Beyond Mode 7: Deadline Approaches!

This update has been a long time coming! It’s time to officially get excited about Beyond Mode 7 as the final art submission deadline is just a mere 2 weeks away! To whet all those video game art loving appetites out there, today I’m going to share a few nibbles of some of what has already come in from our STILL GROWING list of contributors!

First off, I’d like to announce that the book will officially launch at MeCAF 2014, in Portland Maine on May 18th! Jesse and I were accepted for the sixth year in a row to table at this amazing, growing and evolving indie comics show! It’s got a great history of solid attendance and being great for the whole family, exactly the intended audience for the anthology.

Second, if you missed any of my Post-MAGFest Reports (read them here and here) then I’ll once again announce the addition of the amazing Kevin Bolk, 8BitMaximo and Hex Martinez to the Anthology roster! Each brings something unique and powerful to the table and we’re overjoyed to have them on board! Hit those links up and check out their work!

Now, for the newcomers to Beyond Mode 7, let me introduce the anthology real quick: The brain child of my table mate and fellow ink-slinger Jesse Durona (artist behind the popular Despondent Mega Man comics) Beyond Mode 7 came to be after MAGFest 11 in January of 2013. The book will be a full-color, 6×9″, perfect-bound homage to all things Super Nintendo.

With more contributing artists than the system had Bits to work with, it will cover a broad spectrum of experiences, games and memories from arguably the 90’s greatest video game console and game library. It will feature comics, illustrations, essays, and other works of art all honoring a device that brought interactive art and creativity right into our living rooms every day of our childhood!

Some of the games covered by Beyond Mode 7 include: (Art represented are works-in-progress!)

Super Mario World


© Scott Baer

Kirby’s Dreamland 3


© Matt Aucoin

Super Metroid


© Amanda Ruddock

TMNT Turtles in Time


© Bill Volk

Mega Man X


© Michael Ruggia

The Legend of Zelda: LttP


© Matt Aucoin

Earthbound/Mother2


© Randall Drew

…and many many more!

As a note to creators still working: The deadline for final art submissions is the end of this month! As of March, Jesse and I will be compiling the artwork together and preparing a Kickstarter for April! Then it’ll be a Super Nintendo Blitz to get as many people contributing to the campaign as possible! We want to put your art in as many hands as possible, so keep and eye out for requests to help spread the word!

Thanks, and game on!
-RD

Above original artworks are © their respective creator, all rights reserved!

MAGFest Report Part 2: Friends

I have a lot of friends who I only see once a year. At MAGFest. This blog post is about them in all their pure awesome.

Every year for many years now, a bunch of us from the former OneUp Studios message boards (now Mustin Enterprises) gather at MAGFest to catch up, celebrate and party. Since the show has moved to the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center the style of the gathering at MAGFest has stepped up a notch. Spear-headed by long-time internet friends JoeCam and Taras “Pappy” Butrej, a group purchases a large suite and hosts a suite-party. Usual suspects include Rory O’Boyle, Haroon “FFMusicDJ” Piracha, “Jesus” Ian and Brohon. You’ll meet all of them in the photo above. Often the group chooses a theme.

This year’s theme was “Brotel Party – Dress like a douche, but don’t act like one!” Needless to say there were a lot of popped collars, glasses being worn inside and excited shouts of “BRO!” Everyone from Dale North Editor in Chief of Destructoid, to Jake “Virt” Kauffman of WayForward, to Kunal Majmudar and Maximo Lorenzo show their faces at the so-called “Lumberjack Lounge.” It’s a gathering of not only some of the best talent in the VGM Remix/Rearrangement community, but also some of my best far-away friends! Each one is doing something different and amazing with their talents and I hope to give you all just a snippet of their awesome here in this post!

Oh, and in case you were wondering; This is how nerds run a shots competition:

The competition is set up into rounds of 3 shots, each winner advancing until we have a 3-way showdown at the end. There’s prizes for the winners AND Losers. Each shot MUST be themed after a game (or game-related, as there was a Wreck it Ralph themed shot this year for Venelope!) This years winner was HAT! With a shot called “Purple Tentacle” from the classic LucasArts game Day of the Tentacle!

My good buddy Haroon was making his second-place shot from last year on the side for us non-participants so we could taste what it takes to place in “Onimushots!”

I’ve mentioned a lot of people already, so why don’t I get down to specifics? I’ll share a little bit about each person and what they’re doing that’s just so awesome! (No specific order, just as they come to me….)

