Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it! And happy holidays to all (Hopefully you all get to have at-least a small holiday wherever you are)
Sorry for the rough year here on this blog. I should have posted far more often and kept everyone up to date on what's been going on. Honestly I had planned to have both chapter 0 & 1 of "OIL" and "Emily's Negotiation" out by the end of 2017. Clearly that isn't going to happen at this point and I apologize to everybody who's been waiting and especially the others involved in the development of those projects that we've been working on for quite a number of years now. 2018 should be a different story.
That being said, even though I couldn't show a lot of it, I've been doing a heap of work on a bunch of projects this year and since I can't release any of the set's I had planned in time for Christmas I'll at-least show you some previews and introduce OIL's protagonist "Ridori".
If you think you've seen a similar image before you'd be correct. Back in 2014 I released an image like this for Christmas that year. It featured the then protagonist of OIL, a character called "Camille". Due to a number of complications the character was completely redesigned and major aspects of the character and the story were rewritten until the new protagonist "Ridori" was born. (Although here she's with her Christmas makeup on.) I personally prefer the new direction we took with Ridori from both a design and character perspective.
For those that remember, we originally announced the OIL series quite a while ago but I pulled the posts in order to rework things and after a long time and a lot of hard work both Camille (from
Seishi) and I are finally very happy with where he story is at. It's just going to take a bit more time and a lot of rendering from me before it's finished. I'll also redo the "official" announcement post when the time is right.
Those two were concept images of Ridori that I released on my
Tumblr a while ago, back when I first created her. I've tweaked the design of her body and outfit a little bit since then but they're still a pretty accurate representation of her. While I'm not really ready to give anything about OIL properly away just yet, I will share a bit of info with you now. "Our Intergalactic Lovers" (OIL) will be a long running series that follows the adventures of Ridori (a human doctor) through space. Its set roughly 200 years in the future from the events of my present-day earth based sets (Like Emily's "
Investigation" or
"Negotiation" [Coming Soonish]) and will be a sci-fi themed series featuring plenty of alien characters and the sorts of stories that you'd expect coming from me. The story has been written (and subsequently re-written...about 50 times! - sorry :) ) by Camille Juteau from
Seishi who has been a great help in reworking the story and very patient with all my changes and input.
We'll be releasing the 10 page preview; "Chapter 0", when we approach the completion of Chapter 1. (Hopefully Q1 2018). Here's a proper sneak peek of Chapter 0:
That's page 1. No text or dialogue shown though. You'll have to wait a bit before you get any actual story context for OIL.
While this post has been very OIL centered I haven't forgotten about Emily's Negotiation at all. It's just that I don't really have anything to show you since I've given you guys basically all I'm willing too as not to spoil the plot points from that story. While I hit a technical and creative bump with Negotiation (and then needed to do some commissions due to financial circumstances) I've since gotten over those issues and will certainly be moving forward with that set in early 2018 as well. (Thanks for your extreme patience
andi)
And also a huge thanks once again to all the gremlins fans recently. Don't worry, there will be more gremlins as well. We still just haven't completely figured out what we want to do next. Not to mention Kali and Kaleisha's series that I'm developing as well! I know what you're all thinking. Jim, there's no way you're going to be able to deliver on these, you suck at making time estimates and fail to even make consistent update posts. Well, you're not wrong and I'm not going to pretend like that isn't a very likley possibility. But what can I say, I have a very good feeling about 2018, better than I've had about any other. Or I'll choke on some Christmas pudding later today and that will be it...
But 2017 isn't over just yet. I'm currently working on one final commission and while It might not be done in time for New Years (although I hope so) I'll probably do a preview post showing off the characters at some point within the next week whenever I get a chance in-between work, family and recovering from a sudden huge intake of calories. I'll leave you with Ridori in her final outfit design for Chapter 0. Her Doctor's uniform:
I know what you're thinking, but it's seriously her professional outfit of choice! And don't even ask about the Dildos! It's going to be an exciting universe to explore, and you'll just have to wait for Chapter 0 to find out! :P
Feel free to let us know in the comments what you think of our new Protagonist.
Once again, Happy Holidays and see you soon!
~ Jim
