New comic! err... page one of new comic

And no title. And no real details. Does this still classify as an actual post?

It's official-ish!

Some of the Yosumin team went out for drinks tonight in Shibuya. It was SO MUCH FUN, its been a long while since I have gone to an izakaya (erm, Japanese style bar?).

Great fun, great people and one too many drinks. Ahem. Yes, this is a psuedo drunken blog post. I wanted to say that the Japanese developer blog for Yosumin recently tipped their hat to me (although they show really early, unfinished art which is quite a bummer. Ah well...) Although it's written in Japanese, here's a screen grab/ quick photoshop of it to help illustrate;


In other news, the Yongen/ Vowels music video has finally made its way to MTV Japan and is currently airing. Europe is next I think and I have NO idea about any other places. I will let you know when it does eventually pop up however (I am especially waiting for it to hit my home turf - Australia).


(woo-hoo!)

Yamato/ Starblazers - First viddy

HAHA! This is awesome, many of the cuts from the Yamato (Star Blazers) promo were produced at my studio. I hadn't seen the finals until i looked on YouTube just now, before this a lot of 2D animations were missing and many of the 3D cuts were verry different. Man I need to work harder to keep up with these guys.. They are damned good at what they do (especially Tanaka-san and Suzukisan)

I have read the script and no, I won't translate any of this for you. Far to time consuming. You know... that and contractual agreements. Anyways, this is the first look at STAR BLAZERS the film, coming soon.

(Awesome)

Yamato/ Star blazers

While not directly involved in this film (you wont find my name in the credits), many of the guys seated about me are in the process of making cuts for it. My involvement is standing behind these guys occasionally and encouraging them, making comments like 'Is the color of that nebula REALLY ok?'

In anycase, I mention this now because articles have started apperaing in newspapers here in Japan (I have scanned two articles, but they are on another machine - the above image was swiped from the web).  Yes thats right, After 20 years. STARBLAZERS is making a comeback!

I watched this as a kid in Australia and now I work in a studio where this is being made. Talk about luck huh? I will of course keep you al posted.

... I wonder if they have any plans for film tie in comics?

Yosumin Addendum

I really should have posted this last week when it was still fresh, but here you can find the Yosumin Developrs Blog updated by Director Iwasaki-san (I keep saying it, he IS Yosumin, such a nice chirpy guy).  Wherein you can see concept art and the like. Akin to this;

Check back from time to time as I think they will be releasing a heap of ideas we had. All of which was a heap of fun to be involved in.

Yosumin is here!

Today Yosumin went live on- erm... XBox Live arcade and Windows. Square Enix also launched this website (Featuring, you guessed it, a heap of my art). Its great that its finally here and I hope that many people play it, I am sure those who do will enjoy it.

On a completely different yet distantly related note, I finally got around to watching Final Fantasy 7; Advent Children on Blueray and I have to say that it's not bad at all. I finished FF7 when it came out (I bought the disk 3 times and a second playstation because I broke my first in a fight with a Leviathan or something... Got excited and yanked the machine off the table. Can't tell you how glad I am that the PS3 controllers are wireless)

Looking at the credits, I realised that I know some of the contracted companies that worked on the film. Which is awesome. I never thought I could be this close to one of the biggest influences of my teens. This was the game after all that showed me that games could make you feel. It's perhaps one of the reasons I kept trying to create my own worlds. It was definitely an inspiration for me when it first was released and after watching this I realise that it still is.

YOSUMIN! SOON SOON SOON!

I just got this email in the office which means I may have beaten the other big game blogs to it (Highly unlikely) but here it is folks. The official release date for Yosumin on XBox Live (27th of May)! I may need to buy an xbox soon (meaning I will have all of this gens consoles... aint a baaad thing right?)


And then there is this. An absolutely great review of Vowels and its author (me). Very insightful, even from my perspective. Check out Mr Schmidt's other comics. Very interesting comics and MAN what a great way to review a comic (in comic form). I would like to see more reviews done this way. Fantastic.