61
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
63
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 23 - Ninja Whispers
« on: May 21, 2016, 08:43:16 AM »
Whoa, it’s been a long time since members of the satan ninja clan were featured in the comic. I suppose Eddie now being a satan ninja has been filling that void.
Jessica’s been mindful of this page ever since she started drawing Issue 3. She really wanted to make sure that someone could believably mistake Alex for a boy. That’s why Alex has a jacket to hide her figure. And having her get all sweaty from sparring with Eddie was a good excuse for Alex to wet her hair, thus getting rid of the more feminine hair style she typically sports.
64
Discuss Blog Entries / Satan Ninja Promos Commentary Part 2: The Revenge
« on: May 18, 2016, 10:50:04 PM »65
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 22 - Can't Not be a Ninja
« on: May 14, 2016, 06:06:07 AM »
I love that last panel of Eddie happily jumping into bed in his Satan Ninja form. That was Jessica’s idea. It’s sorta painful for me to think of someone sleeping with boots on in bed (I’m a “shoes off” indoors kinda guy), and those spikes on Eddie’s jacket can’t be good for his bedding.
You might be wondering how Eddie’s gonna shower if he can’t take off his ninja clothes (or at least they don’t stay off for long), but no worries. One of his ninja powers is mystical ninja cleanliness. After all, it’s hard to be stealthy if people can smell you coming. I’m not even sure if I’m joking or not.
66
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 21 - Satan Undies
« on: May 07, 2016, 11:54:58 PM »
Holy shit those are some sexy undies. I’ll make sure to let you all know as soon as we launch our SN8X sexy-wear clothing brand. I’m sure it’ll include mega-hot pentagram speedos for the dudes and sexy space leotards for the babes.
When Jessica first drew this page, the first panel was from a totally different perspective, showing Eddie and Alex sitting on the couch with our viewpoint being in front of them. The problem was that Jessica wasn’t sure what expressions to give them. They’re supposed to be tired from their long day of satan ninja experimentations, but also amused by the end of the movie they just watched. But if they’re sitting there looking sleepy yet happy they’d end up looking really stoned or something.
So Jessica decided to completely redraw the panel, changing the viewpoint to behind them. It delayed the page a bit, but hey, now you get to see some totally rad credits! (Well, at least in the hi-rez version.)
67
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 20 - Dude Shinobi in Ninja Exploder II
« on: May 01, 2016, 12:44:43 AM »
This page is possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever written. Not sure where to go from here.
There are six movies in Dude Shinobi’s Ninja Exploder series, with the most recent one being Ninja Exploder VI: Cult of the Satan Ninja, which is the movie that inspired the arcade game that Eddie and Joe are playing at the start of the comic. I actually wrote a synopsis for each movie in the series, along with how they were received by fans and critics. I even started writing a script for the first movie, just for fun.
We’ll probably end up showing more scenes from Dude Shinobi movies as part of our monthly bonus comic series for Jessica’s Patreon. Maybe we’ll even use that to eventually tell the complete story of one or more of the movies (the key moments, at least).
One of the challenges of creating this comic is that we want the SN8X-verse to walk a fine line, with one foot planted in wacky over-the-top land and the other foot planted in a land closer to reality. We feel that going too far into Wackyland can cause it to feel like nothing actually matters within the story, making it harder to actually become invested in it. That works fine for something that’s a pure comedy, but we feel that Satan Ninja 198X is a bit more than that. However, with the media within the SN8X-verse (like the Ninja Exploder series), we’re free to go as over-the-top and wacky as we want.
And here's a mega-minor site update for you: I added an entry for the Cowabunga Ninja Gators to the Glossary page.
68
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 19 - Warlocks, Witches, & Vampires
« on: April 25, 2016, 06:13:07 AM »
Trance’s jab at Corey about being a rules lawyer is a little reference to the first monthly bonus comic strip we made for Jessica’s Patreon, which gave a quick glimpse of how the C&C game went.
