Getting Out II

by Jkun on March 26, 2012 at 9:35 am
Posted In: Blog

Hello…!

Apologies for the lack of comic this Monday due to me still getting my stuff together. Rest assured everything is going smoothly, even if it means I am never leaving my house and turning into what the Japanese like to call a “Hikikomori“!

In the mean time, check out all these awesome guest strips and interviews that have been happening recently! This list will continue to expand and will be updated on the About page:

I have noticed a lot of nice, new, quirky comments popping up on a lot of the older strips. So if you are a new reader, thanks for commenting!

Please keep in touch by following on my Twitter, Google+ or by joining the Facebook page! The more people like it, the more content gets unlocked in the Extras box!

Again, thanks for bearing with me and for being so awesome. Let’s see if we can reach the 1 year milestone in June with no more hiccups!

11 Comments

The Great Failure II

by Jkun on March 11, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Posted In: Blog

Hi guys!

Not a very good update this one, unfortunately. Brace yourselves!

Last week, my PC started overheating. Spitting out temperatures of over 95 degrees and making horrible rattling noises. After taking it to the shop and getting a new cooling system installed, everything worked great. I plugged away at drawing and got 2 or 3 comics done and ready for upload.

Then on Friday, I went out for dinner and came home to a black screen, showing exactly what you see above.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t you back up, moron? Well, I did! I backed up but before my new CPU cooler was installed a week ago! So everything up until Friday should be safe…

…Or so I thought.

Running out of options after realizing that my PC couldn’t find my HDD in BIOS or Windows, I took the PC to the shop again and asked if they could see what was going wrong. Remember, I live in Japan so this kind of lingo is no easy task.

Me and the staff member both tried everything, and finally decided on sending the PC into their repair shop in order to salvage any data, and if they could, copy it onto my backup drive along with the rest of my backed up files from Monday.

Today I received a call saying that the salvaging process had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. It seems my PC had decided to eat everything on the hard drive, and still had room left to eat everything on the backup drive for dessert.

I’m still pretty shocked. I thought backups existed so this kinda stuff, y’know, doesn’t happen? This is the second time in 10 years a HDD has failed on me. The first time, back in 2006, made me backup all my work, every week, for 7 years. Then this happens. Figures, huh?

So, what to do now? Well, under my 3 year insurance plan, the new HDD with a new copy of Windows on it is being installed free of charge (in English, too!) I am going to buy 2 new backup drives this time, costing a little over $200, and backup twice every week.

Long story short, I am going to have to take some time off to remake the 2 weeks of comics I had already done, restore all my templates, SAI/Pshop/Manga Studio settings, colour palettes, get back all my music, anime, etc, and the worst part, stay sane while doing so. Wish me luck.

Thanks for understanding, and supporting the comic this far. If the next few strips look out-of-place, don’t worry, I will do my best to replicate the brush and template settings from memory/using old strips.

For the time being, enjoy the rest of Edumacation! The whole story arc is complete and uploaded, don’t worry. After that, I will be taking a short break (1-2 weeks) to reclaim my buffer and make even more strips for you! To tie you over until then, you can follow my account on Tumblr to see warmup sketches that I do from time to time.

Oh and before I go, back up your work. Now. See you next time.

(The entry was written using my Android phone, it took about an hour and a half…!)

33 Comments

Gallery Update! Crazy Wardrobe

by Jkun on February 29, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Posted In: Blog, Gallery

I’ve updated the Gallery with the recent Character Reference Sheets that I’ve been posting all over my DA and  the Tumboiler. Go check ‘em out if you haven’t aready!

Also, don’t forget to come back on Friday for a new comic, and more new outfits! Have a great week!

1 Comment

JLPT: N3 Passed!

by Jkun on February 9, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Posted In: Blog, Japan

Looks like all that studying paid off!

HOOOLY COW I scraped that reading segment, maybe because I skipped half of it out due to running out of time, goddamn. Still no idea how my kanji sucks, though. Maybe I just suck at filling out the correct multiple choice boxes.

Next? Level N2 this December! The studying continues!

28 Comments

FML Illustrated Interview & Guest Comic!

by Jkun on February 4, 2012 at 8:02 pm
Posted In: Blog

Last year I was interviewed and asked to create a guest comic for the lovely Alice of  FML Illustrated, and today it was finally uploaded! I’ll cross-post the comic below, but go check out the interview (and more great stuff) over on their site! Have a great weekend!

20 Comments

Dev Blog Update #4

by Jkun on January 30, 2012 at 10:39 am
Posted In: Blog, Development

Exploding Puppies

Yo, yo! Let’s talk about what is going down (or “up” for our pals down under) with Crazy Sunshine!

Extras Access Key Update

It seems a lot of you are really digging the content within Extras box! Thanks for signing up to the Facebook Page in order to get access!

Since some readers don’t use Facebook, I have posted the access key over at TopWebcomics as an incentive to vote for the comic. Try it out, it only takes one click and you would be doing the site a huge favour! It’d be great if you kept voting every day, but it’s all up to you!

