horridus

I keep saying this- the guy REALLY needs to ditch digital coloring and inking and shading. Like, he's much better at all these things with the traditional methods. I wouldn't call his art good, but it is WAY more pleasing to the eye BEFORE he applies all the digital crap. The fact he insists on doing it this way despite it clearly not being his strength is just baffling. Then again so is everything else, but this is one of those things he could fix WAY more easily than the other things wrong with his work.

And it would seem there was a more significant update- a preview of the app proper. In the name of fairness I should point out that those are stock voices from a computer, so you can't blame their terribleness on Penders. ...though the likelihood of whoever he hires to do the voice roles being much better is slim to nonexistent. Soo yeah, feast your eyes... at the motion comic... of the PREVIEW that he has been working on for eight years... with no actual sign of the PROPER book being anywhere near complete in sight.

Boy. If there was ever any doubt (all but impossible at this point) about what Penders REALLY wanted to be working on, this kinda obliterates it. I mean really, the man constantly whines about the crap that gets slung his way over how closely he's tried to maintain the Knuckles connection, insists on the originality of his work, and then... boom. Art that demands people pay attention to the Knuckles connection.

It really does. Also, not the smartest move there to directly invoke the incredibly well known constructed language of another franchise to describe his own stuff. He already gets shit for ripping off of Sonic, he REALLY doesn't need to invite people to do the same thing with Star Trek. Likewise, had a bit of a small laugh at that 'THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES is straight up sci-fi and doesn’t treat the characters as human in animal form. Their beliefs, culture & so on differs from what humans do in many ways' bit. This guy repeatedly claimed he 'always' saw the characters of Sonic as aliens and wrote them with that in mind. Largely to justify the fact that he can't actually convincingly write believable humans, and as such, couldn't write convincingly believable characters in general.

Yeeeah, if that's the case he'd have to redraw it from scratch- not only are the characters he DOESN'T own very prominently featured, but he also doesn't own the artwork that was used in the story. It belongs to Steve Butler. And frankly, he's been 'working' towards getting multiple things released for years now, and every one of those endeavors has turned up zilch. Him announcing this is just another in the long list of frankly pathetic attempts to appear as though he's hard at work on something or the other, when come Comic-Con he's still not going to have anything of substance to show for his efforts. This isn't even the first time he's mentioned something like this- he's mentioned including a version of 'The Die Is Cast' with a revised ending for a few years now. So yeah, until we see something? It's all empty words.

There was a mini-series dedicated to its launch and subsequent downing. Rather true to the source at that. Well, the design was anyway, the story on the other hand was an entirely different matter.

Indeed. It is difficult to ascertain. That being said, I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that the artist in question, Steven Butler, would simply wholesale add the Millenium Falcon on a whim. Particularly given that this tidbit of information comes from Penders himself, a man who has a somewhat strained relationship with the truth.

Aaaand now in purple! Well, I'll give him this- it looks SOMEWHAT less incompetent thanks to it no longer looking like he can't blend the image background with the shirt itself.

*eyerub* Of course. Ooof course it would be a flippin' reference to something else. You know, I was too busy 'marveling' at the shirt design to really take notice, but the actual comment of that tweet is... really robotic. "Currently getting pricing from reputable manufacturers of quality product". Like, seriously, who phrases things like this?? ...Ken Penders, evidently.

And in the category of 'updates that are not updates'... Yeah, this is basically a slightly altered variation of the last shirt he released. And you know, it's not the fact that the designs are ugly that gets me. Nor is it the fact the layout is dull and the logo is tacky as hell. It's the fact that he STILL can't get it to blend in with the shirt.

Given that her entire design and character essentially boils down to "Rule 63 Nack"... Think about it- Sally had absolutely no clue that she ever had a brother, at all. His existence came as a complete surprise. This would mean that, somehow, EVERY last adult she knew while growing up at absolutely no point in her life took her aside and told her that she once had a brother. Her father never told her about her brother when she was young. Her mentor never told her about her brother. Her nanny didn't say anything. The doctor who was her family's physician didn't. Uncle Chuck said nothing. And then you get into the circumstances behind his supposed death- he and his mother were shot down during the Great War on route to Angel Island. The loss of a queen and the royal heir isn't something that would be kept quiet in the kingdom, and so we have to believe that, SOMEHOW, this never once came up in Sally's life and that this incredibly infamous incident was somehow forgotten or never spoken of within Knothole. Elias' entire EXISTENCE being a secret only works through sheer narrative contrivance and a mountain of violations of basic logic and sense, and ultimately only 'works' because of Penders' authorial feat rather than being able to stand up on it's own internal logic. Likewise, Sonic's parents being alive as Robians the whole time, and evidently as FREE Robians shortly after Charles was liberated, also means we have to believe that in all that time, they never wanted to talk to Sonic, and Chuck was happy to go along with this prolonged deception. Nor are we ever given a real reason WHY they wanted this or why any of this proceeds- there is a vague notion of 'not wanting to distract Sonic' or some crap, but at the end of the day, we are basically told why Sonic's folks stayed away rather being shown why, and what we are told doesn't really hold water to begin with. All of this functions purely on the basis of drama rather than anything concrete. In short? Nonsense, all of it.

