Alright, so if you know Z-Man and I, we tend to hop projects alot, and leave several unfinished. It's a pretty bad habit of ours, and the downside of it is that we put alot of effort into a project only to have it never be released. There are always at least semi-good reasons for not finishing, the most used one being that we feel that we can do much better by the time we're half-way through. And unsurprisingly, that's the topic of today's journal entry.

Do you remember 7-Days Chapter 4? Do you even remember what 7-Days is at all? Well, 7-Days Chapter 4 has been in the works for the last 2 years now, with Z-Man working on it on and off. If you recall, earlier this year he mentioned that the animation for it was finished, yet all this time we've held back releasing it since we have a ton of missing sound effects for it. And now, 2 years after starting chapter 4, and 4 years after starting the whole series, we're going to be re-doing the whole series. And yes, I mean remaking chapters 1-4 including the prologue, using a bunch of new character models that Z-Man finished up today. Knowing our work track record, I can't make any promises as to when you may be seeing something related to that, but that's what the plans are for now. Normally I would reject the idea of a rework this big, but I gotta be honest...7-Days is in desperate need of a makeover, both graphics and story-wise, and those are just the makeovers it would get if this plan goes through.

Do you remember Midpoint at all? I know it's been like a year since I've even mentioned it, but I've finally restarted work on it! I decided that I wouldn't restart work on it until I was sure that my schedule would allow me to work on it on a consistent basis rather than on an unpredictable basis, which is the only crap that school has ever given me. So maybe I might be able to get some episodes in pretty soon here (hopefully, I don't need anymore disappointment now that the college year is about to start up).

Speaking of college...man, I hate college. Gotta move away and get a job...I miss Washington...

Alright, so I mentioned before that Z-Man and I had recently gotten into World of Warcraft, and unsurprisingly, that's basically what we've been up to since school got out. But it hasn't been all power-leveling and owning the ever-loving crap out of the Alliance, there have been other things that have kept us busy. Recently I've gotten a 9-5 office job (straight out of high school, can you believe that?) that I'm going to try to get down to part-time if I can, and of course Z-Man has had his job at OJ keeping him busy. So if you were curious, no we have not worked on a single thing recently.

But that doesn't mean we haven't constantly been thinking about it. We keep passing ideas back and forth occasionally, and hopefully we'll find time to work on them. My office job I mentioned earlier is actually a Web Development job, so I've been able to keep my skills sharp, and hey, I may be able to find time occasionally to work on stuff at the office. If nothing else, that should help out with the site redesign when we finally get around to it.

Z-Man and I have a couple of days off in the next little while, so maybe you may see a new comic or something in that time period. But right now we're trying to look at balancing development with other things going on in life, and luckily those things have become a bit more stable as of late (thank goodness for no homework and no surprise projects!).

All in all, there's nowhere to go from here but up! So hopefully the future will look a little brighter.

Man, it's been over a month since I updated anything, but it doesn't seem that long. The last few weeks have been nothing but a blur, with the final school projects, Eagle board of review, college visits, and the big one: graduation. It's hard to believe that I'm finally out of high school for good! My extended family has also been hit with a tragedy over the past many weeks, finally ending with the death of a family member yesterday.

As far as projects go, lately I've been working on a dynamic slideshow for my old web design teacher and also for my portfolio. With all of the different options it had, it came out to over 600 lines of code, and it's the largest programming project I've actually finished. While not important to BZ Comics, it's what I've been up to lately and it's somewhat significant to me personally. That goes without saying that there's still alot that we need to do for the site, so hopefully we can get cracking soon!

Which brings me to a hindrance in the plans. Z-Man decided recently to start playing World of Warcraft, which made me feel left in the dust for a little while, so then I decided to play too. So I don't know how long that will hold our attention for, but I suppose that's what we'll be up to for a little while. It's funny, we both join the ranks of the many deviants that have been caught up in WoW.

So some good news, some bad, but it's a status update. Hope everyone's enjoying summer so far!

So I guess I'll start with some more personal things.

Z-Man and I just finished the first of two AP tests today (AP Calculus). We're both taking the same AP classes, so we end up having the same AP tests. So anyways, that means the hardest of the tests I'm taking are done, so hopefully that means a bit more time for myself! The second AP test we take is AP Psychology, but that isn't nearly as hard, at least for me. Other than that, I have a health class I'm finishing up, so hopefully school troubles will be out of the picture for a little while at least.

IT Day was held today in our area, and unfortunately due to the AP test, Z-Man and I couldn't be there for the whole day (IT Day is a local convention put on by Lockheed Martin). It was still pretty cool though, though not nearly as cool as it was last year. I can't remember if I mentioned this last time, but last year the main event of IT Day was the Mythbusters! Man, it was so freaking awesome last year, being able to see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman live and in person. I could have sworn I made a journal entry on that or something, but I couldn't find it, so I thought I would mention it. This year was just some guy from Fast Company magazine that I've never heard of, so it wasn't as interesting this time. But at least I got some neat swag! Our school also had a booth set up, and they showcased some of my stuff there for everyone to see, the most popular one being Classroom Chaos, so I guess that was pretty nifty. It's only unfortunate that I wasn't around when people were walking by; it would have been a pretty good opportunity to market myself. Oh well, there will be more times.

So onto site-related stuff. As busy as I've been (as you would expect, knowing me), I haven't been able to work much on our redesign. I've got a rough sketch of what we're planning on doing, but I really need to spice it up before I decide to go through with it. Z-Man's been working on and off on closing time, and he's made some decent progress, but he's still got quite a ways to go. So hopefully he won't be too lazy and maybe he'll progress at a nice pace.

Other than that, I really want to play Fallout 3 for some reason. Unfortunately I have to wait till summer though, since my 360 is at my dad's house. Ah, well, I guess that's all I can think of for now.

Alright, so I guess I'll give an update on stuff:

The spam bots have discovered us!!! Man, I've been totally free of spam on all of my email addresses up until the last several days. My CoolComixbz inbox has been completely flooded with all sorts of nasty stuff, and even though my poor little spam filter catches about 95% of it, it's been getting frustrating to deal with. I'm very careful with my email addresses to make sure that they are not in vulnerable places online, but that one in particular I've had for years and years, and I suppose it was bound to be discovered eventually. As a result, I've done away with that email address and moved all of my important mail from that one to a new one. If any of you remember my old one, just know that you won't be able to reach me there anymore.

So that leads me into some actual site info. Z-Man and I had been discussing getting rid of the forum entirely, since no one uses it, and my guess is that it is a likely candidate for being the culprit behind the spam flooding our boxes. We may decide to implement some sort of user interaction later (one of our own design) such as a guestbook or mini-forum, but for now it looks like the forum is going to go away with the site redesign. Sorry everyone.

But we can't just do away with fan communication entirely, so when the new site comes up we're going to have a new system that will allow people to communicate with us without email, and we'll also implement a CAPTCHA. devaintArt is a great way to get in touch with us, but not everyone wants or needs an account, so we're still going to have some interactions available site-side.

As far as other things, go, I'm sure you've heard of Z-Man having a Closing Time music video in progress. More info on his journal ([link]). Aside from that, we're still working on the Frame by Frame game and the overall site redesign.

Well, that's all I can think of for now! Ciao!