitation horror movies, so there’s lots of nudity, gore, and very, very, very dark humor. BUT, there are some great quality kills in there, its really funny, and makes a pretty good use of the 3D technology. So yeah, if there’s one movie you see this summer, see Inception. But if you’ve already seen that, then see Piranha 3D XD

Updates

1970-01-01T00:00:00-06:00

sparrow writes:

Wow, so I haven’t posted a blog in a while. My bad.

The last 2 panels of today’s comic represent something I normally cut out of final drafts of the script–silly filler text that stays there until I can think of something that’s actually somewhat clever. But for whatever reason, I found those responses stupidly funny, so I left them there. And it’s my comic, so…yeah!

Moving on, if you pre-ordered book 3 (or if you were at Akon, Book 1 too) at a convention, you should have gotten your books to me by now. Note: this is only for those who pre-ordered from me directly, at a convention, whereby I wrote your name on a list, you should’ve totally gotten them by now, so if you haven’t, you need to email me! For those who ordered from Shark Robot, I just got the special orders (with the extra sketch card commission thing) sent to me yesterday, and Dave promised he’d get me the rest of them sent to me today, so hopefully I’ll be able to ship all those out this weekend. Hopefully.

In any event, I’ve spent the past while attempting to get a buffer on the comics so that when I start grad school I’m hoping the comic won’t suffer too much. Its kinda weird because my college was really more of an art trade school (which was awesome!) but this school, though still kind of an art school, is definitely more of a normal college in terms of structure and stuff (I felt really dumb because I didn’t really understand that you could choose how many credit hours you can take–our school you got to pick like, maybe one class, but once you picked your major your courses were pretty much chosen for you), so I really don’t know what to expect in terms of the work load and stuff. So I’ve been planning for the worse! Which only serves to benefit you guys, haha.

I also saw the Scott Pilgrim movie, and while I thought the comics were cool for what they were, I really feel that the movie is something really wonderful. This is going to sound sappy and lame and terrible, but I really feel like it was a movie that was made just for me. Like, yeah it’s outrageous and insane and stuff, but the video game stuff, the life stuff–I know these people, I’ve lived some of those moments, and I get all (well, most of) the stuff referenced in the movie! It was awesome! The movie itself was really one big homage to video games and anime and general nerdiness, so if you’re into any of that stuff–and let’s face it, if you’re reading my comic you probably are–definitely check it out as it will make you very happy.

One question I get a lot at cons is ‘What inspired/inspires you as an artist/for Mystic Rev’ and luckily some awesome cat on deviantART made an awesome way to show people, via the influence map meme. So here’s mine for your viewing pleasure, I tried to keep stuff from like earliest influences to current influences. Because I should say that CLAMP stuff doesn’t really influence my work all that much anymore, but it did a LOT when I was first drawing stuff. But yeah, the meme’s kinda awesome because it gives you a window into your favorite artists’ madeness influences.

Finally, New York I will be back in your base, touchin’ your stuffs for the New York Comic Con/Anime Fest in October. I managed to weasel my way into the artist’ alley, and while I was dumb and forgot to submit a picture for the image/bio view, trust me, I’ll be there! So that’s something to look forward to for those of you in New York that were wondering when I’d ever be back. I for one am happily looking forward to sampling more of NYC’s delicious restaurants. New York has some awesome, awesome food. You lucky bastards. Though you guys don’t have deep dish pizza nor Portillo’s, so I guess you’re not all that lucky.

Always go for the epic

1970-01-01T00:00:00-06:00

sparrow writes:

So, originally in the script, Toasty’s move was going to be a series of combo attacks in rapid succession, and Ali would be forced back into the shield move in order to keep up. But as I went to draw the actual layout for the page, I couldn’t really illustrate that in a way that looked cool or interesting–it kinda just looked like he was moving fast or worse, summoned a bunch of shadow clones or whatever. So then I thought it’d be cool if he just summoned a bunch of warrior spirits to land some crazy awesome attack, and, well, there you go. When faced with a decision, always go for the more epic choice.

…The only downside of that choice is that I had to draw 9 million valkyries, so I spent most of the day sunday drawing it, and then alllll day today inking the thing. I’m thinking I’ll post colors on Friday, just because that’s probably going to also be a two-day project *Sigh* But hey, maybe it’ll give me a chance to get ahead?

….nah, gotta send out book 3 orders. Why must time go by so quickly?? x.x

Also, one of our big bookshelves collapsed today, too, so I spent a good chunk trying to fix what I could, but all the books had to be taken off that thing, which was well over 100 books (because if there’s like, 30+volumes of Bleach, Berserk, Eyeshield 21 and Hunter x Hunter, not to mention the other random things were on there–this shelf had series double stacked because we couldn’t fit everything otherwise =\\ ). So we’re doing more cleaning of the books stored in our pantry as well (we have a LOT of comics) so ya’ll might see some of our series go up on Ebay since we just don’t have room =\\

Comic to be late

1970-01-01T00:00:00-06:00

sparrow writes:

Soooo, last minute change in the script has me drawing 9 million people for this page, so it’s going to be going up a lil’ later today. Sorry guys ;_;

comic: Way of the master