Author Archives: iRogan

One For The Road

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How ’bout them Game Awards? Guardians of the Galaxy taking home the surprise “Best Narrative” award. And It Takes Two taking home Game of the Year. Most impressive.

The wife and I plan to play this game on her Twitch channel during our couple’s gaming nights. (Typically Tuesdays). twitch.tv/cro0kedj. We played through Morkredd last time, and I have the VOD downloaded and plan on editing that into a fun “highlights” video for Youtube.

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What I’m Drawing
Speaking of the wife… she said I’m not allowed to draw anymore Gwen Stacy. And I see her point. 15 variations is a bit much. I’ll be sure to draw more next year though 😉 .

In the meantime, I drew Tracer, from the game Overwatch, to add to my collection of those characters. So far I’ve drawn Widowmaker, Moira, Brigitte, Mercy, Sombra, D.Va and now Tracer.

Colour version coming soon.

As I continually add and reference my art, I should probably just create a dedicated section for it. With proper folders. Project for the new year.

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What I’m Playing
Played Unpacking for the achievements. 1000G in about an hour. A little bit of Dirt 5. Rain on your Parade has DLC launching next week which I’ll be playing through. Played a little bit Halo Infinite Multiplayer, but have not tried the campaign yet, now that it has released. It’s on the short list but after recently starting up GTA 3 and Watch Dogs Legion, those two are my immediate priority before starting anything new.

Watch Dog has been pretty fun. It is definitely a nice looking game, and I’m getting the hang of the team setup, where you have multiple agents to pick from. Its kind neat actually because they all just roam around the city, and act almost like fast travel points if you don’t mind swapping.

In the co-op zone we’ve started up Borderlands 3. I’ve always loved the Borderlands games. Played 1 and 2 thoroughly, including the DLC. The Pre-Sequel I didn’t quite finish. But 3 has been been pretty fun so far in co-op.

And a huge bonus: it comes with a Photo Mode. And not just any photo mode. One that plays in-real time with your online co-op buddies.

Also tried out the Matrix Awaking Unreal Engine 5 tech demo that was announced at the game awards. It’s kind neat. An impressive showcase of what the new UE5 can do. Obviously limited in scope. Its an open world city where you can walk around and drive showing off the lighting and damage body engine, but not much beyond just looking pretty. The initially opening sequent is mostly just quick-time events to show off the particle effects and visuals, but it is all on rails to hide the limitations of the demo.

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What I’m Reading

Crossover #10
Dark Knights of Steel #2
Soul Plumber #3
The Walking Dead Deluxe #28

Quieter week this week on the comics front as I actually only got 2/4 of my expected pull due to Diamond delays getting the indie books in. Hopefully they’ll arrive for next week.

Achievement of the Week
Borderlands 3: Tips Appreciated (15G)
Tipped Moxxi

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More holiday shopping on the horizon, and a few more weeks of work. A couple more snowfalls and Spider-Man: No Way Home to look forward to as well. Festive times.

Happy Holidays.

G309,401
iRogan

Dusk til Dawn

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Oh, how the hours turn into days, and days turn into weeks. Busy just livin’, but where does the time go?

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What I’m Drawing

I always like to start with this category first because it makes me feel accomplished. Everything else I do is just a time-wasting hobby, or cost a lot of money (see: What I’m Reading 😉 )

More GwenVerse additions this week. And this will be the final two of the year. I swear. We have Silk Gwen, which is just a SILK variation; not as original but I was challenged to do another drawing with her on pointe. I struggled with a few different poses for a few days but inevitably settled on this one to make it work. I may go back and try another pass at the colour to see if I can switch it up. Maybe the blue will work? And also Grifter – GwenC.A.Ts. I couldn’t come up with a witty Gwen name for Grifter that didn’t sound dumb. So instead I decided to change the team name. GwenC.A.Ts. Now I have an excuse to make more Gwen variations from that team 😉 .

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What I’m Playing

Not much in the way of gameplay over the last week. Although I did quickly try out the new Game Pass addition: Townscaper. Not really a game, more like a toy / tool box to play around in. You basically just plop down blocks that turn into houses. You can make some pretty cool, colourful cities. Either way it was a quick 1000G.

Also I’ve been playing Dirt 5. Playing through the DLC races. Really just to check it off my list/queue so that I can focus on Forza Horizons 5 instead. I don’t like have too many same-genre games on the go.

