I have no idea why the forum is down right now... I'm kind of hoping it'll fix itself if we wait a day or two. If not, I'll see what I can do.

January 05, 2009 - Update: Alright, I deleted some old cache and now the forum seems to be working perfectly again.

Yes, the -end of the Pawn series-. I forgot to mention in there that he wouldn't have died if you chose to bluff your way into making him hand over the gun. Well, that's one less obligation for me. Perhaps I'll actually bother colouring some of the Cloudflash Mix comics now, or perhaps I'll leave them to the last second on Friday as usual.

edit: Damn, I sexed up the Cloudflash logo while changing the "2004-2008" to "2004-2009". I am also going to be using new update avatars now. I think it's about time I got some work done on Cloudflash again. I think I'll bring back the quick reply feature within the next couple of days.

I finally placed an actual link to the Cloudflash Characters page somewhere on the site, so now it's possible to find it without going to that one forum topic or memorizing the URL. The link can be found in the Miscellaneous section for now... I plan to have a link to it in the site navigation later. It'll probably swap places with the "Credits" button, but I need to think of a new look for the buttons before I do so. I might draw a cloud or something for the button template. I also added a -page with some of my Nintendo DS drawings- on it to the Miscellaneous section. I was literally only able to find a few pictures of "Deneb" on Google Images, so I'm mostly hoping that Google Images will pick that up. Cloudflash pretty much stands no chance in hell if people are Googling stuff like "free games", but I think it can put up a good fight when it comes to uncommon stuff like this, though our page rank has been dropping a bit... Anyhow... Lastly, I added my first rant-like thing to the Miscellaneous section, as well. I've been meaning to write some tl;dr's about my views on life. I sometimes ended up doing so on other forums, but it was all in bits and pieces, some parts not fully explained... I think I said everything I wanted to in one essay, though. I have other in-depth views on smaller things in life, but this one's just about life in general.

Wait, that wasn't the last thing... I also added some more avatars to the forum's avatar gallery. I created a new section there called "Cloudflash", which contains avatars of Cloudflash characters as well as the random people that appear in the Cloudflash Mix comics. I usually have a hard time making generic characters for the comics, so I'm going to give the ones I've used some names and start recycling them. You may recognize two of the guys from the most recent comic; the orange-haired guy is from "Rebels" and the blond-haired guy is from "A True Friend". I'm not going to add them to the Cloudflash Characters page, but I might make a "Cloudflash Mix Characters" page later.

Oh, and more input is needed on the forum for whether or not I should do two Cloudflash Mix comics per week or not and what day the second comic should be on.

It's not actually February 9th as I write this, but it's February 9th already in a lot of other places... Anyhow, most of you have probably noticed that the forum is down. This is due to some kind of problem with our host, so there's nothing I can do about it. We'll just have to wait until they fix it. On to business, Cloudflash Mix is now going to be updated every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. I know I said I'd do two comics a week, so what's this third comic? Well, Derek Steel is going to assist C-Mix as an additional artist. He'll be making comics from my list of ideas... though he might have his own ideas sometimes, I dunno. If the credits in the comic have my name and his, then the idea was mine and the art is his. If it only has one of our names, then... well, that one person did the entire comic/idea alone. If we start to run dry on ideas, then Cloudflash Mix will go down to two comics per week. If things are still looking grim, it'll go back to one comic a week.

-A Valentine's Day themed Cloudflash Mix comic here

-I added a "Click here for the latest" link on the Comics page underneath Cloudflash Mix's picture, so now you won't have to go to the first comic and then make your way to the newest one. The picture is a part of that same link, so clicking it will also take you to the newest comic. The link that is the comic's title still goes to the first comic, though.

-Some of the forum font colours and backgrounds were a bit screwy... I either forgot about them or never got around to it. For example, if you tried to edit your signature, both the font and background colour would be white... I had to throw some black font in to counter the white backgrounds. Anyhow, I've fixed that up now; most font should now be white and all of the text area backgrounds should be a sorta dark, dull blue.

-I made it so if you post a link, it's underlined... It was sorta hard to tell what was a link and what wasn't, especially if you've clicked the link since I have the "visited link" colour as an off-white colour, making it look similar to normal text. Anyhow, they're underlined now.

