I’m a little under the weather but feel like I’ve been weedling away too much of my free time lately on games, so I put a little time into Clip Studio Paint. I’ve had it sitting around a while since picking it up on one of its many sales, since the idea of a comic specific program sounded good, but the version I got of course doesn’t have the multi-page manager tool I wanted. The panel drawing tools are pretty cool though, and speed up the process of setting the initial layout up just a little. I’ll try and integrate it into finishing the next comic I’m putting together, maybe that’ll help me get more used to it. If it’s going to be more print/e-publishing friendly, that’s a nice plus.

Been a bit more active on Twitch lately, in part to try and show off some of my old favorite games and as a way to get through some of my Steam backlog now that my computer’s good again. Last night was my second session of Slayers for the SFC, and even though I’ve played part of it in Japanese I’m only now getting around to actually playing it with the full English translation patch that came out in 2010. It’s got this graphic inconsistency to it my friend Richie pretty accurately summed up as looking like a Saturn port of a game that added cutscenes to an early 16bit era title- the sprites basically look like something from the NES with slightly more shading, then the menus and character portraits are much more detailed renderings of Araizumi’s artwork, creating kind of a clash. The writing is pretty amusing though, and the game has this knack for being downright trollish in places that helps make it feel like a genuine Slayers product- at once taking the piss from fantasy tropes while being its own entity.

I’ll be taking a break from it tonight since my throat is pretty much shot, but it seems like weekend evenings are working out as pretty good times to stream. Drop by sometime! Follow me at https://www.twitch.tv/thethreetwo to get notifications until I find some kind of widget for showing when I’m online on the page.