The Stone of Adventure

Missing Materia 106 & 107

2009-11-10T04:19:00.003-05:00

There are three things I've always had problem with making comics.

1. Drawing pages in the correct order. I often draw pages ahead of schedule, like the last page with Rikku, or this page with Tifa & Jessie were started weeks in advance, when I should have been working on the page for that week.

2. Having a buffer of pages. I have inconsistent amounts of available time from week to week, so some weeks I draw three pages, other weeks I don't have the chance to even start working on a single page. The way to prevent this is to have several weeks of updates built up. An author would be working on pages sometimes weeks in advance.

My problem with this is that I either release more than one page during a week where I've made more than one page (preventing the creation of a buffer), or I create a buffer, then have several weeks of bad luck where I can't work on anything. I've put up both pages I created this week, but I know it'll bite me in the butt to not save one.

3. Lack of planning. I do create plans, but I never seem to be able to keep up. The Yuffie fight and they FFX-2 girls scene where planned out, but this part with Tifa starts the "winging it" period. I'll have to try to take the time to at least plan out enough to make it half-way to the end of the series.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 106 / Comic

^R Missing Materia Page 107 / Comic

Missing Materia 104 &105, Artwork

2009-11-05T04:48:00.002-05:00

New Artwork from Xenodora, as well as gift art from Darrell31316 of Blonde Marvel, with two color variations.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 104 / Comic

^R Missing Materia Page 105 / Comic

^PG Xenodora Halloween 2009 / Artwork

^PG Darrell31316's Pulse Fan Art / Gift Artwork

^PG Darrell31316's Pulse Fan Art 2 / Gift Artwork

Missing Materia 103

2009-10-29T07:02:00.002-04:00

Hopefully I'll be posting both the 104th and 105th pages next week which will end this scene, with the story then moving to Tifa.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 103 / Comic

Artwork Filler

2009-10-22T05:44:00.002-04:00

No page this week, I didn't really even have the chance to work on it. I'll try to post the 104th and 105th pages together to make up for it.

There's a couple of things I should look into, some people can't register in the forum, and many of the disqus comments aren't showing up on the related pages.

I've been trying out the Opera browser. I've been unhappy with Safari v4, it takes longer to turn on, and it pauses at times. I like Opera, but I have had a few problems with certain websites, and it doesn't support some css3 functions.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^PG More Prepared Than She Looks / Artwork

^PG Bubbles in Blue / Artwork

Missing Materia 102

2009-10-15T02:08:00.003-04:00

I got a Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet on Amazon for $59. They have a better model called the "Pen & Touch", but I didn't see myself using the touch feature, and decided to save the $30 instead.

But it's a Christmas present for myself, ... so I'll have to wait until then to try it out.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 102 / Comic

^R Missing Materia Page 101 Colored / Comic

Missing Materia 101 and Artwork

2009-10-08T03:12:00.002-04:00

I haven't been keeping up with the shaded coloring the last few weeks. I'm not sure if I should go back later and edit them, or if I should move ahead. FFX-2 girls next week, and continuing for a total of three pages, then on to Tifa (for the first time since 2006).

You know, someone commented it had been a long time since Annie appeared in Pulse. She last appeared in the last page of the 8th chapter, dated May 2007. That sounds bad, but neither Eve or Tifa have appeared in their own comics since 2006.

I just realized yesterday that Heroes started, I've missed three episodes already. I guess I'll have to watch them on Hulu.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 101 / Comic

^R Vampire Mistress / Artwork

^PG Alien Invasion / Artwork

Missing Materia 100 and Artwork

2009-10-01T04:23:00.002-04:00

A some clarifications from last week, this was always meant to be the last chapter of Missing Materia. It's going to have the same ending as before. I'm not sure about what other series will have an ending. I intend to try to create endings to as many as possible, but I'm not sure I want to either spend years completing them, or throw together unsatisfying endings. Many of the series don't have planed out endings.

The Adept may stay up on DruckDuck (no ending needed), My Big Life really would only need to get through the origin or so, Lockheart only needs to complete the second chapter (I have to play through FF7 for reference to do the 3rd chapter), Missing Materia might be over in Dec/Jan, and PeEVEed I'm not sure about. I could make something up, but it doesn't really have an ending planned out.

I'm not yet sure what I want to do, or what the others are going to do yet. I'm going to do one of three things, either Pulse, a space comic, or do a toned-down Pulse remake. The picture I drew this week is probably the most toned-down Annie would be physically.

