|
Post by Huntress on Jul 27, 2019 5:57:35 GMT -5
Today we're looking at yet another issue of the NT skipped, so do y'all know what you'd quite like to read instead? A full-length Shad and Saura comic series in one fell swoop, that's what. For those who haven't read about my wacky antics when trying to get this series published and the subsequent hunt for information on how comic series are now being handled, the Sauna Day Saga in a nutshell goes about like this: Finished the series after having worked on it for way too long, sent it in. Got the first part accepted and published on June 21 in Issue 870. Yaaay! Issue 871 on June 28 goes live with no second part published. I didn't notice at first because I was on holiday, but when I did, there wasn't much I could do about it but to resolve to be patient. The week of July 5 got skipped. Issue 872 went live on July 12, still no comic. I did, however, get the second part held over. Yay. The week of July 19 got skipped, presumably for Comic Con reasons. This week's issue also got skipped, presumably for - well, who even knows any more, really. In the meantime we've learned, thanks to Twillie's exchanges with support, that they don't guarantee the consecutive release of comic series parts, nor do they review and accept all parts in a series at once. Melt it down and add it to the others, I guess. But I did promise that if this dragged out any longer, I'd just release the entire series all in one go so that it could be read all in one go instead of with six-week gaps (and we're only waiting on part 2 here. Bets on how long it might take before the epilogue goes live?) So that's exactly what I'm doing here. I'm not posting this so much to get reviews - although they are, obviously, appreciated -, I'm posting this so that it can be read in sequence like series are meant to be read. And if this is the way the NT is now run then the fine folks who've kept the NTWF going for so long might as well get the occasional bonus release for it. I did stamp the unreleased parts with obnoxious watermarks; this is, after all, a public forum, and I don't have all that much faith in how competently TNT would handle the issue if nasty lurking thieveses attempted to yoink them and publish as their own. Howeverlong it might take them xP ...well, if you actually read this far then you've very much earned some comics. Enjoy, don't mind the art evolution and inconsistencies too much (I had it in works for like, 3+ years) and bonus cookie points to anyone who can spot the easter egg.
|
|
|
Post by Twillie on Jul 27, 2019 12:42:07 GMT -5
I'll have more time to comment later, but full comic arc, yes \o/ It's still really annoying the circumstances that made you post everything here at once, since the NT is being anything but friendly to comics right now. Like, what's even the point of making a comic series if they're not going to bother publishing it as one? But in the time I have, I wanna try at that easter egg challenge >w> I only did a little bit of scouting, but my guess right now is: Shad drinking from a Starbucks cup? x3 If not, I'll just have to continue the hunt later on.
|
|
|
Post by Celestial on Jul 27, 2019 12:57:10 GMT -5
I really want to give a proper critique right about now but brain is a no. I did really like this arc though. It is very funny and relatable to someone who has been in a sauna and knows what you all in the north of Europe are like about saunas. I think I know what the Easter Egg is. =D The symbol clued me in.
I see you managed to not only get Wrighton turned into a book but it made its way into Neopia. Although "Starring Me" is a very strange author name. Must be one of those later Neopet names.
|
|
|
Post by Huntress on Jul 27, 2019 14:56:38 GMT -5
But in the time I have, I wanna try at that easter egg challenge >w> I only did a little bit of scouting, but my guess right now is: Shad drinking from a Starbucks cup? x3 If not, I'll just have to continue the hunt later on. That's the other easter egg x3 I think it was also harder to spot, so kudos. I actually wanted to do something clever with the Starbucks cup design, probably with Taelia as the Starbucks mermaid, but there was no way to visually fit it into this series. So I might have to revisit that particular gag sometime later, if I keep up with the theme of Taelia's multipurpose opportunistic entrepreneurship, which I probably will. I think I know what the Easter Egg is. =D The symbol clued me in.
I see you managed to not only get Wrighton turned into a book but it made its way into Neopia. Although "Starring Me" is a very strange author name. Must be one of those later Neopet names. Yeeess C:
...realistically it'll have to be like, volume 13 out of 47 or so.
The full title is infact the official subtitle (Wrighton: Strange Memory), only mangled by the compression magic one needs to undertake when squeezing a comic this long into the 200 KB limit.
|
|
|
Post by Thorn on Jul 27, 2019 16:11:36 GMT -5
I didn't spot the Easter egg (but, seeing what it was now, definitely want to go back and look.) I enjoyed the comic though! Reminds me of my single sauna experience (can feel my head pounding as I type...) , and I do remember you saying that snow was the traditional way to cool down too.
