Merry Christmas Eve!

Just three pages this week. Did Katlyn really get blown up? Just how hard is Bryce? Read and see.

I won’t be putting up any pages next week with Christmas break and all, but in the new year there will be plenty more to see.

Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year from me!

Toby

Wow,

Almost missed this weekly update.

I ret-conned page 16. You know, I did page 16 on the day I was launching the comic and I hurried it. I didn’t want to have to live with that.

Soooo, there is a new page 16 and a new page 17. It makes the whole thing make a lot more sense, hopefully.

Will Eden die? Will Katlyn disobey her master? Where are they?

Get in there and find out!

If you like it, Please spread the word, tweet it tell your facebook friends and like the Otherworld Comic facebook page.

Cheers, till next week.

Seven new pages to read!

With Katlyn poised to kill Eden, the question is what will she do?

To have any idea, we need to know who she is and why she is with these killers. In this new scene you will see a critical part of Katlyn’s origin story and of course, some fairly awesome powers.

As usual, comment me up here oron the facebook page if you’re digging it.

See you on the other side.

Hello you.

Long time no see.

I wondered if we could have a little chat. You see I’ve been thinking this week, about this:

Page 17, which I uploaded on Thursday. Now I know for a fact most people have not even seen this yet, but that’s not what’s bothering me. No, what bothers me is how it ends or more to the point how it doesn’t.

I thought to myself “what if I came here to read some super awesome Otherworld action, and I got this page?” I came to the conclusion that I’d feel a bit cheated. While the page is important, it seems irrelevant without the following pages it is like someone switching off the tv episode at a random point.

Now I’ve been pretty busy since Thursday, I’ve done four pages which is double my pace for November. (I found a really good strategy to increase my efficiency.) Those four pages make up the first half of a really cool backstory scene. I want you to see it, but I don’t want to leave people hanging like page 17 does.

So I am proposing that instead of updating twice a week, I will update in scene sized batches that will give you something meaningful to chew on; 2-6 pages at a time.

I will post right here when a new batch goes up, and it will include a link that will take you directly to the page before the new batch. This way you can look down the posts here until you see a page you recognize, hit the link and read from there.

There is an RSS button on the sidebar (right there -> above “who I am”) that you can use to keep track of updates since they will be irregular (but hopefully approximately weekly.) Alternatively if you go to the Otherworld Comic Facebook page (also in the sidebar) and hit the ‘like’ button then you will get Facebook status updates informing you of new chunks of comic to read.

Please let me know what you think in the comments below. Love comments, I do.

I am hoping to get the next scene to you by Thursday where you will see something of Katlyn’s origins.

Hey!

Thanks to all of you for checking out my comic!

So the schedule is going to be one new page every Tuesday and Thursday if I cannot update for whatever reason, I’ll post up some excuses right here and you can call me a lame-o.

I have re-jiggered the site slightly. Now there are only two navigation tabs at the top of the site, and those old silly comics have migrated over to the oddly names articles section in the sidebar.

Over there you will find the Otherworld facebook page weblet thingimijig. If you like the comic, go there, give it the thumbs up and share it with your friends. My comic will be sad and lonely if no one reads it :)

Cheers!!

Let’s take a look behind door number three.

In the end I got 16 pages done. I wish I’d got through the first issue, which would be about 35 pages I suppose, because I think it would start making a lot more sense by then, and things have only just started kicking off by page 14.

Yeah, 16 pages isn’t all that much. It took a month to make, and only 2 minutes to read! Still, that’s the point of a long form comic, it’s takes a while to build up.

So, there are no comments enabled on the comic pages themselves, but feel free to comment on this post.

Alternatively, I started a Face Book page called Otherworld Comic. If you dig what I’ve done so far and want to give me some encouragement to keep going, there is a discussion page and a wall and all that jaz over on Facebook. I will also be having a sort of launch party on the facebook page between 12pm and 3pm PST today, Tuesday 30th November. Come on by to see some extra preliminary sketches and have a chat!