I think the only things I'm sure about are that I want to simplify, and that I'd like to at least try out doing something that I'm not afraid to show people or post links about. I think that I want to do something different. Maybe I'll get sick of it and go back to doing something unreasonable in a year or two, but I don't want to wait another 10 years to see if people will read something more mainstream.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 100 / Comic

^PG Pulse v2 / Artwork

Missing Materia 99 and Artwork

2009-09-24T03:51:00.003-04:00

I've been debating the site's future with the others recently. I've always had trouble sticking to one thing, but I want to move to doing just one comic, or no more than I can keep continuously updating every week.

The issue with that is why should we continue to use Snoopy's webspace? Varchild wants to go back to Earthfall, and none of the others (than me) have more than one comic. Snoopy has been a gracious host, but it's been bothering me for a long time that we're still leeching off him. There are free places we could go, although it requires breaking up the site, and using DA (or similar places) as our galleries.

Honestly, I'd like to simplify. We'd each have one comic, and each have our own site. The current site hasn't been doing too well with hits anyway. We only get about half of the traffic from 2006. We're back to the 2002 range. I've always wanted to try the one-comic-site thing anyway. I've had a big multi-comic site for almost 10 years now.

This wouldn't happen right away, I'll be continuing to update here until at least the 10th anniversary in June. Missing Materia will be completed, but I'm don't know what else. One theory would be to provide an end for each comic, but I would either need to produce quick unsatisfying endings, or take another year or two to complete them.

I'm not yet sure what would be the "one comic". Most likely either Pulse (but maybe starting over at the beginning), or something new. There's a fair chance whatever I do will be PG or PG-13, not R.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 99 / Comic

^PG Country Time 2 / Artwork

Missing Materia 98, Gift Art, and Artwork

2009-09-17T01:25:00.002-04:00

This week, there's some Pulse gift art from Master Toymaker, some old artwork never seen before on the site, and the original Pulse picture increased in size and edited slightly.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 98 / Comic

^PG Sketch-A-Day 090909 / Gift Art

^R Jungle Girl / Artwork

^PG Sideways Annie / Artwork

^PG Pulse & Titan Edit / Artwork

Missing Materia 97

2009-09-10T02:31:00.002-04:00

Here's a site you might want to know about.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 97 / Comic

Missing Materia 96

2009-09-03T02:21:00.001-04:00

Fixed a few things on the site, but nothing worth mentioning.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 96 / Comic

Missing Materia 95

2009-08-27T04:32:00.003-04:00

Slow week, but I've been trying to build up a buffer of MM pages. The next three pages are in various degrees of completion.

Five more pages after today's installment with Amy and Yuffie, then there's 2-3 pages with Rikku, then Tifa for a few pages, then back to Amy and Yuffie for the start of the big conclusion (the characters meet back up during this part).

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 95 / Comic

Missing Materia 94 & Fixes

2009-08-20T07:25:00.002-04:00

I think there may be too many special effects in the last panel on that 7th Xom page.

Who knows what possessed me to do shading coloring on that MM page, it probably took me as long to shade it as it took for the rest of the steps combined. I guess I've set a precedent though, so I'll continue expecting to keep up that level of coloring and see what happens.

I altered the comics in the current MM chapter, and the Lockheart pages to have the new header and footer. The Lockheart pages have the same text, but I switched the font to Superstrong, which is the font used for the narration in the second chapter.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 94 / Comic

^R My Big Life Page 7 Completed Coloring / Comic

My Big Life 7

2009-08-13T02:04:00.003-04:00

To replace the free extreme tracker (they claimed I broke some kind of rule... after 7-8 years), I switched to another free hits counter/tracker. This one had the option of being either a javascript or just html code. I picked html considering it was -so much- simpler. It doesn't track referrer links though.

I went back and started recoloring the Xom pages in a more detailed way. They're a larger file size, but they look better. I couldn't finish the coloring on the new page in time for the update.

I'm not sure which people would prefer, either comic pages as detailed in coloring as I can manage, even if it means there is no chance of more than one page per week. Or if they'd want something simple (like simple flat coloring without shading), if it meant there was the potential for more than one page.

Years ago, I used to do 2-3 pages a week. But I had more time, I was willing to give up nearly all of my free time, (I obviously had more simple coloring), and I was a lot more sloppy in both writing, editing, and in drawing the artwork.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R My Big Life Page 1 Recolored / Comic

^R My Big Life Page 2 Recolored / Comic

^R My Big Life Page 7 / Comic

My Big Life 6 & Artwork

2009-08-06T06:59:00.003-04:00

I've edited all of the pages of My Big Life, and the 8th and 9th chapters of Pulse. ...edited them to alter what appears above and below the comics pages, the pages are the same otherwise. I also fixed some source-file-related problems with them, and instead of saving them individually during lettering, I've started creating multi-page entire-chapter files.