Maximo V Lorenzo – I’ve talked plenty about this guy already, but seriously, Go read his webcomic OHKO!

Mustin – Co-Founder of the former OneUp Studios with Dale North, now the man behind Mustin Enterprises and The OneUps!

JoeCam – Asshole. Also, writer for The Gaming Vault.


Taras “Pappy” Butrej – DudeBro. Does movie reviews at his blog Mainstreamin’

Kunal Majmudar – Runs Pixeltone Music and co-founder of SWD Tech! Guest percussion for The OneUps also, all around awesome guy!

X-Strike Studios – Tim, Rorry, Ben and the whole gang at X-Strike do video game movies with a sense of humor and nostalgia! I’d recommend Project: Snake Low Budget Espionage as a good starter!

Overcoat – Aka Scott, he hosts Touhou Tuesday and Radio Overcoat Tuesday and Wednesday nights over at AreciboRadio! Be sure to jump into the chat and talk with all the other fans as well as hosts, guests and producers!

Kristina “TrueStar” Kauffman/ Jake “Virt” Kauffman – Kris is another Arecibo Radio host, co-hosting Touhou Tuesdays and her own show Noise Channel on Thursday nights. Her shows are often produced by Virt, who’s 110% Awesome.

Ailsean – God of Guitar.

Steph – Steph is the guest coordinator of MAGFest and one of the bubbliest, happiest people I know!

Flik – Chris Serani was MAGFest’s official photographer this year and I’m sure he’s busy right now uploading thousands of photos!

Justin Taylor – Super nice guy who knows how to METAL. When not on stage, wears glasses!

Brandon Strader – No longer an “up and coming” OCRemixer this guy knows how to rock and will have a solo album coming VERY SOON! Hit up his website!

NO-Shows:

Here are some folk that sadly couldn’t make it this year, but are MAG Veterans and sorely missed!

Mazedude – Chris Getman and his wife just had their first child, baby Isabella! Mazedude is hard at work on his next solo album “American Pixels” Pre-order now for a free Chiptune EP!

Larry “Liontamer” Oji. – Loves McRibs. Had the flu and had to skip MAGFest this year, he’s a veteran attendee, long time VGM DJ and co-host of Nitro Game Injection on Arecibo Radio! He’s also the Community Manager and a Judge over at OCRemix.

KyleJCRB – Main host of Nitro Game Injection and master of the KNGI radio network!

These are just some of the people I meet every year now at MAGFest to catch up with! The list goes on and I’m sure I missed some folks, but hey…that’s why we hang at the show!
To see my complete MAGFest photo set with many of the people listed here in it, his up my Flickr account!

Tomorrow, the final part of my report and what MAGFest is really all about: The Music! Let me tell ya, this year was incredible!

-RD

MAGFest Report #1

First off let me say thanks so much to everyone at MAGFest, y’all put on an amazing show year after year and I know you strive to make each convention better than the last. From this sole cartoonists perspective, let me say you did doubly as awesome as last year!

Simply put, MAGFest XI was twice the show MAGFest X was! I know it’s hard to top a shows’ 10th anniversary that features Nobuo Uematsu’s The Earthbound Papa’s…but in so many ways this years convention blew the lid off X!

As I did with last year’s MAGFest report, I’m going to break this thing up into 3 sections! Art, Friends and of course the Music!

The Friends section will cover the show floor from the awesome staff to attendees and cosplay, to scheduling and set-up, as well as the multitude of people and friends I only get to see each year at MAGFest!

The Music section wraps things up with what MAGFest is really all about: The concerts! This years lineup was superb and all the shows I went to were very well attended, well produced and well performed! From The OneUps to Armcannon, The Mega’s and The Protomen along with special guest DJ Yuzo Koshiro, MAGFest rocked harder than ever!

THIS is the art section! What a year for Artists at MAGFest! The vendor hall had painters, cartoonists, craft makers, and art prints for sale EVERYWHERE! In terms of sales, I heard from almost every table I stopped at that sales this year were up double or more from last year’s show, despite an oddly slow Saturday. This was absolutely the case at my table as both Jesse Durona and I easily beat our totals from last year and then moved over double! Had the table half-paid for by the end of our first half-day (Thursday) even! Seeing that we’re both starting out, making back just table costs is usually an attainable goal, so doing double that this year for me in particular was an enormous step in the right direction, and a great confidence booster!

