Millennium News!

We Tried (and Other Exciting News!)

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:04:56 -0800

Whoa! It's still Friday. That means a page!

I know it's been a while, and I'd meant to post this in December. These last few months have been CRAZY, and it's all for good: I've finally achieved what I've been working for in-between this comic's updates. But first, the schedule:

- This page is not finished yet; the background details, some small special effects, and the foreground shading must be put in place. That will be done sometime within the next week.

- We will update with the last page of this part of the prologue (which is already completed) next Friday.

After that, it may be 3 weeks to another month before I am able to start updating regularly again (although I have already started the Prologue cover and re-thumbnailing it), and here's why:

- I finally got a job as a web developer at a quite wonderful company, which begins in a couple weeks. I will have to acclimate to this, but that shouldn't take longer than a week. I'll be on a regular schedule! Yay!

- Because of this, I will be finishing up every other project I have in queue within the next two weeks. This includes the anthology comic I have taken part in. Its original deadline was in December, which is why I was busy then, but its final deadline was pushed back to mid-March. I'm in the process of refining the sketch for those comics and finishing them, which will take almost all my time until then. It's exciting!

- Besides that, there are some other illustration and design things I'm also needing to do. And it's fun! I've gotten re-accustomed to drawing in sketchbooks (all-tablet drawing had gotten me faster and slightly more consistent with drawing in general) and have been doing so regularly with my trusty Col-Erase pencils. Several sketchbooks that I bought years ago for college are finally filling up.

It's an exciting time in life now, no doubt what I've been looking forward to. I'm completely happy about it! Please do stick around for Millennium's continuing updates, because I'm preparing to take on the Prologue Part 3 with fervor!

Oh, and if you're bored, ask me things anonymously on Formspring. It's strangely fun. I can't even explain why.

On another note, I changed the proportion of the pages starting with this one. They used to be manga-sized 5"x7.5", but now the full-sized page is formatted for 6"x9". They're also drawn at an even higher resolution. I'm not sure how I'll work that out with the first 13 pages if Millennium goes to print (although I think 1-5 were also done at higher resolutions before I dropped down for my PC's sake), but I'll figure it out. This ensures more quality! For YOU!

One more thing! I added a "cameos" section to the Fanart page the other day. In addition to the older cameos of Mune in Return to Eden and Ronou in Far Out There, now we have "classic" Mune in The Apple of Discord! Check it out! Also, I'm pretty sure I updated the Links page at some point.

Summon My Love

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:42:54 -0800

Late is better than never. Apparently Millennium's new motto!

I was going to pretend like I haven't updated in two months and everything was still fine, but that ain't right. I'm still working on the next pages, however. Needless to say, things have taken a slight upturn in terms of work, so I've been keeping myself busy. I'm on the brink of overloading my priorities, so I try to be careful and get things done.

The next update will come soon, and I'm very grateful for your continued readership. I hope in the meantime you've constantly enjoyed yourself with the people you love.

(There's a high-resolution version of the Valentine's card in the Downloads section.)

Also, if you haven't seen it yet, Growly Beast of anticipated webcomic Inscribing Aardi interviewed me. I talk about both my comics and a lot of things relating to them.

Comic Artists Fight Against Human Trafficking

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:22:26 -0800

It's live! The Comic Creator's Alliance, into which I entered Hibiku from my comic Lovefeast, is now accepting donations.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-Margaret Mead

Monday, January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. To participate, we formed the Comic Creator's Alliance--a group of over eighty comic book creators (both web and print) who volunteered our artistic talents to raise money and awareness for this cause. You may not know it, but there are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide- more than double the number of enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. The US Department of Justice estimates 16,000 victims of human trafficking are brought into the United States every year. Unlike slavery in the 19th century, what is happening today is happening in secret. So it won't end until awareness is raised, and people like you and me take a stand.

So here's what we did: each creator contributed an original drawing of one of our own female characters, and combined them into a single wallpaper image. The wallpaper features characters from The Phoenix Requiem, Girls with Slingshots, Earthsong, Looking for Group, Shadowgirls, The Uniques and four IDW Publishing titles: Fallen Angel, The Dreamland Chronicles, Love & Capes, and The Dreamer, and lots, lots more! Donate today to download this unique, once-in-a-lifetime wallpaper. The Donations Drive will last for two weeks, from January 11th - 24th. All proceeds will be split evenly between Love146 and Gracehaven House- two organizations working on rehabilitation of victims and prevention of this crime.

To learn more about the Comic Creator's Alliance visit www.comicalliance.weebly.com. To learn more about the problem, visit http://love146.org/slavery. (Note: contains adult themes and actual accounts of sex slavery.)