I love Thor (?) the uni. I don't regularly read the NT so don't think I've encountered him before, but I enjoyed how drily hilarious he is.
|
|
|
Post by Gelquie on Jul 27, 2019 17:53:05 GMT -5
This was fun to read! And as someone who basically lives in the sub-arctic, this comic very much spoke to me. ^^ (Though saunas aren't so much a thing over here, or at least not to my knowledge. We have them, but usually as just a recreation thing. Must be a Europe thing. Interesting stuff, though!) Commentary!: Part 6 is an especially relatable feeling for me, since I don't do well in heat. One time at a hot springs, even though it was -40F/C (same thing at that temperature), it got so much for me that I basically did just that. Though yes, it still helps that I'm not a fur-based creature. xD
Part 7: Nice touch with the aurora scenery outside the window at the end there. ^^ (I'm a sucker for these kind of things. xD ) I did find the Easter Egg! But I don't think I can take full credit; my eyes accidentally skimmed over a hint, after not finding it the first time. Anyway, it's the same one Celes found. The one Twillie found needed some extra looking. xD
|
|
|
Post by CrimsonShroud on Aug 4, 2019 12:47:36 GMT -5
This was quite a fun read. Made me chuckle a couple of times too. (And that's rare for NT comics. ) It's great to see the whole family again. The way Shad and Saura bounce off their antics are quite humorous at times too, especially with this series. Parts 5 and 6 are definitely my favorite. Especially part 6, with the way you drew Shad and Saura diving into the snow to cool off was just cute and funny! Funny how people can so easily miss the cold weather.
On another note, I feel how frustrating (and annoying) that must be. It used to baffle me (and still kinda does) how the NT can miss or skip parts of a series (or worse, get stuck in hold-over limbo for months, if not forever. Are there THAT many comic submissions being sent in to the NT on a daily basis?) after being submitted and published in the NT. Considering what you and Twillie mentioned about the way comics are published in the times now, it seems like skipping and missing issues is going to be much more commonplace from here on, much to the frustration of comic authors all across the board.
|
|
|
Post by Liou on Aug 7, 2019 17:59:00 GMT -5
Easter egg? Oh, oh Shad reading Wrighton: Strange Memory, the Novel! It could even have looked thicker. >.> Hope Shad is enjoying it! Maybe there's a special edition with puzzles! Comments! I like how details such as Saura dragging the ice bucket to the stove and Shad getting his latte and sipping it give a clear idea of the passage of time between panels. Your businessy takes on faeries will never get old for me. Nice outfit for Taelia sans coat, and nice decor for the cafe. She's even got a cute icy cash register. The delivery of the sauna, hurtling down the mountain, is priceless and probably my favourite part. Nice angle, beautiful chaos, pure glee on Taelia's face as she aims. They can't complain, it's free! The divider and the kitchen table in part 1 kicked me all the way back to the classic Neohome era, such nostalgia, right off the bat. Oh, was Ace inside the lampshade in part 2? The gag in part 5 is simple, but the timing was on point and got a giggle from me, I found it very effective because you kept it entirely visual instead of pointledly reminding wee readers that Shoyrus are scaly dragons and the others are floofers. Happy pampered spooky petpets are a lovely pre-epilogue ending note.
|
|
|
Post by Huntress on Aug 9, 2019 4:45:44 GMT -5
Are there THAT many comic submissions being sent in to the NT on a daily basis? A-nope, the number of NT submissions is trackable (there was a recent discussion about it *digdig* here) and it seems to hover at around 70-80 total submissions per week. If anything, their problem would be lack of buffer rather than work overload. So evidence kinda points towards people-being-less-than-good-at-doing-their-jobs. Easter egg? Oh, oh Shad reading Wrighton: Strange Memory, the Novel! It could even have looked thicker. >.> Hope Shad is enjoying it! Maybe there's a special edition with puzzles! Comments! I like how details such as Saura dragging the ice bucket to the stove and Shad getting his latte and sipping it give a clear idea of the passage of time between panels. Your businessy takes on faeries will never get old for me. Nice outfit for Taelia sans coat, and nice decor for the cafe. She's even got a cute icy cash register. The delivery of the sauna, hurtling down the mountain, is priceless and probably my favourite part. Nice angle, beautiful chaos, pure glee on Taelia's face as she aims. They can't complain, it's free! The divider and the kitchen table in part 1 kicked me all the way back to the classic Neohome era, such nostalgia, right off the bat. Oh, was Ace inside the lampshade in part 2? The gag in part 5 is simple, but the timing was on point and got a giggle from me, I found it very effective because you kept it entirely visual instead of pointledly reminding wee readers that Shoyrus are scaly dragons and the others are floofers. Happy pampered spooky petpets are a lovely pre-epilogue ending note. It's actually a very Shad kind of story, come to think of it (he prefers mystery-adventures). But the whole story - as copied into Word with reasonably small font and still waiting for me to finish formatting it properly, agh - is a whopping 1,200 pages, so either his book is like volume three, it's Bible-printed, or someone pulled some strings to make it bigger on the inside.
