Hi everyone!

As mentioned in the in review 2021, last spring I did a big update to the game!
I should have made the announcement back then, but... I had a terrible laziness to write news for a long time. I preferred to spend my meager free time coding, doodling, modeling. :p

So! This update.

It consists of 2 important points.

No need to download the game

Indeed, with the previous version you needed to download the client of the game. It was not very sexy because the native python graphics module is very limited.

Now you can play it directly from your browser! :D
Nothing to download or install. All you have to do is click on the Play link on the game page.
Or you can simply click here to go directly to the game screen.

On the left, it was before the update, on the right, it is after.
In my short career as a developer, I have never found better than web technologies to be able to make beautiful user interfaces that are fast, pretty and flexible.

As a bonus, the game is also compatible with mobiles!
You can really play it from anywhere now (as long as you have internet access)! :D

Hosting of the server

The second point is more technical.
Before, the game server was running on my home computer, so you could only play if it was turned on and connected to the Internet in my home.

Those days are over!
From now on, the server is running on a professional host with automatic backups, so the game is always accessible! :D

As a bonus for me, it will have been a good exercise for future online game projects that are in development.

I wish you a nice week and see you soon for new adventures!

Suisei

Hello everyone!

It's been a long time since I've given any news. I have been very busy these last months.
It is therefore time to give some news!

To begin with, it seems that this is the first news of 2022, so, I wish you all a happy new year a little late! :D

Today, we're going to take a look back at a very, very busy year in 2021.
So busy that some of the topics mentioned today will be the subject of separate news in the coming weeks.

Here is a small summary of the topics I will cover.

• Péguy
• 13th Digital Painting School's Challenge
• Illustrations
• TGCM Comics
• Dragon Ball Multiverse
• Blender 3D courses
• The Cardassian Bird-of-Prey
• Update of Go on an Adventure Comrades!
• In conclusion

Péguy

I already told you about this project in a news early last year, an app that allows you to generate a number of patterns and effects in an automated way for comics and mangas.

The application itself has not progressed much since then, but I have done a lot of research on 3D programming and have developed new separate tools to speed up my work processes.
I went beyond web technologies and worked a lot with the Python language.
Now I have to think of a way to put all this together in an intelligent and accessible way for the general public.

New effects in the application

Automated 3D scene generation with the Python language.
We don't need to introduce you to these good old stormtroopers anymore.

An application that generates a program that itself generates a 3D object... Yes, the delirium goes far. x)
The object generated here is a Cardassian weapon (Star Trek).

There is a lot more to say about it, so this topic will be the subject of a more complete news in the coming weeks.

13th Digital Painting School's Challenge

In line with my research for the Peguy project, in the spring of 2021 I participated in a contest organized by Digital Painting School, a French speaking online digital art school.

The proposed theme left quite a bit of creative freedom, so I took the opportunity to submit a drawing not drawn with a pencil or stylus, but drawn with lines of code.

Basically, I wrote a program in Python that generated a robot and a 3D setting. Then I loaded this 3D scene into Clip Studio Paint and applied some filters to get a color result.

The concept has been quite successful. :p

This project allowed me to develop a bunch of new features that will be usable in Peguy in the future.

The next big DP School challenge is announced for March 2022. I'm looking forward to it to try new experiences. :D

Illustrations

Pixel Art

Keeping with the illustration theme, last year I did a whole news about the old software of my childhood, AppleWorks and I did a pixel art illustration with for the Drink'N'Draw.
It made me want to explore this style more, but with Clip Studio Paint this time. :D

Feel free to click on the images to see them larger and appreciate the details.

Two Dukats (Star Trek - Deep Space Nine). What? You didn't notice that I really like this character? 8D
The first is a makeover I came up with for a story that takes place in an alternate reality where he loses an eye in battle and becomes a space pirate.
The second one, with the red eyes, was a pretext to test my new graphic tablet... Or testing my new graphic tablet was a pretext to draw him... Who knows. 8D

Kira Nerys and Dukat (Star Trek - Deep Space Nine). I won't tell you the story behind this drawing right now, otherwise it's not funny. I let you imagine. :p

Last May, there was a Drink'N'Draw session about Cowboy Bebop, an anime I really like with great music.

So, I bought a new graphics tablet.
My nomadic wacom was very helpful, but as nomadism is no longer relevant with the virus that we know, making regular data transfers between the tablet and the main computer was becoming restrictive.
So I bought a model width screen to plug into my computer but still small enough to carry on vacation.

I was a Wacom customer for a very long time, but the market has evolved in the last few years and new quality brands have emerged at half the price.
So I invested in an XP-Pen Innovator 16 last spring.