-A new drawing here if anyone's interested

-I added alt tags to a bunch of images on the site, so maybe Google Images will be able to pick them up a bit better... I was only using title tags before since I thought they were the same thing, but title tags would show the text when you mouseovered them, something alt tags seemed to be slow at or fail at doing sometimes.

I added a cover page to Cloudflash Mix... It was just quick copy+paste work for the most part. I might make a really fancy cover page one day, but this is good enough for now. And there's still two hours until it's Monday in my time zone, but I put Monday's comic up, anyways. There was also a new Comedy of the Dwarfs comic put on the site a couple of days ago, but I didn't mention it. For those who don't really check out the forum much, the Super Asshole series continued, as well; it now has six comics instead of just four. You can find links to these in the Comics section; since these series are still running, I added a "Click here for the latest" link under their pictures like I did with Cloudflash Mix.

I renamed all of the Cloudflash Mix pages and did other necessary changes to make it so all of the URLs have three digits. For example, there is no longer a /CpCMix3.php page; it is now /CpCMix003.php. What does this mean? Well, it means any old link to any Cloudflash Mix comics will no longer work! You may be asking yourself, "Danno, why the hell did you do that?" Well, the main reason was that I put every Cloudflash Mix comic on my Nintendo DS and the alphabetical order sorted them by the first digit after "CloudflashMix". For example, the number 1 comes before 2, so it would sort it as "CloudflashMix1.png, CloudflashMix10.png, CloudflashMix11.png, etc." instead of "CloudflashMix1.png, CloudflashMix2.png, CloudflashMix3.png, etc."... The only way to have it organize the way I wanted it to was to rename all of the comics so that they would have those zeros to keep them in order. Since I was renaming all of the comics and I'd have to edit all of the Cloudflash Mix pages to make them point to the right comic, I figured I'd do the same sort of thing with the pages themselves while I was at it; they were also organized in that annoying way in the FTP client I use, so putting those extra zeros in there would end the problem once and for all.

... And here's a link to today's comic.

I put a convenient link to the latest Cloudflash Mix comic under the site navigation, so now you won't have to haul yourself all the way over to the Comics section to get to the newest comic. I'm thinking I should maybe stick the site navigation under the logo going left to right instead of top to bottom (both on the site and forum), and then put stuff like that convenient Cloudflash Mix link to the left. I guess that's all I really have to say... I coulda sworn I had something else in mind. Oh well.

Today's Cloudflash Mix comic took forever to make... I now have a scanner, so I figured I'd try something different - draw the characters on paper as a rough draft, scan it, and then trace it in Flash. And I used the line tool instead of the brush tool since I wanted the lines to be clean and whatever like a pencil's lines. Suffice to say, I don't think I'll be using the line tool again any time soon. Thursday's comic was late and I rushed it a bit... I didn't feel like colouring it at the time, but I might go back and colour it later. Lastly, there will be a bonus April Fools' comic on Wednesday; there will still be a comic on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. I've had this April Fools' comic written down for so damn long, so it'll be nice to get it off of my comic idea list once and for all.

Yeah, Cloudflash wasn't actually suspended. I paid for a certain upgrade on my 110mb.com account that allows me to set custom 404 error pages (page not found) as opposed to it going to some random website that has some affiliation with 110mb.com. Most of you already saw it in action, but what you didn't know is that I purchased it mainly for this April Fools' joke. I deleted all of the pages on Cloudflash, renamed the directories (e.g. cloudflash.net/forum was renamed to cloudflash.net/forum45) so that they wouldn't work, and I set the 404 error to point to the fake "account suspended" page. Also, there is not going to be a special April Fool's Day comic today - it was all a sham. I actually do have an April Fools' comic idea, though, but I figured I'd save it for next year since I did this trick today.

To anyone who missed it, you can see the fake warning here: -http://cloudflash.net/suspended.html-

Oh, and let me know if any pages/graphics/etc. aren't working... I may have missed something when I was re-uploading everything.

I've been meaning to put a small blur on the clouds in the Cloudflash logo. The way I make clouds nowadays produces decent results, but I think the blur really finishes the job. So, yeah... I did that.