...personally I like option three. Hm, I hadn't intended for Ace to be in that lampshade, but now that you brought it up, I quite like the idea of him waddling around all over the place like a tiny sun, climbing into lamps for comfort and serving as a night- or flashlight whenever needed. These are the kind of ideas visual gags in future comics are made of. Part three, incidentally, was the comic that glitched all to heck when I was nearly done with coloring and I had to color it all over again while cursing the skies, so I'm glad to hear that my pain paid off :'D Thank you for the indepth review, these always make me feel all fuzzy C:
|
|
|
Post by mollyscribbles on Aug 10, 2019 11:45:13 GMT -5
This was a good read! It works better when you can read it all at once; it can be a little frustrating waiting to see what happens next when just reading weekly(or bimonthly) in the NT.
|
|
|
Post by Duke Pikachu on Aug 26, 2019 20:49:00 GMT -5
Yikes, sorry to hear you and other comic creators are having trouble getting their comic stories published in a row. Well, at least Part 4 has been published as of this week's issue so you're now half way there! But since you were kind enough to post the entire comics here I'll give them all a quick review: Overall: Starting with the the artwork, it's very nice and all characters are expressive. While the line work is simplistic, the shading and attention to detail (such as spots, scratch/stretch marks, hair/fur appearance, perspective scale) makes it a more complete, complex and visually appealing image. Characterization is nicely done, we get a nice idea of the character's personality even if they only have one line and/or action. Finally I like the punchline in each one. They're not all laugh out loud but many are a nice subtle chuckle as the characters just roll with the punches. Now for some quick quips: Part 1: I wouldn't get too angry at them, Thor. After all, you all moved to Terror Mountain yet didn't expect getting your water pipes frozen would be a problem. You expect them to pay attention when another has bathed? Part 2: Saunas, grooming products, and a cafe. Like, okay, I can get the sauna, but now I want to hear how and why Taelia got into selling grooming products and running a cafe. Next she'll also have a stationery and home improvement store. Part 3: Why does it feel like every answer to travelling down Terror Mountain involves rolling in some way? Not even sledding, mainly rolling and possibly becoming a giant snowball in the process. Part 4: I would have thought having a fire creating weapon, Fire painted Petpet, or even Fire painted family member would be a standard to Terror Mountain living. Also don't Zafara breathe fire? Part 5: Well at least your skin will look great. Part 6: So how did only one melt through the snow? Part 7: The end? They probably wish, got a feeling the battle over amount of time spent in the sauna and who's going to chop for more wood is going to become a new household arguement. Epilogue: And one who thought the smell of sweat and wet fur was going to be the only thing stinking up the sauna, but yeah, if it's hot enough the sauna does seem like a good cooking and bathing time saver.
|
|
|
Post by Huntress on Aug 27, 2019 3:13:17 GMT -5
Yikes, sorry to hear you and other comic creators are having trouble getting their comic stories published in a row. Well, at least Part 4 has been published as of this week's issue so you're now half way there! After the drawn-out battle for Part 2, the rest of them seem to be getting published without issue. So far. Moreover, they've been consistently getting accepted last-last minute in the middle of Friday workdays right before the issue is due to come out, so part of me has sorta wondered if anyone on the team is keeping at least a semi-curious unofficial eye on fansites like these and passed something along. Here's hoping for the best, either way. Thank you for reviewing! =D Commentary on your commentary: - Curiously, the whole problem with water pipes freezing is, in-story, something these pets wouldn't really think about in advance (being from Mystery Island) and out-of-story I wouldn't necessarily expect it either if I moved to Terror Mountain because I'm used to living in a cold country without pipes freezing all the time. The trick is keeping water running in the pipes as often as possible. It's the sort of problem that crops up in, as they said, distant villages where any underground water lines are so long that the water running in them freezes fast when left dormant. (Water conservation Ain't A Thing when you live in the frozen north. By rights they should run their taps every now and again just as a preventive measure, but they don't live there full-time so they haven't internalized the frozen-north-life.) (My headcanon of the Terror Mountain utility network and settlement planning is pretty extensive wouldyabelieve.)
- ...whut, do Zafaras seriously breathe fire? Goshdangit how has this golden nugget of comic potential eluded me for this long? I need to do something with this posthaste. Although having dug around a bit I can't find any canon information about it - it does ring a vague bell but are you sure that it wasn't, like, some sort of a throwaway contradictory neopedia article or somesuch? Saura's petpet is basically one of his standard cooking tools and the rest of the gang is permanently blissfully oblivious to how he gets things done in the background. If not for Ace, he might've gotten something like a Portable Kiln to aid in daily cooking (dangit, more comic potential. hey, actually very solid comic potential. WATCH THIS SPACE.) He just chose a petpet instead, cos you can get them to follow orders.
