...since I've even looked at this site. I got bored with the internet and pretty much stopped reading (or updating) the sites that I used to check religiously. Instead I was doing other stuff, mostly messing with some projects and ideas that I hadn't fully developed yet, which has been both fun and a huge headache. It's amazing how fast times flies when you're focused on stuff like that - there's friends that I used to talk to on a weekly basis that I hadn't seen in over a year. That freaked me out a bit, so I made sure to remedy that.

Of course, I'd be lying if I said it was all work that kept me away - XBox Live and World of Warcraft pretty much used up any extra free time I had. By the way, Dead Rising rocks.

Anyway, I was checking out the blogs that some of my animation biz friends made, and it was a nice rush to see such amazing and varied art - almost like working at a studio again and seeing the stuff people would hang in their cubicles. One friend in particular did a (almost) daily comic, which reminded me how, back in the day, I was going to do a regular Ubel/Ruxpin strip for darkbunny.com. Heck, even looking at Mean Mike again made me recall the second issue I had planned.

So, the old itch is back. I need to figure out if I want to make a separate blog for regular updates and use this as home page, or just stick with this site alone. The appeal of the auto-blogs is that they're so damn easy to setup and use (less time messing with web editing), but I haven't made my decision yet.

Anyway, that's the deal. Now to go track down some other people I've lost touch with.

Oh, and if you want to email me, use csmoeller at gmail dot com. (I didn't make it a link because I wanted to avoid ze spam.)

Walt, if you're out there, drop me an email - we need to catch up.
posted by Ubel at 7:55 AM

Is this thing still here?
posted by Ubel at 2:33 AM

posted by Ubel at 1:12 AM

Walt's cruel comments have forced my hand, and so now I'm updating. Where have I been? Playing games? Smoking crack? I wish. I've spent the past several months disgorging a myriad of projects and ideas (that have been festering in my fevered brain for many years) and finally putting them down on paper properly. I've had to weed out lots of shitty stuff from them and do a bit of reworking, which is taking me a hell of a lot longer than I anticipated, but it's still been a lot of fun. I'll probably post some stuff about them soon.
 
BTW, what is the big deal with Spiderman 2? Reviewers are jizzing all over this movie which, aside from some great special effects, I found to be pretty so-so.

posted by Ubel at 3:38 PM

So last week I cracked and bought City of Heroes, a massively multiplayer online game that tackles the world of superheroes. In addition to Walt's hearty recommendation of the game, most of the lads I played WoW with all migrated to City of Heroes as well, so I'm afraid I was left with no choice. Not having read a thing about it, I didn't know what to expect.

Basically, once you design your hero you go forth and fight crime, alone or in a group of up to 8 people. The large cities remind me a bit of the GTA games, where you can explore the nooks and crannies and find all sorts of ne'er-do-wells doing naughty things. In this game, you then proceed to punch, slash, gun-down, burn, freeze, or blast the miscreants into an early grave. The fighting is a lot of fun in this game, especially when utilizing abilities that knock your opponent around like a rag doll. The graphics are also pretty sweet, although some of the sound effects need work.

But there's more than just cleaning up the streets -- you can also go on missions into the villain's lairs for various purposes, from rescuing hostages to just kicking their asses. As you grow in power, the missions get bigger and tougher.

Overall it's a fun game, but it is a mixed bag. Here's my thoughts:

The Good:
- Impressive character creation system. Half of the fun of playing the first day was running around and just looking at other people's characters. Hopefully in the future they'll add capes, more weapons, and maybe some crazy shit like robotic limbs.
- A nice and simple system of choosing and upgrading powers.
- No worrying about looting corpses or who gets what. The only loot that drops are enhancements that you apply to your various powers, and these appear in your inventory automatically.
- No time-wasters. Log in and just go kick ass. Sort of an MMO version of GTA or Diablo.
- The game is damn fun.

