And who are you, the proud lord said

Hello there.
It's been a while.

So what have I been up to?

For starters I saw GODZILLA. And it was everything I could possibly hope for in a modern day take on a traditional Godzilla movie. And unlike Pacific Rim, it's actually making money. So good news for everyone.


Secondly, I had mouth surgery. Why? Well because for the past few years I'd been dealing with the fact that one of my wisdom teeth basically fell apart in my mouth. Not long after this happened I felt an undeniably shockingly painful bit of pain in that area. Very similar to the pain I felt during my root canal when my nerve endings were torn out. So, I assumed that the nerve had died. And that seemed to be the case. Until about a month ago when suddenly the whole right side of my mouth started feeling INTENSE pain.
On top of that, my top left wisdom tooth was starting to develop little cracks and fissures as well. So off to a dentist I went. And by some amazing luck, the dentist I found does everything based on sedation. And she didnt even poke me in any sensitive spots.

She took one look in there and said "yeah, all 4 are coming out."
Probably because my mouth looked like this:

Scribble a beard on that image for a more accurate representation.

So I went to a surgeon, they gave me a bunch of hydrocodone and other crap to take and told me to come back in a couple of days. I'll be honest here, I'd never 'been under' before in terms of general anesthetic.
On top of that I didn't want to be one of those unlucky smucks who are awake during surgery. That's one of my top 10 "things that will make me shit myself" fears.

So by the time I was laying down on the chair I was an absolute nervous wreck. Probably as bad as I was back when I was having my anxiety attacks 3 years ago. But lo and behold, it was exactly as everyone said it would be. It was akin to time travel. One moment I'm asking the doctor if talking will help calm me down, and INSTANTLY I am waking up in a soft bed with my mouth full of blood, gauze, saliva, and missing 4 teeth.

After that began my new diet of sloops, gloops, and glops as I do not dare eat anything solid with all the stitches in my mouth. Mashed potatoes, jello, ice cream, applesauce, broth, some types of soups. I still have alot of these too, since this surgery was only 2 weeks ago.

After a week I went back in so they could remove my stitches (which had already fallen out), they told me everything was good, gave me a special syringe hose thing to clean out the ghastly holes in my mouth with, and sent me home with a clean bill of health. So now my mouth looks like this:

Go ahead and scribble a beard on that image, too.

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What ELSE have I been up to?
Well I managed to eek out 2 Catface episodes while I was recovering which was very difficult as the pain medications had me pretty much high as a kite and I just might stop to check you out 24/7 so I spent most of my time staring into nothingness or sleeping.

One of the Catfaces IS online now so here you go.



I had quite alot of fun with this one as I got to paint a bunch of new backgrounds and draw all those movie posters you briefly see in the shot outside the theater. Other episode isn't out yet and Weebl sent me a new one to do just yesterday.

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What else, what else. OH!


After 4 or more years of seeming to be vaporware, another ancient game I was looking forward to has managed to eek its way into existence much like Black Mesa Source.


STALKER: LOST ALPHA
It's out.
Yes I am as shocked as you are.

 

I still can't believe it. It came out literally the day after my surgery. I like to think my hopes of it being released are what gave me the strength to live through that experience.
Either way, you might be wondering what it is.

After Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl was released, way back in 2007 (after being in development since before 2002), alot of features had been cut from the game. Guns, characters, monsters, anomalies, even whole massive chunks of the environment had been cut.

The developers uploaded a free alpha build of what the game USED to be like so people could see everything that had changed. This inspired some modders to find ways of implementing all these cut things into a new version of the game. The way it was originally meant to be, technically.

It's not perfect but it is glorious. And basically the closest thing I'm ever going to get to a new STALKER game since GSC Gameworld studios were gutted and Survarium turned out to be a piece of shit.


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Other good news is that the new Kirby game I'd been looking forward to for several months for the Nintendo 3ds is finally out. And much like Lost Alpha, it too is glorious.
And in tandem with the last 3 kirby games, it is full of very subtle and not-so-subtle callbacks to old Kirby titles.

By far my favorite is when I discovered that holding UP in front of the moon in the background of one of the maps lead to a secret door and room. It was exactly like what the moon did briefly in one part of the original Game Boy Kirby's Dreamland. After passing through it took me to a secret room and the original Kirby's Dreamland music even began to play. A nice easter egg for those who've been playing Kirby since the beginning.

There's alot of other callbacks and references as well but it would take me hours to list them all. The game is brilliant though. And much like RETURN TO DREAMLAND on wii, manages to be relatively challenging in quite a few areas.

They also upgraded some of the older Kirby powers.
- Rock now hurts enemies when transforming into the rock and ALSO when transforming back.
- Dashing forward then hitting rock transform makes kirby slide along the ground as the rock, taking out enemies while remaining invincible.
- You can now charge Rock up, turning one of kirby's 'hands' into a giant rock fist that uppercuts enemies and sends them flying to FUCKYOU.
 - Sword now has a dash-upwards move
- Spike and moving upwards now turns Kirby into a single very tall spike with very long range that can pierce anything. It works downwards too now as well.
- Wheel can now be charged by holding down, causing the wheel to build up speed
- Spear is back and has new attacks for every direction
- Beam is faster in every way
- Spark and Shock have been combined again like they were in Superstar

Theres a lot of new powers as well but that's too much to write about.

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But yeah there you go.
Had surgery.
Played games.
Made cartoons.

That's basically all thats happened as of late.

OH

actually.

I forgot something very important.


A bit before my surgery, Valve announced a special contest for TI4, the big competitive DOTA2 tournament. This came right before a GREAT balance update that buffed three of my favorite heroes (Tidehunter, Silencer, and Undying). The contest was to create products that could be sold at TI4, which included posters.

Months prior, I had started on a piece of DOTA2 fanart, featuring some of my favorite supports. Like many things I start, work and other stuff got in the way and I stopped working on it. This contest however inspired me to finish it and its probably the best painting I've ever done.

Please vote for it here.
It won't get in but I do appreciate the votes.

About a week ago, my friend Trickyclock (creator of the Little Buddy sailor hat for the pyro in Team Fortress 2), came to me wanting to collaborate. He and I had collaborated before on a flare gun for the TF2 pyro.

This time however, we were making a sticker for Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
Much like hats for tf2, stickers and skins are all the rage in CS:GO.
So he gave me some basic directions of what he wanted and I drew a thing:

You can vote that design as well here.




Thank you for voting if you do.

It looks like another hailstorm is about to hit this house, so I bid you all adieu.
I need to fix the music player on this blog.