Some of you may have noticed I've been messing around with the Cloudflash Mix comic layout you've come to know and love... I think the first time I combined two panels into one was in comic #61. Sometimes there's just no need for that line down the middle... It makes it so I have to cram the text bubbles into smaller areas and it means I have to draw two backgrounds when I can get away with one! I took it to the next level when I made comic #85 just one large panel! Ah, laziness... but like with the three panel comics, there was just really no need to draw more than what was necessary. And today a two panel comic... And I have one idea that would be more than four panels, but that'll have to wait until I'm willing to draw that much.

Once again, I've been slowly putting some effort into attempting to learn Japanese... Just reading stuff is boring; I think I learn better when I practise or make use of what I know. That said, I've made two Japanese quizzes to help me memorize some words and practise reading hiragana and katakana; one for fruits/vegetables and one for meat/fish. Most of you will probably have no use for such things, but I've put them in the Miscellaneous section, anyways.

Oh, and I forgot to mention this, but I converted "Danno's Rush" to .dpg format two months ago. That means people with Nintendo DS homebrew can watch it on their DS (using the MoonShell homebrew software). It can be found in the Downloads section.

According to Google's webmaster tools, "Meteolife cheats" is still among one of our best search results, so I've made a convenient link to them above the affiliates. I don't recall if I ever mentioned it before or not, but I was putting some of -Hyadain's lyrics- in the Miscellaneous section a month ago. Now they've got a more noticeable, separate page. Some people look for the lyrics and can't find them... Hell, I had a hard time finding some of them. So, I have some of the lyrics in one convenient place that people will probably be able to find. As a matter of fact, we have the top result for "hyadain wai wai world romaji lyrics", so the rare person that searches that will find us and the lyrics with ease. It's too hard to get visitors with original stuff... People are more interested in parodies and fansites. Meteolife is a good example of that... It's probably my least original game to date since it's so heavily inspired by Stick RPG, and it's also my most popular game, still getting reviews on Newgrounds even though I created it nearly three years ago. I'm not gonna stop doing Cloudflash Mix comics or (completely) drop my other projects, though. The Hyadain lyrics are just a small something that I still did put some effort into obtaining/converting to romaji to get a few more visitors.

If you've seen these additions, then you've probably seen that the right side of the page (not on the forum) is looking different. I merged "affiliates" and "links" once more and updated the -"all affiliates"- page a bit. I've actually submitted Cloudflash to a few directories in the past... I found the ones I could remember and put voting links on that "all affiliates" page. If you click those links, it gives Cloudflash a "vote" on their site, which makes it easier to find on their site. There's also a Digg button on every page now (to Digg Cloudflash as a whole, not for specific content). You need to have a Digg account to use it, which you can get at digg.com.

April 23, 2009...
5:50 AM: Woke up, went to the bathroom, ate maybe one and a half bowls of cereal instead of two to three
6:15 AM: Left for bus, which is seven blocks from my house
6:26 AM: Boarded bus
7:00 AM: <work>
3:00 PM: </work>
3:05 PM: Boarded bus
3:25 PM: Arrived at home
3:30 PM: Starving, I ordered two large ham and pineapple pizzas from 2-4-1
4:00 PM (?): Pizza arrived; I ate one whole pizza while playing Genghis Khan and Kunio-kun
Some time between 5:00 PM and 6:30 PM (?): I fell asleep

April 24, 2009...
5:00 AM: I woke up

In short, yesterday's comic will be late.

My update posts from 2006 and 2007 in the History section were hotlinking images from my Photobucket and from Imageshack... but I deleted most of the images on my Photobucket. I uploaded all the images that the History section needed to Cloudflash. There were also some messes with font and link colours due to changes overtime... For example, there was white text on white backgrounds because Cloudflash used to use black font, but now it uses white font. Anyhow, I cleaned all of that up.

The RPG subseries in Cloudflash Mix is now separate. I've been meaning to do that for some time, but I was also sorta unsure if I should do it or not. You can find details about that in the introductions for Cloudflash Mix and Legend of the Final World Quest (the name for that RPG subseries). From now on, Cloudflash Mix will be updated on Monday and Thursday and Final World Quest will be updated on Saturday. It's pretty much the same as before, just now you can expect regular updates for the RPG subseries and it's nice and organized. I'll probably make a Flash game for Final World Quest in the future... or at least that's what I'm vaguely thinking of doing.