The Not-So-Good:
- The mini-missions are instanced, which is good, but they're very repetitive. The same warehouse/cave/office/sewer maps are re-used ad-nauseum to the point where you've seen each one a dozen times in the course of a few days. I was excited to get one mission where I was to go to a club and break up a gang fight, only to find that it's the same warehouse setting that I've seen before with the same baddies standing in the same spots, except in this mission a few pedestrians were added to run around aimlessly. Wow, some club.
- The missions need more variety. So far they're mostly "go find and kill x number of such-and-such" or "go trash so-and-so's hideout and kill the boss". Now these aren't bad ideas for missions, it's just the sameness of them that's the problem, as I addressed above. One thing that World of Warcraft did that would rock for this game is to add larger instanced dungeon romps designed for a certain level range. For example, make an instance called "Dr. Squid's Lab" designed for level 12-15 heroes, where at any time you could get a group and spend a few hours battling through various bad guys and settings until you had a showdown with Squid himself. Beating him would net you a nice goody (in CoH, a nice goody would be a decent power enhancement).
- Some of the sound effects, like the punches, are really crappy. Others are really annoying, like this one buff that while applied to a team member emits a loud noise like a broken refrigerator.

I could nitpick some more, but I expect that Cryptic will be fixing and adding stuff as time goes on. The two content gripes I listed are for me the biggies. I will say, however, that City of Heroes is a strong beginning to what eventually could be an amazing game. It's certainly held the attention of my friends and I, but it's hard to say if we'll stick with it if the high level content is as repetitive as the lowbie stuff.

And now, without further ado, here are some of the stupid characters I whipped up:










Edit:
Whoa, I almost forgot the most important hero:



posted by Ubel at 5:38 PM

Howdy. It's been a while since I've properly updated this dusty old site. In posts where once the smut flowed freely, you've since been treated to brief text updates that were noticably smutless. There will come a day when I resume polluting the 'net with my crappy drawings of sex and violence and the angels will sing. Hallelujah!

In all seriousness, I've been dealing with some job prospects as of late, so the smut factory has been put on hold for a bit.

Tripping The Rift
So the TTR series is chugging along. I have mixed feelings about it, but I will say this: the CG is pretty damn slick, especially on Chode. The acting and animation on him is rocking good. That's all I'm going to say for now.

I've also received some emails offering condolences for having gotten "kicked off" the show. I never went into detail what went down regarding that, but let me briefly clear it up now. Chuck and I were never kicked off or asked to leave the show. In fact, when writing had begun on the first episode, we were set up with a nice office, bought brand new computers, and were otherwise made welcome on the production. Then about two or three weeks later we found out that there was no money in the budget to actually pay us to work on the show. Disappointed, we gathered our things, wished the show well and sought other avenues to pay our mortgages. No animosity or bluster or fireworks. So no condolences are needed. We're still the creators and still get our piece of the pie.

And now for the nerdy computer game update!
Last November a bad thing happened. Matthew Mead -- one of the lads that animated the original Tripping The Rift short and went on to work for Blizzard Entertainment -- got me into the super secret World of Warcraft alpha test. For those of you not familiar with WoW, it's an Everquest-type game where you create a character, give it a fruity name, and enter an online world populated by hundreds of other sociopaths. And, like Everquest, it's a huge time sink and about ten times more addictive than crack.

No doubt you're just dying to see pictures of it. Now that the NDA is lifted on the game you can find zillions of pictures elsewhere, but none are quite as cool as mine:

(left) Fang, whose penchant for buggery made the backstabbing rogue a natural career choice, looks for some clergy to mug. (right) Kubel the mage relaxes at Disney World.


(left) Graystone the dwarf paladin sweet-talks a local woman. "Watch where you point that thing, Missy."
(center) The undead Seethe, Pyraluna, and Syn conspire to kick puppies and scare children. (right) After many hours of posing beneath a hot sun, the night elf Desslok is finally told by a passerby that he looks cool.

And what fantasy game is complete without lots of scantily clad women? None, that's what!


It is a world where C-cups reign supreme and cellulite is a distant memory. Even the ghosts are stacked.

That should be enough nerdiness for now.
posted by Ubel at 7:49 AM

Just saw the premiere of Tripping The Rift on Sci Fi. What did y'all think?
posted by Ubel at 2:38 AM