The main link to the Otherworld comic is on the menu at the top of the page ^ Up there.

Thanks for checking it out. Things are only going to get more interesting from here.

Tags: otherworld

Last update before launch day.

As promised, a small selection of concept sketches. Generally I never finish off my sketches, they tend to be just a few wobbly lines that only I can understand. Consequently there were not a lot that seemed worth including. So instead I selected just a few rough concepts that try to express something of what you might expect from the comic, mostly focusing on the creatures.

Clicking on it will give you a larger version.

As always, hit me up with a comment or link to this site if you think it’s looking like it’s going to be cool.

See you next Tuesday.

Toby

Tags: otherworld

Alright!

I decided that updating last thing at night PST on Tuesdays isn’t really a Tuesday update almost the whole world. Sooo, I’m going to post updates at or around 12am Tuesday mornings from now on.

This week, meet Eden McCrea.

By day Eden is an IT student at Wakefield college but in the evenings, she and her two best friends visit the city’s abandoned places and prcatice witchcraft. A week ago Eden discovered that she can manifest convincing illusions whenever she is in one specific building. What the friends don’t know is that they have stumbled across a secret that The Order has been supressing for almost five hundred years. One that they will kill to protect.



Just one more update to go before launch day and that will probably be a bunch of concept sketches.

I hope you come back to check it out next week! As usual, if it looks sweet or hot, tell your friends.

Tags: otherworld

No more teasing.

Otherworld is a manga-style, twice weekly, long-form web comic based on celtic myth.

It follows the lives of two English girls, thrown together by circumstances beyond their control who find themselves trapped in a brutal parallel world inhabited by mythical creatures and powerful, treacherous beings.

This week, meet 17 year old Katlyn Liu.

Katlyn was raised by the very man who killed her mother and father when she was just five years old. Under his brutal training regime, within an occult organization, Katlyn is about to beecome the youngest full Knight of the Order in over six hundred years. But before that, she must face a test that will threaten to overturn twelve years of planning and change her life forever.




The comic is based on a book that I wrote a year ago but that I never published. I’d love to make a game or a movie out of this idea, since I’ve been obsessing over it for years, but without a spare hundred million dollars that seems unlikely. So while the comic format is not my first choice of medium to release this, (mainly because my art is a bit embarrassingly rusty, apologies in advance) it is going to be fun writing and drawing the whole thing. It just might take a while to get through it all.

Comics manage to entirely circumvent the ratings system, but I warn you that this story is not for children. It is likely to include: extreme violence, gore, partial nudity, sexual situations, drug references, strong language, gay and lesbian themes, and pretty much anything else necessary to tell the story without compromise. By Uk ratings standards it’s probably a 15 rather than an 18, though.

So if you like action packed, morally ambiguous modern fantasy, where myths are woven together with conspiracy theories, then Otherworld might be right up your street.

So tell your friends, 30th November I hope to drop the first 15-20 pages or so.

I look forward to your comments and I hope to see you again next Tuesday!

Toby

Tags: otherworld

I have not updated this site in many many months.

There is a reason...

I have been working on something.

Something big.

Every Tuesday I will be posting info in the lead up to Launch day.

Another week, another comic. I managed to stop myself going overboard this time, the last one took two days, whch is well out of order.

So I have this really cool game idea. It’s not actually zombies + Kung fu (although that sounds pretty mint too.) I’m pretty excited about it, so I’m going to start the old dog and pony show, see if any publishers are on the lookout for new IP. If you know any who are, let me know!

I have to make this game, it would just be totally wicked.

Tags: games, publishers, pitching

New comic is up.

Disappointments about iPhone games not being as great as they could be, actually make more sense to me now. The problem really is the size. You whip out your iPhone when you have a spare few minutes, not when you want to really play. iPhone is great for bite sized interactive morsels. Bigger games just don’t work so well.

The iPad will change that. Touch screen games can be really cool but the touch screens we’ve had so far (DS and smart phones) are just too wee to really give you any space to play properly. Imagine Dragon Age on iPad. That would be sweet.