It is the size and weight of an Ituos Pro Large from Wacom.
It is the price of an Intuos Pro Large from Wacom...
But there's the built-in screen too! :p

It's really great and fits my needs perfectly. I work with it all the time since then.

Draw with the mouse!

Well, working with AppleWorks has made me want to do more experiments in the year 2021.

I made drawings with a mouse!

Yes, it's possible and it's not that difficult. ^^

In fact, I took over a technique I had developed when I was 12 or 13 years old, when my parents did not yet have a scanner.
I had no choice but to do my digital drawings with the mouse.
The trick is not to try to draw the lines freehand with the mouse and the pencil tool, but to use the geometric tools, especially the straight line. At least with the straight line, you only have to worry about 2 things: the starting point of the line and its end point. Thus, the lack of dexterity is no longer an issue. It doesn't matter which way you go.
And with a succession of straight lines, you can simulate a curve.

That's it! Now you know how to draw with a mouse! :D
You can even do it while wearing mittens. I tested it as a joke, and it still works. x)

I made these 2 drawings with the mouse on AppleWorks during Dragon Ball Multiverse lives on Twitch with the main artist Asura.

I will try again one of these days with a video to show you the work process in more detail.

ArtStation

It took me a long time to get interested, but I recently opened a portfolio on ArtStation.
I was expecting a kind of deviantArt bis, but in fact no, it's better, you're more free to organize the content of your portfolio and you can even show your work process (which is what some profesional artists do and it's very instructive).
The quality of the content, at least the one put on the trending page, is also much more professional.
And above all, it's not full of intrusive social networking features! x)

So, if you want to see my latest illustrations from time to time, my ArtStation gallerya> is updated! :D
Just click on the preview below or click on the Illustrations tab of my website to access it.

TGCM Comics

This project progressed more slowly in 2021 than in 2020, but I continued to work on it anyway.
I went back to the blog space, private messaging and comments interface to make it as ergonomic as possible. I also added an image manager for each user, so you can illustrate your words when you express yourself without having to look for a third party image host.

I'm also close to finish the comic pages uploader and I'll soon be able to tackle a big piece, but also one of the most interesting of the platform, namely the online layout and lettering system. Yes, you will be able to draw and fill your dialog bubbles directly online with automatic translation from French to English or from English to French! :D
I hope that this little extra will be one of the strong and innovative points of the platform.

Dragon Ball Multiverse

I didn't release any hard copy comics in 2021, but I didn't walk away from the drawing board.
This summer I participated in the realization of about fifteen pages of the collective amateur comic Dragon Ball Multiverse! :D

For those who don't know yet, DBM, it's a fan comic that tells a sequel to Dragon Ball Z. The story is set 10 years later and does not take into account neither Dragon Ball GT, nor Dragon Ball Super (which did not exist yet when DBM was created).
It was created by Salagir (the writer) and Gogeta Jr in 2008. Today the main artist is Asura and dozens of other artists participate in the creation of special chapters.

To read the entire comic, it's here!
The chapter I participated in was published during the fall of 2021 and begins here.

I had to get used to Akira Toriyama's style again, which I had hardly practiced for about 20 years. I'm doing not too bad. little by little it's coming back. x)

A more complete news is planned on the subject.
I will show you the working process I used to make the pages. You should already know that I have applied all the research I had done until then... Which I have already completed since. :p

The cover of chapter number 84.

Page number 1944.

Blender 3D courses

Speaking of research to improve my work processes, in the early fall of 2021 I started taking an online course about the software Blender.
Blender is a free and open source 3D modeling software. It is increasingly recognized and used by professional 3D artists.

The course I'm taking is provided by Digital Painting School and focuses on the use of 3D for 2D (illustration, comics...), which is very precisely what I need. :D

I had started a course on this same software 14 years ago. The interface and ergonomics at that time were absolutely bad!
Things have changed a lot!
Today Blender has become much more pleasant and easy to use and has been enriched with many powerful features. Now I'm using it all the time. x)

Here are some of the works that I have done or that are still being done as part of the course.

The orange robot is the model that the instructor proposes to make step by step in his videos. The 3 others are original creations.

These first 3 images are finished.

For these last 2 it still lacks the so-called paintover phase which consists of repainting over it in 2D software to break up the 3D look and add the missing details that it would have been too laborious to do directly in 3D. The goal of the work technique is to save time wherever possible.

The Cardassian Bird-of-Prey

Going back to a comic topic, in 2021 I started working with my great accomplice Marialexie on a comic project, more precisely a webtoon, about Star Trek. More exactly on Star Trek - Deep Space Nine.