...

The wallpaper is seriously awesome, guys. Donate for it and know you're also helping a great cause.

Chriiiistmaaaas

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:11:16 -0800

Or should I say, "Hooooliiiiday"? But this post is just in time for Christmas! A crossover with my other comic, as it is now custom to do!

Hope you have an awesome gift- and family-filled one with those you love most!

And if it seems like the only thing I've been adding to the gallery is special-event-themed things for the last several years, you'll be glad to know that more unique art is on the way! In particular, a few interesting and large pieces of art will be manifesting themselves in wallpaper form sometime soon. To see a sketchy preview of one of them, please vote on TWC!

After All of That

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:03:25 -0800

And here's page 13 for the second page in a single week. I think I broke my all-time-low record of four pages a year now (a record originally set in 2007, I think). Yay! Next year let's shoot for at least 52, like intended!

It's been 6 years since Millennium went online, but I think really only two of them count...and not even the nearly-two encompassing the reboot. But that's okay, because I can see what's on the horizon and steer things thusly. Hold on tight! The new story dawns in about 4 pages!

I forgot to mention this sooner, but I updated the Glossary now, along with that Items page. Both need visual aids still. I also updated the slightly-barren but growing Soundtrack and Voices page with an Imeem playlist.

Be sure to go to back to read Monday's news, if you haven't already. Look around the site for some new updated things, and check out the Comic Creator's Alliance.

Not sure what else to say here now, so I'll mention a few comics I just started reading.

Amya is off to a very promising start. Those first pages draw you in especially. I love the lineart. *gush*

This version of Beauty and the Beast, while drawn roughly, really draws you in. The style, though with a sense of incompleteness, stands up on its own, and it's impossible not to get attached to the characters in some way.

Everyone has heard of Cealdian by now, but I'm mentioning it anyway. I love its style. Dialogue is slow, but that's not much to complain about.

Reading such good webcomics is getting me in a real good webcomicking mood lately. And some things changed in my schedule (if it can even be called that), so I will probably get those next two Millennium pages out sooner than estimated. Huzzah!

Like New

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:19:39 -0800

Woo! I'm so very sorry it's taken me this long to update here, but here we are! Millennium's big November update!

I have lots of news to post, so read on...

* Things have been busy for me, and I'm finally starting to make a little headway in the jobbing department. That's part of what will keep me busy this coming month; the other part is the comic anthology I am now actively taking part in. The possibility of publication and the wonderful people involved makes it a fun and challenging endeavor, so I'll be turning my full comicking attention to it for most of December, until its Christmas deadline.

* The next Millennium page will be added Friday. After that, I will -not- update again until New Year's Eve. By then I hope to have page 14 completed; page 15 is already 90% finished, so both those pages will go up in very close succession.

* The new TWC incentive is a preview of the next page. It's actually all of the next page, so you can see it in advance!

* New layout! Convenient navigation! Finally! I hadn't updated the layout since the relaunch, which was almost two years ago now. This one should be a lot easier to update, too, in the future. This new layout is my celebration of Millennium's 6th year online (birthday = November 3rd) - but it doesn't end there! There's still other specials I'm working on regarding wallpapers, finished images (like one of my entries for Webcomics Tarot - remember that? Me neither), and other cool stuff I've been meaning to get done for a while. But they may be slow in coming, like January-February, because I'm focusing on getting comic pages done first and foremost, and that's already time-consuming(ly fun. Millennium's getting soooo close to the official prologue start finally~).

* As of midnight of November 30th, there are still things you may have noticed that need tweaking on the layout. I will get to them promptly within the next day or so!
For the record, that's Sefir, the Wind Spirit, in the header there. As he (and all the other Spirits) are shape-shifters, and since they're all a little flaky, they never appear exactly the same more than once. He's also in today's page.

* Speaking of wallpapers, I added two more to the Downloads page the other week. One is a wallpaper of the 4 Years image that I completely forgot I made two years ago. The other is a wallpaper version of pages 10 and 11, which someone thought would be cool. Yay! Use away. I like how pages 10 and 11 were perfectly wallpaper-sized.

* Guess what? The characters have new, updated, accurate profile images now! Yay! I can't wait for all of them to officially appear in the comic again. For the record, all those supporting characters will have images added from the comic itself - meaning when they actually show up in the comic (which will be, for many of them, in the prologue - they're listed in order of appearance).

* I am taking part in the Comic Creator's Alliance, a group of Webcomic authors taking a stand against child trafficking. If you're an author yourself, contribute artwork! If you're a reader, contribute however you can. Your support for this would be greatly appreciated.
For the record, my submission will be a character from Lovefeast, my other comic. The character in particular is kind of connected to the subject...

