SDusterwald's blog

I haven't had a chance to get much done lately unfortunately (due to some family emergencies) so no updates in a while. However, I did work on re-doing a couple of the early pages from scratch and I have now finally put them up so if you are interested go check them out (just use the Select Comic link in the navigation bar). I might work on some more new versions of the early pages to lift them to the same standard as chapter 2, and at some point all new pages will get done, it all just depends on me finding the time to do it.

Just to let everyone know this time, there will not be any new pages put up until after Christmas. Just too much going on and I have some side projects that I'm taking a little time to work on (including reworking the entire first chapter).

A couple of months ago I came across one of the English commentaries of Korean pro Starcraft games and quickly got hooked. Of course I had played a bit of Starcraft years ago when it first came out (pre Broodwar expansion) but at the time I favoured playing Total Annihilation instead as my RTS of choice. Anyway, now I have installed Broodwar and have been playing a bit (hopelessly trying to imitate the pro players) but mostly I have been watching replays of the pro games (some of these in the original Korean by now).

It is perhaps somewhat surprising how great a spectator sport Broodwar really is.

That's right folks, from now on new episodes of Void will be published under the Creative Commons license rather than regular copyright. I've always felt rather negatively about the current copyright laws and when my sister recently wrote an essay on Creative Commons versus copyright, the discussions that we had made me realize that its time for me to make the switch. For those of you with no idea what CC is all about check out creativecommons.org. If you already know about CC and are wondering the specific license that I have chosen it is Non-commercial, Attribution. I realize that the icons might be a little hard to make out on the page but unfortunately it is a fine balance between legibility and cluttering up the picture too much.

Hi all!
Page 13 always bothered me. While drawing it I never seemed to be able to get it quite right, I erased it all and redrew it several times and in the end I stll didn't really like the final result. Now, more than a year later my skills have improved a fair bit so I decided to have another crack at it. I feel confident in saying that it turned out much better than before. Check it out here. I might put up some sort of comparison picture at some point in the future for anyone who doesn't remember the old page. I'm not sure yet if I will create similar updates for

In all honesty it was always my intention to pair up the Chapter 2 page with a real new comic strip but I just didn't get it done in time. With the next page I decided try something a little different and move to a new format (more or less A3 instead of A4, and portrait instead of landscape orientation, i.e. more like a real comic) which may have contributed to it being late, as well as an early-summer heatwave here in New Zealand. Anyway, in the meantime I hope you will all enjoy the fully dressed Callista on the Chapter 2 page. The picture was actually just a concept drawing but came out so well I decided to use it here for all to see.

I'm back to posting on the site after a rather long hiatus. There won't be regular updates for now, since I am working on a few different projects other than the Void storyline. I'm currently concentrating on writing a script for a print comic (that I will probably publish myself). This is completely unrelated to Void, it's not even in the same genre. More on that as it solidifies. In the meantime I hope to use this site to publish some other bits and pieces as I work on them and hopefully continue the Void story one page at a time.

Over the last couple of weeks or so I've been learning how to play Poker (Texas Hold'em to be precise but it seems that these days this particular variant is essentially synonymous with Poker anyhow. I’ve been vigorously absorbing everything that I can find on the subject in true geek fashion. I’ve read Poker legend Doyle Brunson’s equally legendary book Super/System (well the section on Hold’em anyway), which has given me a lot more insight into the game. Not that I feel confidant to play for any real stakes just yet though. If anything, I’ve learned that Poker is deceptively complex game. Deceptive because at first it looks very easy. Just play the good hands and throw away the rubbish hands, right? Of course there’s much more to the game than that. The game is incredibly deep both mathematically (understanding the various odds: the pot odds, the odds of having the best hand, the odds of making the nuts) and socially (understanding your opponents, how to play them and how to avoid them playing you).

I just want to apologize for the filler content today, I swear things will be back to normal next week. In addition to all the holiday cheer and various obligations that go with it, I was hit by a rather nasty flu. So I hope you all can understand why I wasn't able to complete a whole page for this week. Once the new page goes up it will replace the filler page so that the story is uninterrupted.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!

If you don't know what Magic: The Gathering is look here: Wikipedia link. If you do know what it is then read my analysis of the World Championship after following all the official coverage:

Day 1: The Standard portion of the tournament was really defined by Boros. Many players showed up with Boros and it won a large number of games. Of course it makes perfect sense, it is a great deck with few really terrible matchups and it is one of the easier decks to play.

Day 2: I won't comment on the Limited so much since I'm really more of a constructed player and I don't have any big insights. I just want to say that Time Spiral is a great set for Limited with loads of usable cards. There are really very few cards in the set that can be considered unplayable in Limited. Kudos to the designers at WotC.