We both aspire to provide better products for better pricing each and every year and grow our artistic skills and profits to match. MAGFest is not only our best show of the year usually, it also provides us with the most inspiration, enjoyment and chance to connect with like-minded fans and fellow artists alike. It’s almost sad to say MAGFest is the highlight of our year, but it definitely is, and provides us with the creative capital necessary to get through the entire year!

But enough about us, let’s talk about some of the other amazing artists I had the brief chance to meet, see again, or discover for the first time!

If we’re voting on the prettiest booth girls at the show, Danielle Sylvan Dernoga just might win. She also won my attention for her stunning digital paintings and illustrations. Her style is sort of a nice mixture of realism with the fantastic and just a hint of Disney. Her work is very crisp and bright, using vibrant colors to put your attention where it needs to be. She doesn’t work just digitally, however, offering caricature commissions in pen and ink with copic markers at the table on the fly. This is a good choice as she’s very good at rendering recognizable faces! While some of her compositions seemed a bit stiff, at 19, she’s got a lot of talent and a lot of awesome art ahead of her! Hope to see her at MAGFest XII!

My only true impulse buy of the show was Guilded Age Volume One from T. Campbell and Phil Kahn who were tabling directly behind my table the entire time, yet I didn’t get around to actually meeting them until the last night! Shock and awe, and now disappointment are settling in as it turns out their comic is not too dissimilarly inspired as my budding fantasy adventure, Citadel. T Campbell also was a student of James Sturm, founder of my Alma’matter the Center for Cartoon Studies! While Guilded age is inspired by World of Warcraft, and my inspiration comes from more a Final Fantasy style background, fantasy stories are all cut from some similar cloth. Guilded Age definitely puts humor before anything else, and is made pretty clear that the early goings were wrought with Penny Arcade envy! As the stories go on tho, you can see it shaping into it’s very own sort of thing as the wild band of adventurers drive things forward. While no longer a part of the project, Erica Henderson is no longer the mainstay artist on the book, this volume is all her work, including a bonus story squeezed out before she left for other commitments. In full color, it’s definitely worth the 20 smackers price tag!

I was also introduced, albeit very briefly, to the work of Heidi Arnhold. This Atlanta, GA cartoonist and illustrator is another SCAD grad who’s done some pretty amazing sequential work for Tokyopop on The Dark Crystal, Star Trek Uchu and upcoming work on a Fraggle Rock anthology! She has a very excellent design sense in her fan art posters and prints and her sequential pages are wrought with detail, fine crisp lines and impressively smooth but simple layouts. I definitely didn’t know such a thing as a Dark Crystal comic existed, but I’m absolutely going to grab a copy now, knowing such a talented illustrator is bringing it to life! P.S. – Her husband does a podcast!

K-BO! Kevin Bolk was once again in attendance at MAGFest and man did he have it in high-gear this year! Guy was doing commissions basically non-stop and I hear he’s got quite the list for when he gets home! Kevin is a fine fellow who does the popular web comic “It Sucks to Be Weegie” about Mario’s not so popular little brother. He also has some fantastic slice-of-life/auto-bio comics that are poignant, funny and in his fantastic made-for-animation style! Kyle is also part of the inspiration behind my table-mate Jesse DuRona’s Despondent Mega Man! It was very good to see him again and hope to catch up again soon!

Other creators I saw at the show in-passing as I didn’t have very much time to get away from my own table:

Julia Lichty, a fantasy, sci-fi, gothic illustrator and cartoonist who mixes a lot of traditional and digital elements together to create some pretty striking and darkly romantic pieces.

Sara Ho, who’s “Be the Leaf” Avatar: The Last Airbender print was everywhere at the show, super cute and super popular! Her bubbly style brought some downright fun to the show floor!

Need a dose of hyper chibi cuteness? Tehnoangel Studios has you covered with buttons and prints and all sorts of neat goodies!

He didn’t table this year but my buddy Maximo V Lorenzo aka 8-Bit Maximo was there to party hardy and it was super good to see him and his bitchin’ scarf again!

Well, that about wraps up the artists section of this years MAGFest report! Lots of inspiring and jaw-dropping art this year. Here’s hoping Jesse and I can really step-up our game in 2013 now and really bring it for 2014’s MAGFest XII!

OH! One last reminder: Starting every Tuesday now there will be a new page of Citadel Chapter 1 as I re-boot the story and move forward with the comic! Also, Thursdays will feature a new sketch-card, starting with the ones from MAGFest! Plenty of new content to be had in 2013!

-RD

All art and Photos are © their respective creators. Check them out and support them!