It's been a long time that we wanted to do something about Star Trek, which is a universe that is really close to our hearts, and it's while watching Deep Space Nine that we finally had an idea.
Without going into details, we didn't like the way the treatment of some of our favorite characters ended to a frustrating degree, and since the concept of alternate realities has always been part of Star Trek, we decided to imagine one where things would have happened differently.
The fork in the road comes at the end of episode 14 of season 4, when Dukat decides to go fight the Klingons alone.

I pulled out a dirty word a few lines back: webtoon.
What is a webtoon?
Basically it is a comic format optimized for reading on touch screen phones. The comic panels are read one after the other in vertical scrolling.
It gives a different narrative rhythm than a classic comic and the authors play more and more with the vertical scrolling effect.
The popularity of this format is soaring. I think that in addition to the convenience of reading on a phone, the addictive effect (which social media well konw) of vertical scrolling associated with the fact of telling a story is a contributing factor.

I've been wanting to try this format for a long time and I thought this project would do just fine. Since it's not humorous or parodic like Dragon Cat's, it's out of the question to exploit it commercially, so I might as well choose this project for a purely web format.
And as this format is becoming more and more popular, I plan to be able to host it on TGCM Comics, so I need to make sure I have a project like this so that there will be content in the webtoon section when the site launches.

To get an idea of what the project is going to look like and what a webtoon is, there is a prototype that mixes finished and pencil panels available online, you can read it here.

The other objective of this project is to apply all that I have learned and developed before and thus to use 3D massively for the scenery and the ships.

In short! A project to propose content on TGCM Comics and use Péguy and 3D... Everything is linked ! x)

The cover illustration for the project. I took a lot of inspiration from the Star Trek movies posters to make it.
3D, traditional drawing, digital painting... There is already everything in this image.

Update of Go on an Adventure Comrades!

And finally, let's talk about games!

At the end of last spring I made a major update to my online mini adventure game.

Now you don't need to download the game to play it. You can play it from your browser. To do so, just go to the game page and click on Play.
The server is no longer hosted by me, but by a real professional host now. So it is always running.

I will detail a bit more in a dedicated news.

A much neater and sexier web interface than with the python language.

In conclusion

Well, I told you that the year 2021 was very busy. x)

To summarize, this year has been marked by the learning and development of new methods and tools to improve my working process.
The year 2022 should continue along the same way.
Its objectives are:

Finishing the exercises of the Blender courses, finishing the development of TGCM Comics, resuming a more regular rhythm of realization of my comics and finally studying some software of video game creation.
Yes, because developing games entirely from scratch while having to take care of all the technical aspects of simulating the physics and the display system was fine 14 years ago, because it was formative and these creation tools were in their infancy and not very accessible to the general public.
Nowadays almost nobody does that anymore and game creators focus on the content, which makes a game unique, and I would like to do the same.

Anyway! I'm going to spend a lot time learning a lot of things.

On that note, I wish you a nice week and see you soon for new adventures!

Suisei

Hi everyone!

I'm publishing this little news to remind you that I will broadcast a little game session À l'Aventure Compagnons ! on Twitch tonight, but also that I'm postponing it by one hour.
Indeed, I think it might be nicer to let people who eat at normal hours (not like me :p ) finish their meal, but also, I almost forgot that today was shopping day and I don't know if it's going to be as messy as last Friday at the store.

So, I'll be on Twitch at 8PM. :)

If you want to actively participate in the raid to kick the goblins and the dragon during this session you can download the game on this page.

Have a nice day and see you tonight on Twitch ! =D

Suisei

Hi everyone!

A week ago I had to learn a new programming language for my job: Python.
And to finalize learning this language, guess what I did last weekend as an exercice?

Yes ! A new game! =D

One more!
This time, we're still in the RPG business, but I didn't use RPG Maker and it's an online multiplayer game.
Yes, like MMORPGs, but much smaller. x)

This new game is called À l'Aventure Compagnons ! (Go on an Adventure Comrades!) and is downloadable at this page.

In this game, you will explore a small, very small, fantasy world, very classic, looking like Tolkian Middle Earth (you don't change a winning team) all illustrated with pencil.
You can play as a human, an elf or a dwarf to go up against goblins or a dragon in a turn-based combat system close to an ancient Final Fantasy.
A single adventurer can defeat the goblins, but a small group raid will be necessary to defeat the dragon.

Now you can download the game here and play.
A nice manual is also available on this page. It even includes a bestiary ! =D

If you use Mac OS X or Windows, at the start of the game, a very ugly console of those which frighten the neophites like the one below will be displayed next to the main window.