In fairness, Tails' parents were a Gallagher contribution. That being said, a rather large chunk of the family expansions DID happen because of him. He did indeed give Sonic parents who were still living in the present (despite it making little to no sense), and likewise he gave Antoine a father, Rotor a father (who showed up for a few panels in a single flashback), and likewise expanded Sally's family be including an unmentioned older brother (despite it making no sense), and revealing her mother Alicia was in fact alive, to say nothing of the various ancestors that showed up in her family history, as well as her grandfather and grandmother. And then of course we have Nic the Weasel, identical twin sister to Nack... Now in fairness, on paper these are not really BAD things. The problem is that Penders doesn't put a lot of thought into any of this and seems to include them more due to wanting a sense of 'completeness' (due to his intense fixation on families) and to give the characters an automatic degree of significance , rather than taking time to flesh them out and so forth. A lot of it just feels arbitrary, and it shows.

Largely depends on the nature of the story- in a drama about intimate relationships and how they impact people (soap opera kind of stuff), it tends to matter. That said, Penders' framing of it here makes it sound like he just wants to arbitrarily assign partners and such for no real reason other than his bizarre love affair with minutia. In short? It's pretty complex and something that should only be brought up if it is in fact relevant to the plot, and it's doubtful that Penders actually understands that. Normally I'd mention how astounding it is that his phrasing makes it sound like he honestly didn't plan any of this basic shit ahead before introducing characters, but given how he only 'recently figured out' who Rutan's father was, this sadly is in fact a legitimate insight into how he does things. He doesn't really think of the basics until AFTER the fact. Remember the family tree where virtually none of the Guardians spouses were even named? And I really have to laugh at him claiming this is going to be 'Character Driven'. In all the years that Penders has worked on Archie, he has never demonstrated any capacity for Character Driven works. All of his major storylines progress and advance due to purely to the plot demanding it, not the characters. Things proceed in Endgame because he forces it. Things proceed in Knuckles because he forces it. Things DON'T proceed in 25YL at all, and when it does, it's STILL forced. Character development is sudden and with no prior build up, and nothing feels organic. The guy is a parrot- he can speak (well, type) words, but he doesn't actually understand any of it. Ken Penders, evidently. Every time he starts waxing philosophic about the creative process it becomes clear that his perspective is, to put it in the most gentle and polite terms imaginable, EXTREMELY unique.... and for all the wrong reasons. That there kinda sums it up- he sees Character Development more in terms of the arbitrary than in terms of how it enhanced the story, and this is born out in his writing given how little characters DO develop in a meaningful way, and the few cases where it sticks it hasn't been built up or implemented organically at all. This guy has such a warped and wrong-headed view of how storytelling works that it's almost hard to believe its real, and yet, there it is. The "Princess of Acorn", remember. Sally can't be used, so we have the "Princess of Acorn", who I am sure is TOTALLY unique and not at all a pathetic ripoff of a character he can't legally own. I despise the fact that this is something we can honestly consider him wanting, though... For real. It sincerely makes me wonder how on earth he got this way, given that consuming media a lot in theory gives you at least a LITTLE bit of insight as to what makes a story work or not, yet he is seemingly impervious to any kind of real understanding.

Dude, no. It's a fan project that has next to nothing to do with him and involves nothing of his work on Archie. Frankly it sounds like you WANT this to happen so that you can find something new to bitch out Penders over.

Yeah. At this point it's really more an issue of Penders being a hypocrite, given that he hasn't actually released this project and most likely won't. Even then, the odds of him actually making any real money off of this are slim to nonexistent- he's actively relying on the fact that he's way too small potatoes to be noticed by SEGA even as he tries to trade in on his connection to their franchise.