Well, this sure has been an exciting Saturday!

We decided to start advertising on GG-Guys.com and TheSlackerz.com, some webcomics we enjoy reading, with the goal of sucking their readers from them with our comic.  We noticed quite quickly, however, that site performance was suffering with only a load of a few hundred users per day.

We made the decision to move the site to a Linode Virtual Machine, and I, Shawn, started making preparations.  And somehow in the process the Missing Number Comics on Dreamhost completely borked itself.  And a DNS entry was entered incorrectly.  And as errors compounded onto cached errors, I lost more and more of my sanity!

The curse of Missing Number has struck again!

But if you are reading this post, and seeing this comic, then your DNS has finally cleared itself and you are now seeing our shiny new site.  Doesn’t look like much change on the face, but I guarantee you, we went from clogged Volkswagen Bug to Joint Strike Fighter on the inside, with an easy ramp up to even more power if necessary.

So, when we begin our advertising again, it’ll be with a site that works   Thanks for your patience!

One final note, now that the ranting has died down, our local sprite artist produced the two sprites which appear in the second frame, from hand, without using a Pokemon base sprite:

Why redraw these guys if they’re pretty much the characters from Fire Red/Leaf Green?  Details.  The costume details for the Fire Red and Leaf Green male and female player characters don’t exactly match our Male Player Character and Female Player Character.  And we wanted to make it obvious that these sprites and characters were ours, not just similar versions of well known characters (like our rendition of Naruto).  I would put Male Player Character and Female Player Character into the “Original” character column.  Of course, you’ve only seen these guys as sprites, but I can assure you that when they appear in the comic, their uniqueness WILL appear!

Not much to say about this one.  Last issue of the Vulpix Come Home arc!  We will be starting a new arc next week.

Sorry for the delay on the update.  We had a wedding in the family yesterday, and it was only a 360 mile drive (one way)!  We underestimated travel/rest/matrimony time, and by the time we got back we had just enough energy to collapse into sleep.  And sleep in.

If you’ve liked our comics so far (including this arc), feel free to vote for us!  The links are in the graphical buttons in the Vote box to the right.

Also, say hello to our new affiliate, GlitchCity.info!

This one gave us trouble as well.  We had the first 3 rows of frames completed early, but we all thought the punchline was missing… something.  About Wednesday, Shawn had an inspiration and drew the final two frames, setting off the schedule for the entire weeks worth of production!

The background for the last two frames were fun to do.

EDIT:  My bad!  I said that this was the last issue in the Vulpix Come Home series… I was wrong!  We have the final one in production, and it will come up next week (Technically, this WAS the last week for Vulpix Come Home… for me, that is, as I’m sketching the next one as we speak… type… read.)

(Also, we were distracted by GameStop’s Pokemon tourney this Saturday.  Check out our (miserably failing) experience On our Blog.

Editors Note:  We currently don’t have a blog anymore!  But the tourney was fun.

This one took much longer than it should.  You would think by the time we hit issue 19 we’d have the process down pat?  Of course not!

We even had some issues with backgrounds.  The sketch artist didn’t make the layout of the land clear… so the backdrops were flipped around!  Made for some impossible situations (like Jessie and James seemingly walking through a solid wall!)

The other reason for the delay is this:  the new site for Missing Number!  We have officially rolled over to Version 2 (even though it’s still in beta).

Some of the new features of Comics Engine 2* can be found on the Comics Engine 2 page.  Look it up.  Leave comments!  Subscribe to our feed!

Enjoy this issue;  we’re already in production with the next issue of Missing Number, and target for our official post date of Saturday Evening.

* Editor’s Note:  We no longer use Comics Engine 2, so there is no Comics Engine 2 page.  Thank you come again!

Well, that issue was fun as well. First time the sketch artist has attempted Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy (in a final draft, that is. The practice sketches have already been shredded like Enron paperwork).

The inker has discovered a speedup technique on the inking style, it saves him something like 10 hours an issue (there’s a reason we’re weekly!), but keeps the Game Boy Advance/Diamond-Pearl art style.

The colorist is happy that he’s back to being the only person working on the coloring and shading. It’s a bit difficult to coordinate color style between two different artists. The colorist has been put into deep-freeze awaiting his next issue.

In any case, we’ve had a lot of fun with this arc, and there are a few more issues to go! Can’t wait to see what’s coming along…

…in Missing Number: Adventures in Glitch City! (Or in this case, Iridescent City.)

This one was fun to draw. New guest stars: Jessie and James of Team Rocket!

Not much to comment about this one… except to ask how the Virtual Boy got behind the door. Hmm. The world may never know.

P.S… if you like our comic, go ahead and vote for it. The voting links are off to the right of the page, in the SHAMELESS CAPITALISM box. Voting means more viewers, which means happier artists

We had some humorous obstacles to this comic. We got the whole thing done, committed, I was cleaning it up… then the colorist said “I forgot David’s burns!” He fixed that, submitted it, I was cleaning it up… “I forgot the words BURN HEAL on the bottle!” He fixed that, submitted it, I was cleaning it up… “I got the wall colors wrong!”

It was kinda funny.

Despite computer issues, we were able to recover the comic and get-’er-dun, as the locals might say.

For some reason, I think Vulpix doesn’t like Dave. Hmm.

Along with the computer confuzulation, Dave (our colorist) got his new job, and he (along with the sketch-est) has started a new commuting arrangement that should realize much fuel savings.

Due to the scheduling conflicts this has created, the comic is now up today. We’re hard at work on next week’s comic, and will see you then.

Well, we had fun with this one. Our colorist had the idea of having Vulpix’s FLAMETHROWER go right through the frame. It really worked, so it stays.

We’re starting our first long-term story arc here on Missing Number. Hope you enjoy the story. We’ll get to develop the characters a little more during the next few weeks!