Don't panic, it's perfectly normal. :)
It's even a very useful tool. All the bugs and errors are displayed there if there are any.
So, if at some point it crashes, feel free to copy the content of this console or make a capture and send it to me on Discord or via the contact form so that I can apply the necessary patches quickly.

As this is an exercise, I don't plan many evolutions for this game, but I think I will bring some little improvements, notably to make it multilingual (it is currently available in French only) and to improve a bit the graphical interface. Python's built-in graphics library is quite limited and not fully developed. Some external resources will be needed.

At the moment, the game server is running on my personal computer, so it will sometimes be turned off (you'll get a nice error message on the login screen :p ). Therefore, I'm thinking more and more about investing in a small Raspberry Pi to run as a permanent server, especially since my other game projects that are already on the way integrate more and more multiplayer components.

A little live session on Twitch?

Well, since at the moment the tasks I'm doing on the comic book Tarkhan Skullkiller are not particularly exciting to film (hatching on trees), I propose to do a little live game session on Twitch where we'll kick together some naughty goblin and evil dragon. =D

I propose you to do that next friday (April 17, 2020) at 7pm by connecting in voice chat on Discord to play together.

That's all for today.
I thank my friend Jérôme who accepted to beta-test the game to track down the remaining bugs. ^^

I wish you a good Easter weekend and see you soon!

Suisei

Hi everybody!

And here is finally the result of the contest on the game Star Wars - Space Battle ! (Yes, it took a while, but to be honest, I was lazy to write the news. :p)

After one month of challenge, it's fenryr8778 who wins with 273 points !
Congratulations to him! \o/

So he wins the originals of this illustration of Rey from Star Wars!

Besides, many of you played, and that really made me happy! :D
When you develop a game, it's the greatest reward to see people playing it.

So, to thank you, it occurred to me to offer a small gift to all the participants: a A6 postcard among those available on the store that you can consult here.
I will send an email to each of you to ask you which visual would please you and your contact details to send it to you.
Note that the Cosmic Christ is announced as currently unavailable. I am planning to reprint it, so you can choose it as well.

So, it was a first time and seeing that you played the game, I have a good mind to organize new contests of this type in the future while evolving the formula and developing small features to follow and animate these events more easily for ever more fun. :D

On that note, Have a nice week, and see you soon!

Suisei

Hi everyone!

In the first place, I wish you all a happy new year 2020 ! ^^

I probably say it every year, but I'll spare you the Wish you a good health! that often brings bad luck at a time when germs are waiting to storm us. x)

While waiting for more consistent news, I'm stopping briefly to remind you that the little contest I launched in mid-December is still running! =)

As a reminder, it's all about winning original penciled and inked illustration of Rey, heroine of the new Star Wars trilogy.

To participate, it's simple, just play my game (coded with my little hands) Star Wars - Space Battle here: https://www.suiseipark.com/StarWars-SpaceBattle/

The one who make the highest score between today and January 15, 2020 included will win the prize! You still have 9 days left and you can play as many times as you want! :D

At the moment, the best score of the contest is held by Reliaks with 249 points!

About the comic book Tarkhan, it's progressing slowly but surely. Job and strikes don't help much (yes, I'm one of those people from Paris who had to hike to go to work and spend their holidays alone) but I'm doing my best to finish the comic. I still have 5 more pages to ink. I also take the opportunity to test equipment to optimize my working time.

That's all for the news.
I wish you a happy new year 2020 again and I'll get back to my comic pages. :)

Have a nice week and see you soon!

Suisei

Hi everyone !

I'm so overwhelmed these days that I forgot to tell you some things.

Book signing session at the Comics Corner

Tomorrow, Sunday, December 15, I will be signing at the Comics Corner, in Paris, with Marvin Traoré, Jean-Christophe Nollet and Lionel Calméjane, on the occasion of an afternoon dedicated to Star Wars to celebrate the final episode of the saga ! :D

I made a small poster especially for this event. :)

the session will start at 2:30 pm. On the page of Comics Corner it is announced that it should last until 7pm, but due to the strikes, I may not be able to stay until the end (the problem will probably be the same for the other artists).

As usual I will present you my comics already released, in particular Dragon Cat's to stay in the Star Wars theme as well as the original pages of the current projects including Tarkhan. :)

Win an original illustration

In addition, to celebrate the end of the new Star Wars trilogy, I offer you a little game to win the originals of my poster!

To participate, it's simple, just play my game (coded with my little hands) Star Wars - Space Battle here: https://www.suiseipark.com/StarWars-SpaceBattle/

The one who make the highest score between today and January 15, 2020 included will win the prize! :D

So get on your keyboards and jump into your X-Wing!

Good night and see you tomorrow at Comics Corner! :D

Suisei