There are some problems with two pages, partly because I used to create a second smaller and flattened version of the artwork for each page, and I would use that in the lettering process instead of the full-size version. There is one page (202) where I added some water and energy effects only the smaller version, and another (with Lucy) where I have only the smaller version (and I'll have to recolor it from the inks). I already had to re-freckle Lucy on the largest version of the pages.

Considering it's now one 21 page file, I tried exporting the entire 9th chapter of Pulse as a PDF. Even rescaled from 600dpi down to 300dpi, it was over 25 MBs.

I posted some tests in the forum where I was considering making the comic pages larger pixel-wise. Instead of the current 630 pixels wide, I considered making them either 758 pixels wide, or even 800 pixels wide. It's definitely possible, but I decided to play it safe and keep the current size. I might consider it again, but more tests to see how much it affects file size might be important.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R My Big Life Page 6 / Comic

^PG Mountains Out of Molehills / Artwork

Comic Fixes, Artwork & Gift Art

2009-07-29T22:44:00.005-04:00

The guest art section problem is half-fixed, It seems the site has broken some rule and now the Extreme Tracker has been disabled, the images that appear on the gallery page haven been changed, and there's a new favicon for the site.

I also started adding sort of splash images on the main pages for the comics. I'm sort of experimenting with what might look good. Some might require specially drawn pictures just to fit that shape.

No Xom this week. I have been trying to complete the coloring on pages from Pulse chapters 8 & 9, so here's some of that. I think I have 6 pages left.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^PG 9th Anniversary / Gift Artwork

^R Pulse Page 205 Colored / Comics

^R Pulse Page 221 Colored / Comics

^R Pulse Page 223 Colored / Comics

^PG A Different Shade of Raven / Artwork

Scarlet Widow 41, My Big Life 5 & Artwork

2009-07-23T00:20:00.004-04:00

First of all, SaburoX drew a great 9th Anniversary gift art picture of Annie on his DeviantART page. I thought I'd link directly to the item, then add it to the gift art gallery next week.

On a related note, I think the gift art area needs to be redesigned. I'm not sure how though. I sort of wish I hadn't grouped the entries by author, and that I kept them listed chronologically. Now it's difficult to know which pictures are new out of a big page of pictures.

Another option would be that instead of having different pages based on which comic they relate to, that each author would have his or her own page. Instead of all of the entries by ___ being on different pages because they are characters from different comics, they would be all together.

I'm also still considering altering the style of and what information is at the top and the bottom of the comic pages, but it'll probably be another week or two before I make any changes.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Scarlet Widow Page 41 / Comic

^R My Big Life Page 5 / Comic

^R Escape from Knockerville / Artwork

^PG Sure You Don't Want to Go? / Artwork

^PG Valiant III and Maybe the IV / Artwork

My Big Life 4 & Artwork

2009-07-16T07:22:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to fix some typos on some older pages that I've known about for a while, and I've been trying to add shading to some of the Pulse pages that didn't get the full coloring treatment at the time.

I also ran all of the pictures on the site through a free image optimizer called ImageOptim. It only works with png and jpg files, but it does make a difference. It made most jpg files at least 2% smaller (which is a lot over a whole site), and certain files (like the thumbnails) were as much as 40% smaller.

Also, I started a topic in the forum about if I should simplify the information that appears on the top of each comic page. If you want to read about it, or want to share your opinion, you can do so here.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R My Big Life Page 4 / Comic

^R Pulse Page 222 -Colored- / Comic

^PG Tifa's Winter Gear / Artwork

Scarlet Widow 40, My Big Life 3 & Artwork

2009-07-09T08:22:00.002-04:00

New stuff from Omac this week.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Scarlet Widow Page 40 / Comic

^R My Big Life Page 3 / Comic

^PG Tinkerbell / Artwork

^PG Pulse Chapter 10 Preview / Artwork

My Big Life 2

2009-07-02T01:58:00.002-04:00

Slow week. Here's the next page for the anniversary comic. This page introduces Iona, Xom's doctor. The next page sort of gives a simple explanation about what's going on.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R My Big Life Page 2 / Comic

My Big Life 1 & Artwork

2009-06-25T08:03:00.004-04:00

On the 29th is the 9th anniversary of the site, I guess this is the last update before then. I'm not sure if I used to update on Sunday, or if the date is on different days every year.