Remember how I changed the Comics page so that clicking a series' image took you to the latest comic if it was still running? Well, I'm not gonna bother updating that with C-Mix or Final World Quest since you can access the latest comic via the link to the left (on the site, not on the forum). Oh, and some of you might be confused that there's a spot for comic #7 in Final World Quest, but there's no comic there! Well, I thought I should slip something inbetween "Butch" and "First Encounter"... I'll make that comic on May 2, 2009. As a part of Cloudflash Mix, the RPG series so far has been aiming at humour, but some of the future comics for it might not have jokes at all. It'll still be a parody of RPGs in general, but it'll also have a storyline that sort of makes sense.

Oh, and I nearly forgot. There's a little something extra at C-Mix #17 if you click the comic itself. I might have little hidden extras like that on other comics sometimes... Sometimes I have some comments or alternate versions of certain comics, but I have nowhere to put them - now I do. I won't announce which comics will and won't have hidden extras in the future.

edit: I made new site navigation buttons, and I put them at the top of the forum, too.

I'm going to insert one more Final World Quest comic inbetween "The King" and "Name" before the series progresses further. I already made a spot for it, so "Butch", "Our Quest" (today's new one), and "First Encounter" got numbered one higher.

I'll be editing this post as I go along, and I'll post it on the main site when I'm done...

- There is no longer a "Your post has been successful! Click here to view the post, or click here to view the forum" screen after you make a post - now it just goes straight to your post after you've made it.

- The join date format doesn't show the exact time you signed up at anymore... Just the month, day, and year. I personally just thought it looked stupid and unnecessary to have such a specific time in our "viewtopic" profiles.

- By default, you can only set custom profile options to "show in profiles" or "show in both profiles and topics". And not individually. What you choose affects ALL custom profile options. I originally wanted that "At Cloudflash since" profile slot to show in topics and have everything else only show in your profile, but I couldn't do that... It was all or nothing. Anyhow, I installed a mod that allows me to do that setting individually for each custom profile slot. Also, I've made that option unavailable to normal members now. Chances are that newer members haven't been with Cloudflash that long.

- I used to only have two disturbing websites censored (so that people can't post links to it), but now the curse filter is very strict for the sake of the people who have parents who freak out at "taboo" words, or for people who are like that themselves. If you don't want swears and stuff to be filtered, go to ucp.php?i=prefs&mode=view and select "No" for "Enable word censoring".

- You can only post URLs if your post count is over 10. Not that we get many spambots, but that should thwart them should they challenge Cloudflash.

Having a tablet certainly makes drawing a lot easier. It still took me a good few hours to make the latest Final World Quest comic, though... Happy birthday to me, etc. I just intended to use the "worthless celebration comic" joke again today. The way I separated Final World Quest from Cloudflash Mix just happened to make it line up perfectly so that my birthday would be the comic after the hundredth. I dunno how I ended up turning it into what it is, though... It was good fun for me, though.

When I make new comics, I usually open one of the older ones, erase all the drawings, and draw the new comic in it. Then I save it as a separate file so I can still edit the older comics if I want to. However, I occasionally hit Ctrl+S before choosing "Save As" and making it a separate file... I've lost a few editable files for comics this way, and I just did it today, thus overwriting C-Mix #100's editable file. Oh well... hopefully there's nothing I'd want to change with it in the future.

Now then, what tricks've I got in my hat? Well, I don't wear a hat. Anyhow... I've got the script up to comic #18 for Final World Quest done with, and I've got lots of random ideas for later... It's nothing to really even think about at this point, but I intend to end this series before it reaches 100 comics. I'm thinking of maybe making a Flash RPG for Final World Quest when it ends.

I'm sort of lacking motivation to work on my current Flash projects, and I worry that mixing tablet drawings into the current art for the projects might make them look weird...

I have some vague ideas for more comic series... Colouring can be a pain, so they would maybe just be a rough, unpolished style like today's comic. I intend to develop the storylines and characters better before really starting on any of these comic series ideas... and I dunno how long they'd be. If I get around to any of these, I'll probably finish a good portion of it and then release one page a day until it ends.