* There is now an Italian translation of Millennium!! There's a direct link to it in the header on every page. I always thought it'd be cool as heck to have my work translated into another language, but I never thought it'd be proposed this soon. A big thanks to the Admin of Oltrecomics!

* I changed the poll. I think this is the third time I've changed the poll in two years. Gasp. It'd be easier to change the poll more often if I updated more.
With no surprise, "more pages always good" got the majority of the votes on the last poll about update frequency (46%), while a mere "yes" and "take your time/quality over quantity" were tied at second. To those who wished me death for taking so long, sorry! But if I die, I can't continue on at all, so I have no choice but to adhere to this slow, slow comic.

* Oh, as for other updated sections, the Links are updated, too. Also, the Glossary and Items/Spells, which is soon to sport images! All the info sections should eventually host at least a few supplemental pictures, but especially Items. A lot of Item descriptions (done in the spirit of Role Playing Games) were written a year or two ago, but I rewrote most of them for that page just yesterday. Fun.

Thank you so much for continuing to read and enjoy Millennium. :D

And for my fellow Americans, I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving with lots and lots of food. And for you not-Americans, I hope you had a lovely Thursday with lots and lots of food.

Mid-Update Plug

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:10:56 -0800

Amid other things, I'm going to make webcomic plugs every so often. It's the least I can do as far as news posts goes!

Union of Heroes. I started reading it a short while back! It's a nice, somewhat cheesy, very well-done photocomic about superheroes and alternate dimensions. I made guest art for it.

It's not up yet since I just finished it, but it will be soon. You get a sneak peek! There are lots of other guest-things going on over there right now. You should check them out: the guest art for this photocomic is particularly creative.

I'm starting to like superhero stories more now, but mostly when they involve a lot of humanizing. If I had superpowers, my uses for them would be 90% practical (unless one of them was flying; all practicality goes out the window then and I go a little nuts. I wouldn't be able to help it).

On another note, I updated the links page. I think. Something new should be there.

Y'know how I was gonna be on TGT Webcomics a while back? Well, it had to be rescheduled, so now I'm gonna be on there Wednesday, September 9th (9.9.09!) at 7 PM EST with a special surprise host. YAY! Do tune in!

Mid-Update Plug

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:55:00 -0700

First Spread

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:55:19 -0700

Whoa... first off, this spread isn't 100% officially done yet. It's almost there, though. 80% as far as this one goes. You may wonder just what the heck is going on still. I guarantee you, no one in the comic knows yet, either.

Second off, SORRY for not updating for so long! I don't intend on leaving you hanging like that, but I finally got to working on this again. Warning: the next few pages are going to be a little depressing. I suggest you take a look at the Page Notes to grab an inkling of what's going on here, and hear me talk about ~style~.

Uh... I wish I had more to say right now. Oh yeah! My podcast interviews so far are posted in the Author section. Go listen to them! They're so fun!

There are no new vote incentives yet. You should vote anyway. Especially on September 1st. That is a good day to vote, like today. :D (Thanks~~)

Ah! I remember what I was going to say! The 200,000 hits special kiriban passed without anyone saying anything. Aw. You guys need to get on the ball. XD Oh well. Maybe I'll set another one for 250,000 hits, and if no one gets that one, I'll just draw something! o/

...I hope it occurs near Millennium's birthday. *lazy*

Anyhow, thank you for 200,000 hits and 5.6 great years.

Sen -Live!-

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:16:30 -0700

Announcement: 200,000 Hits Kiriban

We're coming up on 200,000 hits, more quickly than ever in almost 6 years! Keep your eyes on the hit counter, near the bottom of the front page. If you see 200,000, you win! And whoever wins gets a request lineart from me! And the request can be whatever you want, provided it's not incredibly complicated or gross. |D Note that if you mention a hit close to 200k before anyone else, you will still win.

We have about 9000 hits to go, so keep your eyes out!

And now, here's a semi-comic-cross-post from my other comic!

My interview at WCRI is now up for download! I actually need to listen to it again. I'm sure I sound awkward.

EDIT 8/17: Podcast schedule update!

August 19th: Moonhawk Studios Presents (9 PM Central)

Come in and badger me for not updating! I'll still love you.

In case you didn't know, Starship Moonhawk (rated -M-) and TGT Webcomics are both fellow members of the WebComic Planet Collective, one of them a senior, and the other brand new (as far as the collective goes). I am currently going through both of them (and now's a great time to read Moonhawk if you haven't already, as it's only 30-some pages in for its 3.0 and final restart!).