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What I’m Reading

The Department of Truth #14
Human Target #2
The Me You Love in the Dark #5
SPAWN #324
Wonder Girl #5
The Scumbag #11
Fine/Print Vol 1 (not pictured)
DIE Vol 4 (not pictured)

So I was partially right about Decorum last week. The main titled comic is ending but a sequel series is replacing it. No word on the creative team, if Hickman will continue writing? I’ll have to look it up.

Also sadly, The Me You Love in the Dark ending after #5. Just a short brief series, probably better served as a trade / graphic novel. Its been a fun series with gorgeous art.

It’s getting close to that holiday time, house lights and trees are going up. Time to sit by the fire eating cookies with milk.

Happy Holidays.

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iRogan

Working Remote

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I did it! Finally finished the Wonder Woman #drawtober piece I have been working on over the last month. Well into #drawvember, and almost #drawcember. Even though those aren’t real and I just made them up.

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What I’m Drawing

This has gotta be, probably, the most complex, complete piece I’ve done to date. I’ve always done the pin-up style characters but rarely dabble in backgrounds. The point of #drawtober this year was to push myself when working with backgrounds. That’s why I only set out initially to do a handful of drawings. My wrestling comic has and will continue to require backgrounds, so its one area I need to continue to improve in. Push the comfort zone.

Now I just need to find room on my wall for another framed poster.

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What I’m Reading

Sticking with the art for a bit, Marvel announced the official GwenVerse. Issue #1 starting in January 2022 I believe.

I mentioned in previous posts about Spider-Gwen and how I had started drawing a bunch of different Spider-Gwen variations starting earlier this yeah in February.

I’ve created the page where I’ve added them here: Spider-Gwen

It’s pretty cool that they’ve decided to make it a whole universe. Excited to see how it turns out, and to see their variations.

And in other comic news, my weekly trip:

Batman Reptilian #6
DC vs. Vampires #2
Decorum #8
Echolands #4
Gunslinger Spawn #2
Sweet Paprika #5
Radian Black #10

Decorum definitely feels like it might be the end of the series, or maybe its just a bit bigger than normal and required different binding as it is bound like a very thin trade. We’ll see. The series promised a lot in scope but I feel hasn’t really gone anywhere, and is confusing to follow. It’s been inconsistent too. Starting back in March 2020, now a few months shy of 2 years and only 8 issues.

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What I’m Playing

It’s been a little quiet on the games front as the last week I was focused on finishing Wonder Woman. I’ve been playing a bit more Watch Dogs Legion, and a little Halo Multiplayer. Tried out the Fiesta playlist mode working towards progression in the latest Event. This week I should be able to spend a bit more time as a I take a creative break from drawing to recharge.

Sliding into Monday like…

Be Good.
iRogan

Peeker’s Disadvantage

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“Back smacked” with a ton of games and gameplay this past week, as we gotta talk about Forza Horizons 5’s awesomeness, GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition’s not-so-awesomeness, Halo Infinite shadow dropped, and maybe a touch of Watch Dogs Legion; so let’s just jump right into it.

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What I’m Playing

Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite multiplayer dropped on us this week, releasing early on the Xbox 20th Anniversary. This was just the Multiplayer component and not the campaign. And its basically the beta, only a full release where the developers are asking the players to treat it like a beta as they are still ironing out bugs and server load. They are expecting the player count to drastically increase around the proper launch date of Dec 8, but wanting to surprise players too. I’m sure EA is none-too-pleased to have the early competition to BF2042.

I guess because the game hasn’t officially launched, Xbox is like “no achievements for you!”. But also, sure, you can have achievements.

600G are included with the multiplayer component, 50 or so, so I’ve been burning through those as I can. A chunk are training/tutorial related, and then customization, and then gameplay.

From what I’ve read, a large chunk can actually be unlocked when playing on the bot list lobbies, making them significantly easier to acquire. I won’t argue that.

Impressions: It’s fine. It’s Halo. It’s what you’d expect.

Forza Horizons 5

As you’d expect, not reinventing the wheel here, Forza Horizons is great. Another meaningful step forward for the franchise but nothing new, aside from the locale. It is amusing to me, to see that they were able to finally pull off the “seamless multiplayer integration” which they touted for 4, but weren’t actually able to pull off.

Impressions: The game is beautiful and plays amazingly, performance mode or quality mode.

Grand Theft Auto Trilogy – The Definitive Edition

Definitely not definitive. But still fun. Still a nostalgic trip back in time. From my initial experience, aside form the awful rain effects (since fixed), it actually looks quite good. The lighting is impressive in the evenings, standing amongst the vehicle headlights. And the game is just as quirky and goofy as I recall. Currently playing through III.

