ToPComics

ToP Concepts: Theodore Durrington

By Humbug | Published November 17, 2012

Ted with breech load rifle

Chris This is Theodore. He likes to hunt.Let’s call him Ted for the sake of convenience.

When Humbug created Ted we had a few criteria:

* Sleek

* Stylish

* Classy

* Practical

* Hunter

We wanted Ted to be well-covered and sheltered from the elements, with a hint of industrial progress of the day and age without looking too modernized.

Initially we thought of going for the standard fantasy ranger, you know the type; Green fabrics, boiled leather armor, cloaks, bows and arrows, pointy ears and no doubt played by Orlando ‘I am the prettiest member of this fellowship’ Bloom.

This led to layered items of clothing for ease of mobility, with the edges slightly worn for a sense of his ability to live off the land. Teddy boy ain’t no prissy noble, oh no, those are the eyes and features of a man completely devoid of humanity and remorse; a cold and efficient killer.

Given Humbug’s aesthetic fetish for long flowy things on men, he almost started with a long flowy trenchcoat; however upon discussion, we agreed something knee-length would be far more practical, given where he was, his fancy boots and riding-pants giving him a hint of class.

Looking at this current design, I have to say that it fulfils how we envisioned him.

Look out for Ted in the upcoming reboot for Tales of Pylea!

Ramblings of Chris: Introductions

By Humbug | Published November 15, 2012

Chris About Chris.

About me: I’m a short, potbellied Chinese bloke with a curved spine, horrific eyesight, muscle knots, a busted liver and aspergers syndrome! Whoo!

Like many people, I’ve spent a large portion of my life trying to find my place in existence. I’m not a terribly contemplative individual, as I often find peoples behaviour strange and confusing but in recent years have learned much of the contradictory, erratic and downright self-destructive behaviour that is human society.

Not terribly inclined towards academic pursuits, I dropped out of college shortly after art foundation (mostly due to frequent disagreements between impatient lecturers and myself). My journey to find myself has been colourful to say the least, including working as a short order cook in a greasy dive, retail work at a comic book shop (not as fun as one might imagine and the stocking of mainstream comics really stunts your abilities as a conversationalist), customer service for an online gambling call-center (you would not believe the number of times a customer has begged for cash and told me how he spent his kid’s schooling fees to fuel his addiction!) and in recent years, narrative writer for a computer game studio, writing dialogue for a point and click adventure game.

Oh yes and I’m told I have a tendency towards too much information (TMI). Can’t imagine why…

Meet The Kuok

By Humbug | Published November 12, 2012

Chris Hi, Chris ‘ere!

I’m the new writing peon brought aboard by Humbug for Tales of Pylea’s second reboot.

Right; unaccustomed as I am to public typing, where can I begin?

Humbug brought me aboard to assist in the story structure and dialogue for the comic and I’m proud to say that you can all look forward to a brand new plotline filled with explosive action, daring heroics, mystical spells and boundless lechery (the last one being mostly from Arianhod).

Well, that’s about all I can say; any more rambling would result in spoilers and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?

Stay tuned for more ramblings!

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Now with moar Avatar

By Humbug | Published November 10, 2012

Chris is going to start posting in Sixpacks and Seafood, and since I’m the one who updates the blog, all the entries are going to be under my name. I whipped up these simple avatars to slot into blog posts so you can tell who is making the entry.

Chris This is Chris.

Humbug And this is me!

Expect SP&S to be a bit more colourful from now on. 😀

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Possibly More Changes, arg

By Humbug | Published November 3, 2012

I’m thinking of switching the Webcomic plugin with Comic Easel. This is not a decision I’m making lightly, since I have to move the comic archives AGAIN, it’s going to be another tedious process. Why the change? Webcomic recently upgraded to its fourth version. And it is not just a simple update, the damn thing got a complete overhaul and it’s not backwards compatible. That means the Webcomic theme I’m currently using will be rendered obsolete and I’ll have to use the latest one that has brand new coding.

Now this I can handle, with time I can eventually transfer all the modifications I’ve done into the new theme. The real problem is that the upgrade process from Webcomic 3 to 4 hasn’t been a smooth ride for a number of people. This can range from annoying bugs to the whole website getting broken. It’ll probably be easier for me to upgrade now since my website setup is still new and my archives are (relatively) small. But what happens a few years later when Webcomic 5 comes out? It’ll be the same process all over again, since the creator admitted that he likes to make drastic changes with each version. My archives might be massive then, and I am not keen on the idea of having to clean up the archives yet again.

The other option is to not update at all, but with WordPress constantly updating, having outdated software is just asking for trouble. I know there is no guarantee that Comic Easel will keep on updating in the near future, but at least it’s active now, and I can use default WordPress themes which will consistently be more up to date and hopefully keep brokenness to a minimum. I just need to familiarize myself with its code so I can start bashing it. Blarg.

On the plus side, Comic Easel seems to be less buggy than Webcomic and less memory intensive. Moar RAM is good.