I made a special comic to celebrate the day off! I figured I should point that out since Wednesday isn't a part of Cloudflash Mix's update schedule.

I made that little section under the site navigation on the main site a bit nicer looking... Also, I'll update the little image there to show a small bit of the latest comic. Now you'll be able to know if you saw it already or not without having to check. I also added these links to the latest comics to the top of the forum. I might not update the links on the forum if I'm extremely lazy/tired or if I forgot, but I'll try to. The image will always update with the one on the main site, though... It just might link to the wrong comic if I forget to update the link. Anyhow, that's it.

I added Morose to the little bubble in the top-right corner on the main site, meaning he might show up there sometimes. I also updated the backgrounds for all of the character bubble things, but you'd need to clear your cache or refresh the page to see that change... You need to get the same bubble twice in a row when refreshing in order for that to be effective, though. Here are all the Cloudflash character bubbles so you can just refresh this page to get them all updated.

Morose was also added to the bottom of every page where those tiny versions of the Cloudflash characters are. I'll probably add Morose to the "Cloudflash Characters" page today, too.

Also, there's a new Super Asshole comic by Skutieos. You can find it in the Comics section or click this explanation.

edit: There's another Super Asshole comic today, and the "A Bunch of Stupid Geeks in Sweatshirts" comic series has been removed by request of its creator.

I put a Twitter thing on Cloudflash's homepage... If I just have something small to say regarding comic updates or when I'll have them up, I'll mention it there. I might remove it later, I dunno. Depends on how handy I think it is.

Have you ever played River City Ransom? In this day and age, probably not. It's a great NES game. Anyhow, I made a wallpaper based on the game in openCanvas. It's available in two sizes, 1024x768 and 1440x900, and you can find it in the Downloads section. The larger size should fit or stretch well on wide screen monitors. The background is from one of the "Sticksville" maps in the game, though some details vary. You'll only find one of the characters in the wallpaper in the actual game, but I used a sprite sheet as reference so I could make all of the people there look River City Ransom style.

I made a new page for my openCanvas art; I put a link to it in the Miscellaneous section.

Also, I reset the Cloudflash Mix hitcounter, which is on -this page-. I kept a record of the previous hits by writing it down manually, so that old one won't update anymore. I had a hard time believe C-Mix actually had that many hits, so I wanted to see how many hits it would get in a shorter amount of time... Much to my surprise, there were already 13 unique hits and 100 total hits within just one day. I'm wondering if search engine crawlers are playing some role in this or something...

Cloudflash's anniversary is coming up. I'll try to make a few C-Mix comics to celebrate... Also, I've hidden three images on the site... They look like these:

Find them and then post in this topic (or email me if the forum is down or if you aren't a member). Post the links of the pages you found them on. If you find all three, you'll get to be drawn into a Cloudflash Mix comic! Yippee. Only the first person to do so will get drawn in... If you find all three, please include a detailed description of your appearance and/or a photo. The images can be hidden anywhere on Cloudflash (excluding the forum).

I'm also promoting Cloudflash at Gaia... They will similarly be searching for certain images all over Cloudflash, but their images will be different and I'll be giving them items/gold at Gaia Online if they win. If you see them and you don't have a Gaia account, just ignore them or whatever.

In other news...

My sister was using the computer pretty much all day... I reviewed the readings, meanings, and stroke orders of the 80 grade 1 Japanese kanji, I worked out, I went to the store to buy ham, lettuce, and icecream sandwiches... What was I to do, then? I ended up drawing a picture of Morose, Butch, and Grant (spoiler alert) to use as a cover page for Final World Quest. You can see it here. After that, I looked for and found a bunch of old drawings and storyboards that I made years ago... As some of you may remember, I once mentioned that I was making a comic on paper featuring Kazushi, but I ended up scrapping the project and just keeping that character. I read through the few pages of it that I had and found some jokes and stuff I could use... and some character designs that I could work with, too! I've been planning to make a new webcomic series featuring Kazushi and another character (who once appeared on an "under construction" notice)... I'm still writing the script and stuff.

Drawing on paper is a lot harder than I remembered... No "undo" button, no precise eraser...

