Sup guys?

To "celebrate" TWC's new month and aptGG being in the good 'ol top 50 again I decided to release 3's old spritesheet as a vote incentive.

For those who voted already who want it, it'll be up tomorrow as well.

hope you guys like seeing the sprites laid out like this, might give you guys some more insight in how I handle em.

Sup guys, have a small new vote incentive up.

Nothing big, but it pretty much shows the "first step" and "final step" for the latest shown page, which might be interesting to some of you.

Just curious, how many of you would like to see the clean backgrounds/individual sprites for future vote incentives?

regards,
Guido Bos

I got my TWC password back, which means I can finally get new vote incentives up.

One thing I was wondering, is there anything you guys would like for vote incentives aside from character sketches and stuff?

I know that goblins (current #1) shows panels from future pages but it's easier due to the lineart->colouring->finishing process they have going;

Generally speaking once my pages are in any way presentable, they're pretty much done anyway.

Still though, I could imagine some of you guys having bright ideas on what you'd like me to show, and hey, if it gets me more votes, I'd like to do some cool stuff for you.

either way, hope you guys enjoy the comic updating again, hope to get a new page done within a day or two.

peace.

I forgot if I told anyone about this, but I've been in France for the last few weeks; (3 total);

Now that I'm back it's time for me to seriously look into ending this hiatus and getting the comic back on track;

While I've stopped updating I've done a few major things that will hopefully boost the quality of the comic big time;

This includes such things as:

1. redoing the sprites to be better
2. actually writing out the plot for arcs in advance
3. thinking about the plot over the course of several years
4. rewriting the plot again after I realised a few things that might be better to change up completely for stuff that might happen years from now, go me.
5. adding several new mini-styles for the sprites so that I can have more variation within the comic.

and finally, redoing the sprites all over again today, cause I realised they still weren't good enough.

Go me.

Either way, as of today I'll be talking to my friend and webhost Ben about getting the updater fixed (He told me it broke I think) and then I'll start producing pages again, hopefully getting the comic back on track by next week!

In other news, just before I left for France we officially released the first real version of Frogatto for Iphone; you can either download it for Mac/PC or whatever for free; or if you want to support us/play it on Iphone, you can get it at the Istore for 5 dollars or something.

I'm pretty proud of what we've done with it (especially graphically); so I hope you'll give it a try, Frogatto button is at the top of the page.

Either way, by the time I post a new journal it's probably to announce the official start of the comic, so look foreward to it.

Kind regards,
Guido Bos

Hey guys, neorice is gone and doesn't even know this yet, but Frogatto 1.0 has been released for free on computer (Mac/Windows), and for iPhone ($1.99 currently, but will be $4.99 soon)!

Just thought you guys might be interested in neo's other project. :) Also, the news feed is working again - sorry about the outage (we switched servers and had to get the RSS module installed again).

Yo, I've had some people ask me for a more specific time; and as of today I'm fairly certain I can say that it should be roughly around the first three weeks of August;

I'm leaving for France in less than a week for three weeks total; and expect to return roughly when August begins, that's also the time for me to have some vacation time without explicit further obligations, seems to me like the perfect time to work towards starting the comic back up.

If anything big comes inbetween I'll be sure to let you guys know, but for now expect aptGG to return around that time.

Hope you guys didn't mind the wait too much, I can't wait to get back in the saddle and work this thing.

P.s. Toy Story 3 was amazing, go see it.

One last test next week and I'm done with this schoolyear; I hope to work on a bit of buffer from that point on and after that I'll try to get regular updates back in order.

Apologies for the long wait but with school and stuff on the side I really didn't want to spread my focus too much with everything going on.

Although I won't update immediately to get a buffer going, I hope to get some livestream sessions going while I work on pages etc & I may post a bunch of teaser images to reveal stuff to come while I'm at it.

I hope all of you can wait just a little tad longer, I've worked fairly hard on trying to get some plot points worked out well, so hope the overall quality and storyflow will be much higher, but I'll see when I work on it.

Kind regards,
Guido Bos

Hey people, how's it hanging? Aside from a regular reminder that my comic isn't cancelled but simply on a long hiatus until I get my schoolwork back in order, I figured it'd be a good idea to add a little journal to discuss stuff;

For those wondering when and if I'll ever pick up the comic again, I can say with some certainty that I'm planning on starting it up at a regular tempo around the summer vacation, and by that time I should have rid myself of most tedious or time consuming tasks on the side, allowing me for extra focus without too many worries.

