Posted: Thursday, June 28th 2007

Today Activision announced that Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s has gone gold. And despite release date estimates of July 17th, the publisher indicates that the game will not hit shelves until July 24th. This is the last iteration of the Guitar Hero franchise that will be developed by Harmonix as Activision has opted to move development to the Activision owned crew responsible for the GUN and Tony Hawk games, Neversoft.
Source: Gamespot [ more info ]

Rock the 80's is essentially an expansion. It doesn't sell alongside a guitar. And there's nothing wrong with this, I have 5 guitars already. I can't say I'm exactly happy with the pricetag compared to the setlist depth though. Let's examine:

The problem I have here is that I'll be paying the same amount for 30 songs as I previously paid for 66. And where some will argue that this is because some of the tracks on Rock the 80's are original recordings, the woody-truth (meaning, as I see it) is that the price increase is little more than Activision upping the sticker price to capitalize on their investment at our expense. Why would I think that? There are only six "original recording" tracks in the game and they're not exactly the upper eschelon of the tracklist.

In all honesty, if this wasn't the final Harmonix developed Guitar Hero title, I wouldn't buy it in protest. And at this point, unless there's a miraculous 9th inning homerun from Neversoft, I have no interest in artificially padding Activisions wallet by buying Guitar Hero III either.

I'll follow Harmonix on to Rock Band and Activision can eat me.

Submitted by Woody | 10 Comments - last comment by: Woody

Posted: Tuesday, June 26th 2007

I was recently digging through a stack of my non-GU artwork, then thumbed through the GU artwork, then looked again at line of 3 inch binders I have stuffed full of artwork from the comics themselves (one for each year). And it was while looking at all of this ink on paper that I decided it might be time to try to thin it out some.

So, I decided "maybe I should try to auction it off. Some of my webcomic peers have done that with moderate levels of success". Granted there are alterior motives. I have a massive tax bill lingering from last year that I'd really like to get out from under. And, these auctioned pieces would go toward knocking that out.

Well once I committed, I did the math for what it would cost me to use eBay and ended up less than impressed. I decided I could probably do a type of "write-in" donation, a la silent auctions, easily enough. So, that's what I did.

I'm using PayPal to accept payments (an unavoidable evil). But, even those without an actual PayPal account will be able to pay via credit card, e-check, etc.

Anyway, you can find the Auction section here:
http://www.gucomics.com/auctions/

For the most part, I'll be posting artwork in batches of 2 or three. Each piece has a goal, but it's completely inconsequential in the grand sceme of things. Right now there are Vhah images up for grabs.

I appreciate your participation and hope that these minor extensions of myself will find good homes.

Submitted by Woody | 1 Comment - last comment by: magi7456

Posted: Monday, June 18th 2007

Tonight, as I was trying to complete an important GU project, I ran out of storage space.

I have 2 Western Digital 75Gig Raptors. They've lasted a long time; but, I've known I was going to have to add more storage space for a while now. All of those comic photoshop files, custom artwork, MMOGs, etc., eat through my "capacity" pie chart.

At any rate, I've put in a rush order for a 500Gig drive. Thanks New Egg (and Maximum PC for the recommendation). With any luck we won't see any GU downtime because I ran out of space to save new comics.

Submitted by Woody | 14 Comments - last comment by: Pojodan

Posted: Monday, June 11th 2007

ConnectiCon is the only convention I attend each year. That's by choice. The ConnectiCon staff pay special attention to their guests, and the whole thing is very webcomic friendly. The whole thing is a mash of Anime, Fantasy, Webcomics, Video Games... everything that serves to entertain we champions of Geekdom.

Now, every year I ask that they put me on a lot of panels. I don't care what it's about. They pay for me to come out; I just want to feel like I'm earning my keep. But, each year, I get assigned to one panel maybe two. So this year, figuring it would be more of the same, I decided to do the one thing I usually avoid like the plague: I'm manning a GU booth. But, I'm an anal sod and everything has to be just so. To that end I have great plans for a booth that serves to invite rather than solicit.

Folks at conventions do like to toss about their disposable funds though. So, I've started assembling items they might just decide are worth a dollar or three. None of these things are currently available in the GU store, but should be after the convention. Unless of course we have a very, very good convention.

Getting back to the matter of panels, ConnectiCon has only assigned me to one; a computer graphics Q&A/Tutorial panel with Hawk from AppleGeeks and Garth from Comedity. To help promote the event, and since all three of us use one in some form or fashion, our pals at Wacom have provided an Intuos 3 6x8 to give away to one of the attendees.

The only thing left for me to decide now is if I want to set up a Guitar Hero station in my booth or not. It would give me something to do while I wait for the 1 person in 1000 at the convention that actually know of GU to stop in and say hi, right?

Submitted by Woody | 3 Comments - last comment by: DashCat9