Here are some alternate responses I wrote for Trance, but Jessica didn’t think they’d work well without hearing the way I intended the lines to be delivered (picture Trance’s lines being said by Christ Knight from Real Genius):
COREY: I think she has the hots for me.
TRANCE: Ah, must’ve won her over with your astute observational skills.
Or
COREY: I think she has the hots for me.
TRANCE: What a fun thing to think. I’ll try it too.
Also, if you look closely, you might notice that Trance is gazing upon the Stagbunny issue he referenced earlier, featuring a girl with a familiar surname.
69
Discuss Blog Entries / AD's 35th Birthday
« on: April 22, 2016, 06:01:10 AM »
The next page got delayed by Jessica taking on some art commissions (psst, that's your cue to support her Patreon [if you don't already] so she spends less time on commissions and more time doing the comic). She's now very close to finishing the next page, but we didn't want to let a whole two weeks go without some kind of update.
70
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 18 - King of the Space Pirates
« on: April 09, 2016, 11:05:27 PM »
Xoddom might be a little familiar to some of you. That’s right, we’ve finally come to the thinly veiled Maddox cameo we talked about doing forever ago. Of course, we've eightiesified him.
For those or you not familiar with Maddox, he’s the mastermind behind The Best Page in the Universe (currently in its April Fools mode), The Biggest Problem in the Universe (our favorite podcast), and he’s written the books The Alphabet of Manliness and I Am Better Than Your Kids (AKA, Crappy Children's Artwork).
Jessica and I have been fans of Maddox’s brand of satire since around the late 90s/early 2000s. In fact, I once considered having a website where I would post rants and reviews, but I decided against it because I realized it’d probably seem like I was a total Maddox rip-off.
Years ago, Maddox put out a call for artists to do some minor Photoshop work for him, and Jessica answered the call. She kept in touch with him, so once we launched the comic, she passed it along for him to check out and he thought it was awesome.
For the first several months after our website went live, the only people checking it were our friends. However, that changed after Maddox saw it and gave it his public approval. Even now, two years later, a lot of our most dedicated fans originally discovered us through Maddox. That’s why we wanted to thank the dude with a cameo.
Originally, his cameo was going to be really brief. Perhaps a panel or two and a line of dialogue. However, as I wrote this page, his character evolved in my head into a former lover of Ket’s, and I ended up having too much fun with the banter between them.
We have some other cameos planned for the comic, as our way of thanking our most ardent supporters. Of course, like Maddox, anyone who appears in the comic will be getting an ‘80s makeover and a subtle name change.
71
Discuss Blog Entries / Satan Ninja Comic Strips
« on: April 01, 2016, 08:29:14 PM »
Ever since we launched this site, we’ve noticed that the Internet in general tends to be a lot more receptive to gag strip comics as opposed to long-form comics. For those who don’t know the difference, long-form comics are story-driven (think Batman or Dragonball), while gag strips are joke-driven and each strip tends to stand alone (think Garfield or xkcd).
The popularity of gag strips on the Internet makes sense. Long-form comics require that a reader start at the beginning (or at least at the beginning of the latest narrative arc) in order to fully appreciate it. They require a time investment, which is a total bummer. Gag strip comics, on the other hand, are instantly accessible. You can see a single page, chuckle at it, and then carry on with browsing the ‘net. Or better yet, share the page to social media so you can make your friends and family laugh and feel unjustifiably funnier for having shared it.
Recently, we decided to start doing a monthly bonus Satan Ninja gag strip for Jessica’s $10+ patrons. It was while working on the gag strip for March that we thought: “Hey! Why don’t we totally re-vamp Satan Ninja to be a gag strip comic all the time!” We then smacked our foreheads and exclaimed “Duh!”
Now, some of you might not be too happy with this change, and we totally understand that. But listen, since Jessica quit her “day” job to focus on the comic, it simply makes sense for us to take the path that has the greatest chance of success: the path of the gag strip.
