Via Drawn! I checked out this neat, brand new comic by Danny Zabal called Journey in the 6th Dimension. There’s only 3 pages up right now, but man are they beautiful! The story looks interesting, too. Danny was also nice enough to write up a quick review of Marooned and had nice things to say.
Go check out the comic, you won’t be sorry. I’ve definitely added it to my reading list.
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itOk, how fitting is this? The Something Awful folks (snarky forums) have expanded Asimov’s original 3 rules of robotics into 30 rules. I haven’t actually read them yet, the site is blocked here but the preview I saw looked funny. Read the full list here.
I’ll have to see how many are applicable to our own ASIMOV 
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itI call this a character tile for lack of a better term. This is my first crack at John. I’ll be making these for all the characters in the story. I need to come up with a better background probably.
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itHere’s a little preview of an upcoming strip that will be starting a new story. Man I’ve gotta get a good scanner.
And a little hat tip – if you are a reader (new or otherwise) of this strip, Monday I’ll tell you how you can win this:
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itEarlier this week I posted about a new game I was playing called Star Pirates. I’ve played quite a bit more now and have gotten the hang of the game and it really is ingenious and fun, so here’s a complete review.
The Basics
The idea is simple and easy to learn, which is partly what makes the game great. I think they put it best:
“The Earth is destroyed – space miners stationed in the Asteroids struggle for survival. Gangs of Star Pirates loot old hulks, scavenge resources, attack and raid each other’s ships and fight for dominance of the stars.
Gamble, explore, mine asteroids, upgrade your ship, research weapons, shields and engine technology. Donors within the game become “Notorious Star Pirates” with additional features.”
Now I ask you – who wants to be a Star Pirate searching for loot, fighting other gangs in space, gambling and destroying your enemies? Pick me, Pick me! 
You sign up, you grab a ship and you’re off. It’s that simple.
Home Page
Once you’ve signed up, you’ll have a basic ship (which you can upgrade once you earn some credits). You can take a look at your home page which gives you loads of info:
You get your basic info on how much research units you have remaining (important in order to improve your ship), energy, cargo, experience, what state your ship is in and what is installed on your ship. Plus, find out how well you’re doing in battle (I’m over 50%!)
You get started by searching through some space debris, pulling the slots and doing some simple mining. Pretty soon you have enough cash to start improving your lot in space.
Research
In order to improve your ship and thus improve your chances in battle, you must continually research technology to make your ship better. This uses up some energy, so you balance the desire to fight and the desire to improve your ship, because it takes time to regenerate that energy.
As you gain levels you get more research units available to you. I’ve noticed as I’ve researched more my ship has definitely gotten tougher.
In Space and Points
You start out at the lowly Mars station, but as you gain levels and experience you can travel to further out places like Jupiter station. At all stations you can pick through debris once an hour to find good stuff (credits and even weapons and armor), play the lottery, visit the items store, upgrade your ship and even sell points. Points allow you to regenerate energy quicker, buy extra turns searching through garbage and more. Points can be purchased through Upgrade Account by using a PayPal account to support our site, from other players swapping for cargo in the points market and you can sometimes find them in the asteroid belts. Upgrading is cheap and can be done through PayPal – I think the I bought some points for $3 and they lasted me a long time.
You can pick a ship out of the scan result on the right and attack! Yeah, that’s why we’re here!
A great victory for me (yeah I picked on a little guy, so what!)
Summary
I’ve really only touched on the basics here, but you can see the game is really simple to play – but really fun too. You can upgrade to be “Notorious” and you get the benefit of quicker regeneration, certain monies going to straight to the bank instead of being exposed to pirates (great for selling points) and more.
Even better, you can join a Fleet (or make your own!) and battle it out with other fleets in all out war! Is this much fun even legal anymore?! All I spend is a few minutes on lunch and break during the day and I’m having great fun with this game.
Head over to Star Pirates and really give it a try – it’s totally free and all you need is your browser. You won’t regret it – I give it 5 out of 5 stars. And say hello to Dekker (me) while you’re there!
NOTE: I deleted all comments and closed commenting on this post. My comic isn’t the place to sort out issues on this game. My post was merely my opinion. If you like the game play, if you don’t – then don’t.
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itI’ve been working on trying to get some better consistency with my characters. I’ve been drawing John over and over to try and get his proprotions right. Once I got it where I thought it should be, I added the other two characters and added reference points to make sure I’m drawing them in the right sizes in regard to each other. This isn’t the greatest scan but you can at least see what I came up with. I’ll probably make a nicer version from this that I can refer to while doing the strip, with a few other views of the other characters.
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itThis is a fairly neat application built by Google called Lively. It’s essentially a second life type room you build yourself (or join one someone built) and you go to chat there. Looks like it could be fun. The servers seem to be really slammed right now, but I made a little webcomics room if you want to try it out. You need to have a Google account of course. Here’s the room:
Neat huh?
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itBeen playing a fun little game called Star Pirates. It’s nice because it takes up very little time, no downloads or clients needed – just your browser, and it’s silly fun. Basically you outfit a ship and go out and pirate! Attack other ships, upgrade your ship, join a fleet, battle other fleets – it’s nutrageous! Go check it out and have some fun.
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itHow about some fan art! Daniel Bethel, the illustrator for the neat webcomic Eben07 sent me this gem. Daniel is quite the illustrator and does great work for Eben07. Check out John here! He’s looking seriously capable! Thanks for sending this in Daniel, it rocks! It makes me think John could actually get something done
Recommend on Facebook Share on G+ Share with Stumblers Tweet about itWas digging through some files yesterday and found some older sketches from when I began to draw again a year or so ago, thinking about doing a comic or some kind of creative project. I had a few ideas which I ultimately rejected. Here’s some of that material.
Bird Superhero Character – I had an idea for a bird that was a superhero – kind of a Clark Kent thing going on.
An interesting precursor to Asimov, maybe is this guy HENRI
When my eldest daughter was 4, we did a little project and wrote a children’s book together. I did some drawings of the little girl in the story thinking I would illustrate it. In reality, I want her to do it as a project though.
A more sophisticated version of Captain John?
Lastly, right before I realized I just didn’t have time to pursue animation, I was going to do a short based on this book “Trubloff” I read as a kid, a Russian folk tale about a mouse who plays the Balalaika. So I had done a bunch of drawings of him that I was going to use to build the model. Here’s one.
I kind of like these, I’m glad I’ve learned not to throw stuff away. I had done lots of stuff in college that is long gone now that I wish I still had. Never throw your art away!
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