On another note, as some may or may not know, most of the earliest comics I've done were made without anything resembling a script at all, I just winged it and decided to just see where I could go with it; as I really had to write a comic for a while before I could really tell what I wanted to do with it.

Over the course of the first months of aptGG I came to a few conclusions:

1. Becoming a noticeable respectable "pixelart" comic, which was my first plan was surprisingly easy, when I first decided I wanted to do an actual pixelart comic I decided that my ambition should reach up to A Modest Destiny [my favourite pixelart comic] and not far beyond that, before my first concrete style change I slunked into a bit of a depression as I found my self-imposed goal almost too easy to obtain.

I gave myself a goal that I didn't only expect to obtain, but could obtain fairly easily, at least in my own eyes, AMD, although a perfectly good comic in it's own regard, worked more because it was one of the first to do it right, iconic in it's design and above all, good as an actual comic; (In some ways better than mine, in some ways worse, I'm sure).

I realised that I don't just want my comic to be noticeable and recognised as one of the better webcomics in terms of the pixelart section, which lacks real quality artists going all out, but in the webcomic section in general; This is a goal I set out for the future, and it's the big reason I suddenly went from quick semi-sloppy CG backgrounds to elaborate/detailed pixelart backgrounds.

But there's more;

2.

What I realised above my desire to really be a good artist, is my desire to not just tell a story, but tell a good story, not one that simply emulates a typical genre like fantasy and lifts on the familiar tropes, but something that's unique in it's own right, a world of it's own and engaging on several fronts.

I've made "basic" webcomics before that I never actively released to the public eye, and most of them were just typical fantasy stories with rather shonen-like "fight fight fight" stories, I was afraid of humour as I had no idea what to do with punchlines, I wasn't even thinking of more "advanced" genres like mystery or romance.

AptGG in a way started as a type of experiment, I just took the premise of three heroes and ran with it, surprising myself by somehow giving all three stories extremely different tastes in their own right, as I realised that if I amde all three too similar in base design, they'd be too easy to divide into "best, worse, worst."

The things I've realised over doing more than 200 pages in this general set-up is:

1. The stories, in some way, are still too similar; I've kind of given Noah the mystery type of appeal, Burk is more humorous/action based and Tobi is ..well, she's Tobi;

But thinking about it, I've written all three of them roughly the same way, and although I kept true to some basic aspects of the genre they "represent", I do realise that after just winging it for quite a while, all three of them are have been a "trial version" to what their comics could really be so far.

When I start my comic back up, aside from hoping to improve it art-wise, I've really gotten to the point in time where I realise that I don't just "want to do a comic"; but I honestly want to tell a story, I've been thinking long and hard about where to go with this, and I really hope that by the time I return from my hiatus I've really reworked what I honestly want to tell with each of the three stories, with each of the three protagonists.

Either way, I had a sudden urge to type all of this, pardon if anything sounds conceited, contradicting or in any other way strange, but I figured it'd be good to let it out.

For anyone interested in any sort of discussion, although the comic's still on hiatus, I still check the forums from time to time, so any advice, ideas or general feedback on what you liked most for each story, post it there.

Kind regards and wishes of Peace,
Guido Bos

I found quite a few people asking today, so I figured I'd post a journal.

I'm putting some focus in school & my game right now.

I'll get back to the comic, but I'd want to do it at a moment when I feel like I can focus on it for a long time again.

Peace.

Scrapping flash idea for now, as most people are either against it, or very skeptical about a proper outcome.

may play around a bit with it in the future either way, but don't plan anything big with it for now.

for those wondering why I haven't been updating, by the way;

Right now I'm spending a lot more time than before on getting stuff for the game I'm working on done, and I find it nigh impossible to juggle the comic, game & school around at the same time, so when I spend time on either the comic or game, I actively put the other project on hiatus so I can ensure no quality loss on either of the two.

As I make no real profit off of this comic, I'm sure most of you understand that I permit myself the occasional break so I can spend my time on other things.

Peace out.

[p.s. the comic isn't dead, for those who think that, just taking a break.]