Well... I already put three celebratory Cloudflash Mix comics up early in the morning, so it's sorta late to announce that now. It's been a sorta shaky year due to the crappy MySQL database ruining the forum half the time plus the recent site downtimes. A year ago on this day, there was a total of 31 C-Mix comics. Now we've got a total 127 C-Mix, 18 Final World Quest comics (that weren't in C-Mix), and other... things... We've had some good times, we've had some bad times.

Like last year, I'll try to complete at least one movie/game before the end of the year. I'm guessing I can at least handle to get "Dungeon in the Clouds" done before then seeing as it's pretty much already done. I swear I'll get at least two of my Flash projects done by the end of the year, then! Take that, future Danno!

Here's another... thing:

"In the 1940s, the United States was working on the Manhattan Project. Meanwhile, Mexico was working on something far more sinister."
A webcomic series about the cactus man; coming fall 2009.

Looking back, I didn't even make anniversary posts like this in 2005, 2006, or 2007. For shame. Even through downtime, even if we end up changing hosts or something, even if we remain unpopular and unbeknown to the entire world, here's to another year of Cloudflash!

My artistic abilities are lacking... I've come to be too disappointed in them. Also, half of the jokes on my comic idea list are pretty lame or just wouldn't really work too well in short one-shot comics. Well, I did comics like that before, anyways, but I think these ones REALLY wouldn't work in short comics like that. Anyhow... yeah, Cloudflash Mix is going on hiatus. Where did it come from, where did it go? Where did you come from, Cotton Eye Joe? I might make some Cloudflash Mix comics on occasion if I happen to feel like it or something. You'd probably notice if the "latest C-Mix" picture changed, so I wouldn't announce it.

I'll still update Final World Quest on Saturdays. The changes in artstyle are sort of a problem... I've been cutting some of the dialogue down and stuff; I'm thinking of maybe remaking it in black and white sometime after it's finished. The remake would include more dialogue, better plot, more action, a consistent artstyle, etc.

I might work on some other projects, I might not. We'll see how things turn out, I guess.

Cloudflash Mix has supposedly had 206 unique visits in the past month, which I still don't really believe. 200 guests, if C-Mix going on hiatus outrages you, now's the time to speak up! I might change my mind or something if I was more aware of the readers (if there are any out there).

Here's an edit of Final World Quest #27 by Hisho that made me laugh:

I invite the rest of you to go ahead and change the text on some Final World Quest and Cloudflash Mix comics and post them here! Maybe I'll display the good ones somewhere on the main Cloudflash site in case the forum is down.

We've got a new Flash animation up by Skutieos, The Heart Attack! You can find it on the third page in the Movies section.

Noticing I hadn't written any updates for November, I'm writing this November update post moments before it becomes December (in my time zone)... Things did happen, but I was too lazy to make proper announcements. Anyhow, here they are!

Final World Quest went on hiatus on November 14th. The story was kinda rushed... it probably would have been better to scatter that stuff over two chapters. Like, one for their first adventure and one for meeting Grant and concluding that adventure... But there it is, all squeezed into 33 pages, what I consider "one chapter", the end of that arc... sorta. I wanted to remake Final World Quest with better art and in black and white as I believe I've mentioned before... I like the way the latest page turned out; I think my general art and colouring skills have improved a lot over the past few months. I might redo a lot of those pages and spread it into two chapters (in colour) when I'm satisfied with my art skills, then the story shall continue! I do have the story written quite far ahead... It lacks jokes, though; I'll try to work some more in there.

Most of you won't really care about this one since it isn't really aimed at Cloudflash's regulars, but I -translated a song- by a Japanese YouTube musician called "Hyadain". Cloudflash has some good results with certain Hyadain-related searches, and I'll try to keep it that way... Couldn't hurt to have some people discover Cloudflash. Well, it could, but I'd hope it wouldn't with a harmless search like that. Anyhow, I also embedded the YouTube videos on each of those translation pages to make it more appealing... I also added the dates I made/uploaded those pages at just for the hell of it.

I made it so all the news posts from 2009 can be linked to now... which is for my next point!

Back on Cloudflash's anniversary, I swore I'd get at least two of my Flash projects done before the year ends. I also mentioned that I'd release a comic about the "cactus man" sometime during this fall. I'm working on that... So far I have 6 pages done, I plan to make it around 25-35 pages long. It's black and white, not incredibly detailed... but whatever.