Extras Unlockable Content Update

New content will be available through the Extras box every time the Facebook Page reaches a milestone. Currently there is an outstanding 241 participants, with new content being unlocked every 100 likes. So start recruiting, as something spectacular will happen if that number breaks 1,000!

Art Fixes & Dialogue Updates

Ever since the old archive of comics were hauled into the Extras box a lot of lingering problems with previous comics are still present, such as a few spelling errors in the dialogue, text being too big and inconsistent, and transparent backgrounds being buggy for a few readers. I am going to run through the archive and fix up as many of these as I can this week:

  • Fixing Text & Transparency issues
  • Adding soundeffects to panels
  • Adding patterns to backgrounds
  • Recompressing files as smaller .jpgs
  • Fixing site background gradients.

I think it would be neat if the text size and fonts were consistent throughout the comic, even if my art style has changed a lot over the course of half a year. Hope you enjoy the outcome!

Edit: All done, enjoy!

Fan Art

I’m still itching for some great Fan Art! If you have the time, enjoy the comic, and want to express your love, please feel free to contribute by E-Mailing me your pictures. You never know, you might get something in return if I ever find a bucket of time to dip my head into!

Thanks for reading, keep telling me about site issues and other features you’d like to see in the future!

Image edited by Mr. Hoisington!

12 Comments

Time is Not My Friend

by Jkun on January 24, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Posted In: Blog

Man, what’s the point in doing anything if it takes ages, right?

Recently I have had problems finding motivation, or any kind of will to actually do stuff that need to be done in order to, well, live. For shame, me.

Let’s take today for example. Like most days during Winter, I swiftly woke up at 5.30am to shovel some snow before it turns to ice. After all, I don’t want to fall and crack my ass a second time, get it? Ha.

While shovelling, I thought about how many times I had repeated this mundane process, only for the same amount of snow, or more, to fall throughout the day. This got me thinking about how many things we do daily that have become such a normal part of our lives, we never think about them as “wasting time” any more.

Time is a precious thing. You can never have too much of it, and it will always be your enemy. I tried to break down the amount of time I spend doing things that aren’t productive and I was astonished at just how little free time I have!

For example, since I live in the middle of nowhere, my gym is a 45 min drive away, that’s 1.5 hours wasted driving there and back (I actually enjoy driving, just not in Winter). Then of course there is shovelling snow, which takes a good 45 mins to an hour because of the size of my house/driveway, and since the snow never stops I have to do this twice a day. Crazy, right? There’s another 2 hours down the drain!

“But what’s that go to do with motivation? Aren’t you just being a negative nancy?” is what you are probably thinking. Yeah, you’re right, maybe I am just being negative. Like how even though I can get rid of snow now, it’ll just keep coming back for more later, and that by living in Aomori, I will need a car to do anything unless teleportation is invented. Come on, Japan!

But then I take a step back and think of these boring tasks in a different way; Unless I dig out my car, I can’t use it to drive to the gym, and unless I drive to the gym, I can’t work off those calories! Plus, all that digging and ploughing will also help shed off some pounds over time, right?

So while these mundane chores aren’t productive, they aid in helping with something that is productive, but just takes a certain amount of “warmup time” to accomplish.

So as for motivation, try listing a bunch of stuff you want to achieve, and how you go about doing them! Look at what activities take the most time, whether they need you to drive to a certain place to achieve them, or require you to prepare some equipment beforehand. Lay them out progressively and look at how many steps it takes to complete your activities. Think of the time it takes to prepare for the activity not as a waste of time but as part of the activity itself, simply a “warmup”. Maybe you can even gain something from it too!

In the meantime, what kind of jobs or chores do you find boring and repetitive?

Image courtesy of Fanpop.com

13 Comments

Ranking – Spam Comments II

by Jkun on January 18, 2012 at 8:52 am
Posted In: Blog

Hi there!

Occasionally I rank the spam comments I get from random bots visiting the site. Here’s a top five from the last few months!

5

When I look over a sites, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I’m talking about, I am aware it was eventually my choice to read, however I essentially believed you’ll have some thing useful to say. Many I hear is a couple of whining about something you could fix if you werent too busy looking for attention. - from Friendbook comic strip

Sorry my site disappointed you, “colon cleansing product”.

4

I have been browsing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for me. Personally, if all site owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will be a lot more useful than ever before. - from CollabComic blog entry

Uh, I-I guess this article was pretty touching if you are into collab comics. Like, really into them.

3

i totally agree - from Getting Out blog entry

Agree about…what?

2

I want you to learn a thing in the very start of this record which a thing is that this: I care about your needs and that i sincerely imply. – from In Business comic strip

How sweet! Shame it isn’t just pure garbage.

1

good idea im gonna try it – from One Small Step For Man comic strip

Please don’t try this.

Big thanks to everyone so far who signed up to Facebook in order to sneak a peek in the Extras box! Keep it up!

Also if you have 2 clicks to spare, please keep voting on TWC! We’re now within the top 300, let’s try to get that to the top 200!

See you Friday!

8 Comments