Besides, the comic will still feature Jessica’s awesome art, and all your favorite characters will still be there, and so will the ‘80s references. And now that we’re a gag strip, we have a lot more creative freedom. We can do things like break the fourth wall, and “kill” characters for the sake of a gag, only to have them back without explanation in the next strip. And it’ll be a lot easier to write the comic without having to worry about things like plot or continuity. From now on it’s nothing but good ol’ wacky fun and gags!
72
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 17 - Meadow McCarthy
« on: March 26, 2016, 11:06:37 PM »
Writing a comic is a lot harder than I thought it’d be. With every word you use, you’re covering up more of the art, so words come at a premium. If this were a novel, I could write a natural conversation between Eddie and Alex, weaving in important bits of exposition here and there while adding some depth to the characters and the relationship they have.
But that’s tricky in a comic. I need to accomplish a lot in as few words as possible, leaving Jessica’s art to fill in the blanks. It’s definitely taken me a bit to get used to.
73
Discuss Anything / Twitch Streaming
« on: March 24, 2016, 12:46:40 AM »
So Jessica and I have decided to take the plunge into the world of live streaming. Last night we streamed on Twitch for the first time, with Jessica drunkenly playing the steam port of Final Fantasy III (the real III, not FFVI, which was originally released on the SNES as III).
Holy shit, so many things went wrong. Controller issues, the game screen displaying nothing but black for minutes without us noticing, Jessica dying and having to start the game over from the very beginning because she never saved it... it was a bit of a mess. But hey, we did get a surprise cameo from Maddox, and our stream should only get better from here, right?
For anyone who's curious to witness the chaos, you can view the stream by going here and then clicking on "Previous Broadcasts." (Unless you're reading this over two weeks from now, in which case the video will be gone, as Twitch only saves videos for 14 days.)
Jessica also plans to stream herself doing art. If you sign up for Twitch and follow Jessica, you can choose to get an email notification everyone we go live.
Holy shit, so many things went wrong. Controller issues, the game screen displaying nothing but black for minutes without us noticing, Jessica dying and having to start the game over from the very beginning because she never saved it... it was a bit of a mess. But hey, we did get a surprise cameo from Maddox, and our stream should only get better from here, right?
For anyone who's curious to witness the chaos, you can view the stream by going here and then clicking on "Previous Broadcasts." (Unless you're reading this over two weeks from now, in which case the video will be gone, as Twitch only saves videos for 14 days.)
Jessica also plans to stream herself doing art. If you sign up for Twitch and follow Jessica, you can choose to get an email notification everyone we go live.
74
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 16 - Baby Moondreamer
« on: March 19, 2016, 09:19:11 PM »
When we were coming up with the birth name Eddie’s hippie mom burdened him with, we wanted something super dumb and ‘80s and girly. Thus, Baby Moondreamer was born. He’s so lucky that Grandma eventually relented and allowed him to change his name to Eddie McCarthy, but those first couple years of school were brutal for poor Ed.
Speaking of Grandma, when I was researching for her character, I read up a bit on the effects a stroke can have, and it’s so fuckin’ weird how much it can change a person's personality. Usually it causes previously existent personality traits to become more extreme, but sometimes it causes the victim to take on personality traits that are the complete opposite of their pre-stroke selves. In the case of Grandma McCarthy, she went from being somewhat reserved and over protective, to being outspoken and generally carefree without much regard for the feelings of others.
We had showed the Minxy poster in a blog post several months ago during our hiatus, but Jessica decided to update it a bit for this page, mostly redoing her face and her boobs.
75
Discuss Comic Pages / Issue 3 - Ninja Power! - Page 15 - Dinner with Grandma
« on: March 12, 2016, 04:57:09 AM »
Taken at face value, this has to be the least appealing page title so far.
It's hard to tell what they're eating, but it's mac 'n' cheese with slices of hot dog. I like the fact that grandma felt it was necessary to don an apron to cook mac 'n' cheese.