I’m just going to tackle these as a campaign playthrough, and not going to go after 100% completion. Just focus on the bulk of the achievements, but I don’t need to find all the hidden packages or anything. Ain’t no one got time for that!

“What are you plans for the weekend?

Well, I have a family… so I don’t make plans.”

Watch Dogs Legion

Watch Dogs Legion? Really? Where did this come from? Well… see… I beat ME: Shadow Of War, and needed another open-world game to fill the void. I wasn’t ready to tackle Assassin’s Creed Valhalla yet. So… Watch Dogs? Right? But GTA is open world. Yeah I get it, but I started this before that came out and now I have two on-going and I don’t want to talk about it.

Watch Dogs Legion has been pretty fun. I’m not too sure how I feel about the “no main protagonist” angle, but it works with the whole DedSec movement; No leader, No Problem, etc.

They brought back Aidan Pierce as a paid-for, playable character, so I suppose I could just play the whole campaign with him, but he also has his own expansion, so we’ll leave him to that.

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It’s unfortunate that with the recent batch of releases, quite a few games on my list have fallen by the wayside. Far Cry New Dawn, The Ascent, Back 4 Blood, Surgeon Simulator 2. Wreckfest and Dirt 5. Hell, even GTA V was popular all over again amongst my group for all of twelve minutes.

This is why I don’t like starting too many things at once, as it’s so easy to just forget and move on. Sad, really.

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Achievement of the Week

Halo Infinite. You guessed it.

Working from home has its advantages.

You can drop everything at 12pm, nuke some food and load into some afternoon Halo.

It’s even better when your friends are also working form home. Talk about needy.

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Be Good
-iRogan

Unnatural Talent

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I missed my weekend post, but I’m following through with my promised Wednesday, new comic, new art, post. And then bed before 10.

What I’m Reading

New comics, week of Nov 10th

  • Batman The Imposter #2
  • Justice League Last Ride #7
  • Ordinary Gods #5
  • A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance #2
  • Robin & Batman #1
  • Stillwater #11
  • Superman vs Lobo #2
  • Undiscovered Country #17

Undiscovered Country hit me with a surprised “to be concluded” tag on the final page, which is a huge shock that this comic is ending, if true. We’ll have to wait and see.

New comics, week of Nov 17th

  • Blue & Gold #4
  • King Spawn #4
  • The Nice House on the Lake #6
  • Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #5
  • The Walking Dead Deluxe #27
  • Batman vs Bigby #3

What I’m Drawing

Gwen Lantern

So I don’t think I’ve posted any of my Gwen Stacy series here yet, so I’ll have to make an art section for that. The story is, in February earlier this year I started a month long drawing challenge dedicated to Gwen Stacy, or more specifically Spider-Gwen. I called it the Gweniverse. I took the idea of Spider-Gwen as an alternate universe version of Spider-Man and applied that to as many different characters as I could think of. Marvel, DC, didn’t matter.

I started first with the ones that were already canon, SpiderGwen, Gwenom, Gwen Poole, and then just ran with it:

  • Gwencrawler (Night Crawler)
  • Gwenclops (Cyclops)
  • Gwentanna Gwentara (Zantanna)
  • Gwenbit (Gambit)
  • Harley Gwen (Harley Quinn)
  • Gwennernaut (Juggernaut)
  • InGwencible (Invincible)
  • Rogue-wen (Rogue)
  • Gwen 2099 (Spider-Man 2099)
  • Gwen Lantern (Green Lantern)

In February I was able to do the first 9, and then throughout the year I’ve been adding to the collection when I find some inspiration. I’ll post the gallery for next week.

#Drawtober – Wonder Woman

Still slowly making progress on last month’s Wonder Woman drawing. I’ve now inked my background, and now we are finally ready for colour.

This is, by far, the most work I’ve ever dedicated to a background on any piece I’ve done. And it was one of my goals last month when I decided to do fully realized, rendered pieces; to push myself to do backgrounds more consistently. It is one of my weaker skills and it’s something I’ll need to be able to do more when I return to working on my creator-owned comic.

I should be able to put in some real time colouring this, leading into the weekend as I still hope to get a new Stranger Than Friendship comic posted by the end of November.

As I mentioned at the top, I missed this past week’s post, but I’ll have a significant update after this coming weekend. I’ll have a lot of things to discuss. On the docket we have:

  • Grand Theft Auto Definitive Trilogy
  • Forza Horizons 5
  • and Halo Infinite Multiplayer

And bed before 10.

-iRogan