In other news, I want new update avatars... Just another reminder for myself...

Oh, and there's the forum move, of course. Somewhere around November 4th, the Cloudflash forum moved to another host to combat that terrible downtime issue. So far it's been floating like a cloud. Now then, I have less than a month to get 2 Flash projects finished and a chapter of this "cactus man" story done, plus I'm learning Japanese in the meantime, trying to improve my art, and slowly starting to learn C++. I quit Dungeon Fighter Online today to show how super cereal I am; I gave away all my stuff, so I don't have much to return to, and I intend to uninstall it within a week or two. Oh yes, I'll manage this somehow... I just need eggnog and GUTS!

It's mid-December. The cactus man is about 3/4 of the way to making it to Cloudflash... will I be able to release it fall 2009 like I said I would back in August?! The dreaded official "first day of winter" draws near... And this thing's been taking up all my time, so it might be tricky getting two Flash projects done before the end of the year. Past Danno is a jerk.

In other news, I wasted time setting up a -list of some simple art tips-, which can be found in the Miscellaneous section. It's easy enough to find art tutorials that tell you the length of your limbs in reference to your head's height, but I find that kinda hard/annoying to measure with... When measuring your fingers, why look at the head when you've got a perfectly good palm to measure up with right there? And as such a nice fit, too... Anyhow, I'll add more pictures to that page at some point in time.

I made a little section for some Fantastic Plastic Machine lyrics (also found in Miscellaneous). When I tried to find lyrics for some of their songs, most of the sources were flawed and/or hard to find. So many useless lyric sites had pages setup for the lyrics, but then they just say "We don't have this song. Add it now!" So, to get past those idiots, you have to search a specific line from the song... When I did that, I only had one or two results on some Korean blogs... So, yeah. Maybe having the lyrics here (and accurate) could draw some people towards us.

Yesterday, I was surprised to find out that I had vacation time remaining for this year. What better day to use it on than today? My work week has been split in half! The god of vacations stood triumphantly over the mess and swallowed the Wednesday he'd severed. When I requested he slice it up a few more times, he sheathed his blade and return to his lazy slumber. And after I was prepared to give a dried out pen as an offering, too...

In the end, I managed to bring El Cacto to Cloudflash. You can find him in the Comics section. Chapter 2 is scheduled for spring 2010... which probably means I'll put it off until June and finish it a week before the official "first day of summer". But who knows? I might finish it before then. Anyhow, post some feedback. Story, art, lack of colour, humour -- whatever comes to mind. I absolutely 100% guarantee that Skutieos will not permaban you if you post negative feedback.

Also, some slight changes... The "Comic updates" text under the site navigation has been changed to say "ah, fresh air". I think I'll no longer use that space exclusively for Cloudflash Mix and Final World Quest... or I guess for just "comics" like it stated before... I think I'll feature links to new animations or whatever from there, too (starting... riiiiiiiight now). I think I'll just leave C-Mix and FWQ links on the forum for now, though.

Oh, and I have a different update avatar today... None of my previous ones expressed my frequent feeling of sleepiness and exhaustion.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention this ages ago, but there was one last Comedy of the Dwarfs comic back in October.

Yeah, that's right... now I'm getting serious. 6 litres of eggnog and I'll have approximately 36 hours or so of free time before the end of the year. By the power of eggnog, I will finish two Flash projects before the end of the year (even if no one really cares)!

It ended up taking a little bit longer than I expected, but it's done. I ended up adding a lot more stuff than I originally planned, including fancy menus, a full intro story, some improved graphics, and a ranking system at the end. You can find it in the Games section... I dunno how I'll finish another project with just Wednesday and Thursday. Well, a man's gotta do his best, win or lose.

In other news, I think I'm going to remove the "score" part on all of the game/movie pages. We can go ahead and rate things on the forum, but the "score" thing just seems kinda meaningless to me at this point, plus it's a slight hassle for me to have to update it manually (since having it automatic would mean the pages could crash just like the old forum did).

Also, I intend to add some simple gradients for the skies in El Cacto chapter 1... it looks too plain. I'm mostly just writing this here to remind myself. I'd do it now, but I'm going to need to spend all my time working on that other Flash project.