IPad, if not this generation then the next, will be fairly competent at 3D. It’s a serious platform and I can’t wait to see if the console game development community dives in as they have failed to do with the iPhone.

If they do, then it will mean a serious shakeup of the games industry. With no gamestop to strong-arm the pricing, iTunes is a space where developers can finally be the king. Publishers won’t be publishers anymore, they will be funders... might as well just get venture capital backing instead.

I just wonder how long the battery will last under heavy 3D gaming. Time will tell.

Tags: IPhone, IPad, games

I just had an epiphany.

Ever since it was first announced, I have been extremely dubious about OnLive. There seems to be so many technical (and financial) hurdles to overcome that I have been unable to imagine a scenario where it can be successful that doesn’t require either magic or some sort of stock scam.

Anyway, I was just washing dishes when I realised that there IS a realistic scenario in which OnLive could work! One where all it’s drawbacks become meaningless. There is even synergy!

If OnLive was bought by Blizzard and the only game available through them was WoW (or Blizzard’s next MMORPG), then the whole thing starts to make sense.

WoW’s gameplay is already balanced for server-side lag, some additional client lag would probably be quite acceptable. In fact, if you put the world servers near the OnLive shards, you could reduce the server lag and possibly get an overall lag-win.

WoW already has user limits, too many people try to log into a world server and you get queues. So if the maximum number of OnLive shards are already in use when you try to log in and you have to wait to play, who cares? WoW players are already used to that no one is going to start demanding their money back.

Blizzard believes in having the minimum possible hardware needs to gain entry to their game, but secretly, you know they would love to really pull out all the graphical stops. With OnLive they get to do both! And Blizzard’s policy of not chasing the latest graphics card update will help stop OnLive’s shards from becoming redundant every year.

OnLive gets to build some dedicated platform specific clients for their streaming technology, so that a carefully crafted interface can be made for a PC game being played through an iPhone or a PSP, one that will give the player the best possible UI experience on those platforms.

Finally, the monthly cost of OnLive’s service would be rolled into the existing WoW subscription, (as a premium option, of course) something that many Wow players would find acceptable for the chance to play WoW on their iPhone / iPad / PSP / browser wherever they go.

Of course there are logistic hurdles to overcome, but it makes sense, I say!

Blizzard gets to open the games to an even wider audience, breaks into mobile gaming and gets the brute force to do a pretty major graphically update.

And OnLive? OnLive gets synergy, man. And who wouldn’t want that?

Tags: onlive, games, World of warcraft

Another comic done. This is the first time I have ever updated my website on time, I think. It bodes well for the future.

It would have been more relevant if I had made it about Dragon Age, what with Awakenings just having been released, but then I’d have to change it and I just don’t have time right now. I have to go and play Dragon Age :)

Bioware is so hot right now.

By the way, previous comics can be viewed in the new comic archive over there on the side bar ->

Tags: games

You know, there’s something about numbers that doesn’t seem to mix too well with artists. I’m no great artist but when I was young I loved drawing while maths left me cold. However hard people tried to convince me that mastering numbers would be for my own good, I refused to apply myself to learning them.

I didn’t want to learn maths, I wanted to learn magic. Not the pulling rabbits out of hats kind, but the real thing with the beard and the staff and the robe and hat.

As a wee boy reading fantasy novels, I always wondered about the people who didn’t learn magic. I mean, if magic worked and it let you do whatever you liked, what kind of idiot wouldn’t want to learn that? Disregarding the fantasy worlds where only a special few have the ’talent’ for magic, there are plenty of fantasy worlds where magic is just a secret knowledge that only the select few know. It’s the guys in those worlds who still use tools to plow fields instead of by snapping their fingers that I don’t get.

Seriously, if you saw someone doing real magic, you’d make some effort to work out how, right? I know I would. In fact, I’d drop everything for the chance to learn a few god-like powers. You’d be mad not to!