I've spent the last week or two working on things I owe to other people and other neglected projects while taking a brief break from comics (and sort of attempting to build a sketch buffer). It's still coming along nicely; I'm that much closer to completing a few more websites and am finally printing my own business cards. (My old designs were ugly. That's portfolio class rushing for you.)

I made it so that the LJ development project for Millennium is actually kind of readable and nice to look at now. I kinda fell out of Art Slam, but when I do start drawing and refining more of the concept art I came up for with it, I'll be posting it there.

I should probably update the poll. Maybe I will in a few more pages. I want to see how many "DIE"s I can rack up first.

One more thing: The Webcomics Tarot Project has updated some things recently! You should check it out if you haven't in a while. I really need to finish my cards for it...

Predicament

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:42:38 -0700

Hello there!

For those of you interested, here's a little info on why I'm SO SLOW at updates right now, cross-posted to both my comics! Whee!

- In the midst of a slightly unsuccessful post-graduation job search (s'been going on for a year now), I took on a lot of freelance things...for free! I work slowly but surely, but most of the things I've take on just started this year, and I haven't finished any of them yet. Websites and things like that which, it turns out, needs a lot more investment than originally thought (at least in one case XD).

- I also took on a bunch of essentially free art commissions at Gaia, most of which I haven't finished despite my promise not to take like a year on them (so sad ;;).

- I also realized that I have a lot of unfinished original artwork. I still haven't been working on those (despite my plans to create an original artbook), but I need to. They probably would take less effort than comic pages, but more often than not I'd like to get the comic going along, so the art stays unfinished. I do have a lotta unfinished comic-artwork, too. I need to finish things.

So, realizing how long a lot of my other projects have been sitting, stewing, and not moving, I recently started trying to get through them...slowly. I've decided (like just the other day) that I can't possibly take on anything else short of an actual paying job until I get these things done. If I miss a comic update, it's likely because I'm working on these things, or something in life actually came up (my life is usually boring in terms of going out and doing things, which is why I had time to take on so many things in the first place), or I overslept (because of my highly irregular sleeping patterns).

I do spend time I can't spend drawing or doing other things by continuing to rewrite and refine parts of comic scripts. Millennium's writing is nearing total completion but still has its open spots. LF is long so far and has much more to be written, but its prequel story is almost finished, and its first volume has to be trimmed down. That's what I spent some time doing last week.

I am treating my comics seriously, but sometimes I just need to get some other things out of the way! I hope you understand. I'm almost always working on things. I subtly updated all the info sections on both comics just yesterday. I'm almost always accessible, too, so feel free to contact me, or even to still berate me for not adding new pages, lol.

Charities and More Greatness

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:48:24 -0700

More Editing - Only 3 more hours left to bid in the auction, guys! (Sorry, but no pages today, had to take care of other things. )

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I'm going to be on Webcomic Reviews & Interviews WEDNESDAY at 7 PM CST (8 EST)! Be there if you'd like to hear me blab about both my comics, and webcomics in general!

Yeah, it's short notice. I forgot to mention it here amidst other things. Also, we just planned this, it seems, lol.

Hey! It's been a busyish weekend. I'm always glad when I have more things to do than my comics (not that I don't like working on them - working on them continuously post-college just feels weird, lol). One of those things this weekend has been contributing to the LBGT Webcomic Charity Art Auction!

My entry, seen here, is two characters from my other (gayer) comic. Also contributing to this are some pretty great comics, including but not limited to FERA, Clan of the Cats, Primary, and Amazoness (a few of which, like Lovefeast, are intended for more mature audiences)! But wait, there's more! Go look!

Bonus!! For every $10 raised on my picture, I'll do an extra page for next Friday's update! So $50 would = 5 pages...all in a single day! Impossible, you say? Not when my heart is warmed. :D (Note that this number may actually be divvied up between my two comics. It's only reasonable, and still nice for all of us.) I totally ganked this idea. Let's go!!

For your convenience, here's the list of everything being sold on Ebay. Bidding ends first thing Friday! Don't miss out! It's for a great cause.

I also posted a review of Myseries of the Arcana on LF today. While I'm posting here, I also want to plug a comic I finally got around to reading the other day - the Abominable Charles Christopher.

It's beautiful. It's yet another one of those comics I'm grateful are online for free, yet I will buy as soon as it's available in book form. If anything, I love comics about a myriad semi-realistic animals full of character and living out their natural lives in such colorfully-spoken ways.

What really stunned me about it is that it's not 100% driven by one plot, but is many plots and smaller gags all rolled up into one website. The big plot intrigues me, not only because the author doesn't have a set-in-stone plan for the story - just guidelines, so he stumbles along and discovers things just as Charles does himself - but because you'd never know that if he didn't say so.