- Part 6 is Rule of Funny xD
- As one who grew up with saunas, arguments over who gets to spend time in it and who has to chop wood totally are standard household arguments xP
- If your sauna smells like sweat, you're doing it wrong (the way theirs is set up, you wash in the same space, and the procedure is to rinse the space out and keep a log burning after you leave the sauna so that it dries everything out) but wet fur might easily be a problem, haven't really tried to keep a bunch of grumpy floofies in a small hot space to see what happens. As a rule, it ends up smelling mostly smokey, plus if they're at all reasonable they'll air it out every now and again. Of course, they might not be very reasonable. But ye average sauna temperature ranges between 90-110 C (190-230 F) so you can cook eggs in there no probs. Haven't tried anything more persnickety like steak but youtube videos tell me it's possible.
|
|
|
Post by Duke Pikachu on Aug 27, 2019 19:57:01 GMT -5
- ...whut, do Zafaras seriously breathe fire? Goshdangit how has this golden nugget of comic potential eluded me for this long? I need to do something with this posthaste. Although having dug around a bit I can't find any canon information about it - it does ring a vague bell but are you sure that it wasn't, like, some sort of a throwaway contradictory neopedia article or somesuch? Saura's petpet is basically one of his standard cooking tools and the rest of the gang is permanently blissfully oblivious to how he gets things done in the background. If not for Ace, he might've gotten something like a Portable Kiln to aid in daily cooking (dangit, more comic potential. hey, actually very solid comic potential. WATCH THIS SPACE.) He just chose a petpet instead, cos you can get them to follow orders.
Yup, it's one of the old Species Abilities that Neopets could use in the Battledome. Credit goes to CrimsonShroud for pointing it out to me (the Zafara character in his stories, Arthur, uses this trick often). All the others for Zafara are pretty standard: Strike, Leap, Slam, Block, & Screech. Zafara Flame is the only "wait what?". Going through the others for the species you own: Lupe: Nothing special. Uni: Have the ability "Rejuvinate" which creates potions. They also have "Joust" which, while isn't surprising, does mean they use their horns as a piercing weapon. Shoyru: They have a surprising amount of fire moves too, more than Scorchio have! Flame, Inferno, and Fire Stare. Also Shoyru had a natural minor resistance to fire. Ixi: Nothing special Ability wise, but they do have a strong resistance to earth but a minor weakness to darkness. Aisha: They look to have some sound-based powers that aren't normal animal sounds: Sonar and Sonic Shield. Other funny/notable ones I noticed: Bruce have "Jive", Chia have "Smile" and "Giggle", Draik have "Gaze of Evil", Flotsam have "Flourish", Gelert have "Slobber", Jubjub have "Fire", Kacheek also have "Smile" as well as "Flower Power" and "Sneeze", Kau have "Restore" that also create potions but also tiny resistance to all elements, Kiko have "Expectorate", Krawk have "Fire Breath" and "Death Stare", Kyrii have an ability called "Deplete" that looks to do nothing, Lenny have "Fade Out", Meerca have "Mind Trance", Moehog have "Fire" and "Lightning", Nimmo have "Lightning", Ogrin have "Stupefy", Wocky have "Fire Shield", and Yurble has "Yodel".
|
|
|
Post by CrimsonShroud on Aug 28, 2019 13:36:07 GMT -5
- ...whut, do Zafaras seriously breathe fire? Goshdangit how has this golden nugget of comic potential eluded me for this long? I need to do something with this posthaste. Although having dug around a bit I can't find any canon information about it - it does ring a vague bell but are you sure that it wasn't, like, some sort of a throwaway contradictory neopedia article or somesuch? Saura's petpet is basically one of his standard cooking tools and the rest of the gang is permanently blissfully oblivious to how he gets things done in the background. If not for Ace, he might've gotten something like a Portable Kiln to aid in daily cooking (dangit, more comic potential. hey, actually very solid comic potential. WATCH THIS SPACE.) He just chose a petpet instead, cos you can get them to follow orders.
Apparently, Zafaras have the innate ability to breathe fire. It used to be called Zafara Flame. Thing about it is, finding official art of Zafaras demonstrating this unique ability is pretty much impossible, since it seems TNT themselves either forgot or simply never got around to making art of it. That, and the lack of Zafara characters in plots may have contributed to the lack of proof this ability exists. It's pretty much a myth at this point.
The only evidence that can be found is this in-depth Battledome page. I kinda wish they kept the species specific abilities for the new Battledome, but alas.
The only art I could find was from a Neopian Times comic. Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me remember which issue (as it was many years ago since I read it), but I do remember it was about a yellow Zafara who was trying to make amends with the Snowager for "starting off on the wrong foot". The last panel revealed the Zafara encased in a block of ice from neck to toe, breathing fire to melt it.
Having said all that, I'm looking forward to the moment Saura realizes/remembers he can just breathe fire.
|
|