He's the start of a new comic because of the anniversary. I'd odd that I'm doing that as I often comment that it would be a good thing to have fewer comics to work on... This series will have pretty short chapter though, with the first only being 6-7 pages long. This first chapter is sort of a this-is-what-her-life-is-like sort of thing, with an origin later. This will be sort of an intermission for Missing Materia.

I should have planned ahead better with some stuff, but here's a picture from Omac.. and I scrounged around and found some unfinished pictures.

I've been fixing/changing more stuff on the website. Hopefully I'll have everything ironed out in the next few weeks.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R My Big Life Page 1 / Comic

^R Six / Artwork

^PG Queen of Thieves / Artwork

^PG Overload / Artwork

^PG Juno vs. Buttons / Artwork

^PG The Al Bhed Hello Inks / Artwork

Missing Materia 93

2009-06-19T07:00:00.004-04:00

Good news. A reader (I shouldn't use his full name I imagine) Thomas graciously created a new comic php script for the site. He, as well as others I've heard from browse the internet with javascript turned off, and then couldn't see the back/next navigation for the comics.

The new php script looks similar to the javascript one, it even creates page of page links divided by chapter by itself. There are also chapter navigation (previous chapter, back to start of chapter, next chapter) buttons when viewing a comic. The script also uses the same web address as the javascript version for the comic pages, so the comments were not wiped again.

I've set it up for many, but not all of the comics yet. I've also made some other long-overdue changes, like fixing some sloppy mistakes, and I've started a process that will allow me to change all of the header and footers on every single page with by editing only one file each. Some more validation, error checking, and link checking needs to be done though.

The gallery javascript was also replaced with a php script I found a couple of weeks ago. This one should seem very similar from a visitors point of view, but it requires far fewer files and it automatically takes one big list and divides it into groups of 10 (I had to do that manually with the old one).

Next week is the anniversary (closest update before I guess). Things might not be ready yet for the Xom Rom Atom comic though (maybe the planning will go faster than I think), so it'll either be that, or more MM. The Xom comic will be done, worst case it just might not start exactly on time.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 93 / Comic

Missing Materia 92 & Artwork

2009-06-11T04:14:00.002-04:00

I've made some changes to a number of pages, mostly to move closer to completing the last site overhaul.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 92 / Comic

^PG Ready for her Color / Artwork

Missing Materia 91 & Artwork

2009-06-04T03:23:00.002-04:00

Okay, I've got at least a temporary setup for the comics. It's javascript, people can bookmark a specific page, it allows the comment system (although the old comments are gone considering the pages are at a different address on the server), the navigation works in a similar way, it's acceptable even if javascript is off. It does require a few extra steps though. It's also completely flat, so it can be backed up very easily.

The negative for it is that the other method was really one single web page that paged through the comic pages. If you wanted to edit the textual information that appeared along with the comic on all of the pages, you would just edit the one single page. This way each page has it's own html page, so I tried to keep them as simple as possible, putting most of the information back on the main page about the comic. The javascript automatically creates the back/next links between all of the different html pages, instead of making the back/next pages using just the images.

Each of the two methods has it's advantages and disadvantages. This way the back/next navigation is on both the top and bottom, and the web address for the pages is more manually controlled (which causes fewer possible problems with the comment system). Also text and other special information could be added to one specific page without appearing on the others.

I've also set up a new forum (although with the comment system working again it might have not been as important). Like usual, I sort of picked an unusual oddball choice. I had always thought that flat file forums run better on non-big sites. I found a flat file forum that's still being updated, and it's pretty nice. I've been making a skin for it, I haven't fully tested everything.

-Lightfoot

Updates for this week:

^R Missing Materia Page 91 / Comic

^PG Eyes of Destruction / Artwork

New Information

2009-05-28T19:54:00.004-04:00

Nevermind about the last post. Snoopy talked to the new hosting company and they turned on, or fixed whatever was preventing php stuff from working. Luckily I was able to use time machine to grab old versions of certain pages from last week and turn everything back to the way it was. There might be a few glitches though.

I might use those big pages with links to each page on the site somehow though. EIther using it as the index page for each comic's directory (where you see the comic directly now), just as an optional full chapter list page, or just put all of that information below the comic on the comic page.

With that hopefully fixed, I guess a forum decision is next.

Edit: nevermind about that nevermind. The scripts seem to work, but they are only displaying the newest comic image even if you push back or forward. I'll have to look into the issue more. I probably shouldn't have jumped into reversing the website back without fully testing everything.