It's genuinely funny, beautifully-drawn, touching, moving. You feel as immersed in the adventure as the very characters themselves. You love even the smallest of speaking roles.

I can't recommend it enough.

10-11 Preview

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:14:44 -0700

Since I still haven't delivered an update, here's a preview of the next spread, at least. Note that the end result will be significantly more interesting than this. I also have to make a major edit to what is seen here.

It'll be fun to work on. I spent this week with the more artistic side of me drained but the design part intact, so I was working on web stuff instead. I also changed up how banners are displayed around here... the new design for this site that I'm working on will accommodate them, among other things, well. Hope you understand, and thanks for reading. ♥

Oh yeah! We're higher up in the rankings this month! Please keep voting! ♥

State of the Week

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:05:45 -0700

Hey! Millennium is in kind of a transitional state right now. I'm working on a brand new site design! This one's been lingering around since the restart began, which was well over a year ago. It's time for a much better change. I like this layout, but there's dust and cobwebs now. And there're little things I never bothered fixing, either. *lazy*

The new layout will be detailed and hopefully not too distracting. In a way, it's slightly inspired by The Awakened's newest layout. Visually, it will be colorful, but not a color overload. It'll have my 3 favorite colors in it. It'll reflect the nature of the comic better than this layout and coincide with the scene change that's coming with the next page. (I'm still reworking that page, btw.) You'll liiike it.

For the record, now in addition to a Livejournal feed, I set up a Millennium Twitter account so that new page notifications and links will go up if you prefer to get your comic updates via Twitter. It's more reliable than going through all my main account's blithering tweets to find out about a comic update!
Lots of extra little things like this (like Facebook) are linked on the Support page and also down there to the right.

Since I've deprived you of yet another update, I'll fill the empty space in your heart with rambling. I saw Up the other day. As you can bet, it was fantastic -- it was several triumphs for Pixar, really, just when you thought they couldn't possibly outdo themselves (well, I never thought that, but really this is just fantastic).

They made an incredibly quirky and unconventional cast of characters work very, very well. Its visual style is just great (I had the chance to look through all of its design book right after the movie - great concept art), and it blends the oddly realistic (court summons? in MY Pixar movie?) with the utterly fantastical (flying balloon house) and gave me the most genuine laughs of any Pixar movie. It also made me cry the most. Heartwarming/sad stories involving old people absolutely get to me. It's probably the sweetest thing I've seen in a long time - it's really, truly touching, and that's why I love it.

This can also be said of the short preceding the movie. My favorite Pixar short, along with the magician/rabbit one paired with Wall-E, which was also great. I laughed. I really laughed.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to see my second ever 3D movie (after Coraline) and first 3D Pixar movie since it was out of 3D by Friday. :[ I didn't get to see it sooner. But it was still fantastic... I just wonder what the chase scene would have been like in 3D. Holy crap, I love chase scenes, but especially in Pixar movies. They're ALWAYS great.

So yeah, see this if you haven't. The theatre was still relatively crowded despite it having been out as long as it has.

Oh yeah! This movie also had the most terrifying antagonist, I think, of all Pixar's movies. In fact, I can't recall anyone else nearly as creepy...except Hopper, maybe. I also can't recall anyone who outright threatened to kill the protagonist. Holy crap.
Speaking of A Bug's Life, that, Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and Ratatouille are my top favorite Pixar movies. Wall-E might make it in there if I watch it again while not feeling awful/tired.

Millennium Late

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:13:24 -0700

Hey! I apologize for the lack of updateage here. Friday I kind of got distracted, and then I found a bunch of old thumbnails for the next sequence of pages that I had misplaced - thumbnails which strangely look better than what I've more recently come up with. I'm debating whether or not to redo certain parts of the next spread. Anyway, I'll not linger longer, and try to have a page up by THIS Friday.

In slightly interesting news, I dumped a whole bunch of concept sketches here just a little while ago. Those sketches are all the start of something amazing, by the way. I'm glad I finally got some of my ideas to paper - even if a good bit of them are fairly NEW (and I mean, REALLY new). They're good ideas. I like where we're going, and it's good to be sorting this stuff out now.

I also added a tad more info to all the characters' bio pages and the Spirits part of the World's Chronicles. Too bad none of it comes into effect until later, but you get to see some cool stuff soon anyway.

Also, hey, did you hear Red Moon Rising got a new site? Yeah, it's almost exactly like the old site, but that one crashed, so it's a fresh start and new beginnings over there. Go look look look.