It was only when I was much older that I realised that this world does have a kind of magic and I didn’t want to learn it because I thought it was the root of all evil; money.

The people adept at wielding the real magic wear suits not robes. They work in towers looming over the centers of our cities like modern day Saurons. The bankers and financiers don’t make anything. They deal purely in money, applying their arcane knowledge to grow enormous pools of that green magic. With it, they can have whatever they want.

If I had really understood it in those terms when I was younger I may have listened better in maths class. I still think that greedily going after money for money’s sake is an empty pursuit, but on the other hand, not learning magic when it exists does seem pretty foolish.

(By the way, hope you like the new posting format. I’ll try to upload a new comic every week. Fingers crossed.)

Tags: finances, Website

I have been busy these last two months incorporating a new company for my consultancy business.

Today it is finally all systems go!

The website can be found at www.focalpointgames.com. It is aimed primarily at game developers, both old and new. I have been working on some pretty in-depth game design articles, two of which are available right now, both dealing with action adventure level design. I hope to make the site a goto place for game designers to get a slightly different perspective on game design.

Meanwhile this place will now be the place that I will be putting the things I want to talk about that have less concrete value i.e. my opinions.

Thank you for checking out my sites.

Toby

Tags: consultancy, Website, Articles

I’ve been busy moving this last two weeks. It’s been hectic but we are now in new temporary digs.

The problem is that I have no games consoles until we find a permanent place to put our mountain of crap that is currently in storage. Consequently, I’ve been spending a bit more time than usual checking out iPhone games.

I have been convinced by the iPhone as a gaming platform ever since it was first announced but for the most part I’ve been pretty disappointed by the games that I’ve played. (Although I have not played enough of them for my opinion to be statistically relevant.)

I had dreamed two ears ago, (an insane dream) that Nintendo might start porting some of DS games to the platform. At the very least I had hoped that some of the better third party developers would bring their back catalogues to the iPhone. But after two and a half years there have still been very few DS ports. Cooking Mama (iTunes link) has finally made the jump but I am still waiting for some Phoenix Wright action.

My hankering for DS ports comes from my perception of an overall higher quality of games found on that platform in comparison to the iPhone.

Admittedly there are iPhone game powerhouses like Gameloft that have been pumping out games that are way above the appstore standard, but I’ve been waiting for something really awesome; a killer iPhone exclusive game. For me at least, I found one this week.

Jet Car Stunts (itunes link) is good.

From the simple radiosity inspired flat shaded graphics to the Stunt Car racer inspired acrobatics, this game just keeps bringing me back for more. Admittedly the difficulty level is steep, but death is so common and so meaningless thanks to the handy reset button that the often hilarious wipe outs and near misses are more funny than frustrating.

The tutorials are a perfect intro to a control system that feels intuitive but has a great deal of depth. The steering (via accelerometer) is perfectly implemented and I love the sound.

Jet Car Stunt’s short bursts of high skill gameplay coupled masses of re-playability makes for a perfect phone game in my opinion.

While I still wish for the iPhone’s Phantom Hour Glass to while away longer journeys, I find myself firing up Jet Car Stunts whenever I can sneak in a spare minute.

If you were ever a fan of Stunt Car Racer by Geoff Crammond, you may find this to be its spiritual successor; a game that follows that same death-defying track, while strapping on massive great rockets and launching itself through hoops like some deranged Darwin Award winner.

Five thumbs up!

Tags: games, IPhone

There has been a sudden influx of people over the last few days as various news sites have picked up on the images I added to the site three months ago. If you are coming to see those pictures, they are here.

I’m glad a few people have come to have a look because I was a bit sad when I put them up in November and virtually no one came to see them. Meanwhile I have not done much updating to the site, but that’s because I have been working on a big update. Specifically I have been morphing this site into my personal website and creating a separate consulting company site, which is looking really good, but still not ready to launch.

Meanwhile I thought I’d go ahead and push through an update on this site, stripping out the consultancy parts and instating a more casual style more in keeping with a personal homepage.