Expectations where completely and utterly blown away this past weekend when For Tax Reasons trekked down to Baltimore for Otakon 2009, the (in)famous fan-run convention for anime enthusiasts and, as evidenced by their gracious inclusion of our work and panel, nerds ranging the entire breadth of the geek spectrum.

What Lantern Corp would LARPers belong to?

It was my first ever Otakon, and the first time Ben and I have done a panel and appeared as “the For Tax Reasons guys” before an audience that wasn’t sitting at their computers. At the earlier suggestion of our buddy Darrell and later encouragement by Alan over at Otaku Generation, we submitted a panel called Let’s Talk Animation! with For Tax Reasons and were approved for a Friday early afternoon slot. Our thinking was we would have maybe 20 people show up, talk a little about the origins of Ronin Dojo, debut our newest episode before posting it on Youtube, and then do a talk/slide presentation on how you too can get on board with DIY animation. Our thinking, to say the least, was flawed.

First off, that’s more that 20 people. Pretty certain it was over 100 people. And pretty much everyone was there to see us. Though I think a few people may have just been camping out seats for the Cosplay Cosmetics panel that followed.

Not shown: My legs shaking uncontrollably from nerves. Also, I peed my pants.

Secondly, it turns out that people like to watch things they’ve already seen. When the folder containing all the Digital Pirates video appeared on screen, it became quickly apparent that people wanted to watch them all over again before we debuted the final episode. What choice did we have but to oblige? It was an incredible experience to see a live crowd laugh and cheer with something you’ve created, to have feedback other than Youtube comments and your mom telling you you did a nice job. We dropped little behind the scenes tidbits between each episode, and after screening the final episode, again bowed to mob rule and starting answering questions from the audience. We did manage to briefly run through our instructional presentation, but the panel really just consisted of showing clips and talking it up with the audience. And yes, the panel was filmed, but we need to make sure the audio is usable (and edit out any parts where we don’t think we were funny) before we decide what we’re going to do with it.

A slide from our boring ass presentation. Fuck academics, show cartoons, assholes!

At this point I need to say thank you to everyone who showed up. We’ve communicated with fans via the internet for a while now, but meeting people with faces and real names and getting to just have a conversation was a thrill. Everyone who approached us after the panel and even later on during the weekend, thank you. Whenever I was feeling dog ass tired or having that post-episode release comedown, I had you to fall back on to pick me up, whether you realized it or not. Sorry if at any point I seemed crazy or scatterbrained – it was a crazy, brain scattering experience for me. Quick hello to Sylene from R5 Central, who came up and said hi after the panel, the girl who got her picture snapped with us (email it to us if you’re reading this!), Rym from Geeknights (who encouraged us to look into doing something at PAX East 2010), the staffer in the video game hall who chatted us up, and, of course, these awesome dudes, Tyler and Ryan, who are so rad they’re getting a block of text to themselves now.

So Tyler introduces himself after our panel as the friend of Ryan, a gentleman (and a scholar, I might add) who emailed us a little while back with a photo of a Reaper miniature he was using for Dungeons and Dragons that he had painted the Mercurial Shield of Lightning Defense from IM IN UR MANGER on.

Ryan was on his way to the con, with the actual miniature in tow, but he hadn’t been able to make it in time for our panel. So pumped was I to meet this guy, I scribbled down my phone number for Tyler and told him to call me when Ryan got to the convention. We ran into each other again later on Friday and talked up a storm as Ben burned a DVD of our shorts for Ryan and I. . . just kept staring at this:

RAAAAAAAAD.

Thanks so much for hanging with us, dudes. Probably my favorite moment from the con.

Tyler, some idiot in a pink shirt, Ben, and Ryan.

I’m gonna post more about the convention later, in terms of what else I got up to and how Otakon compares to my lifelong experiences with American comic conventions. So stay tuned for Part Duex.

You didn’t smell as bad as I thought you would, Otakon. Still room for improvement, though.

Hey internet, you got me so worked up, I jumped off Twitter and took to my blog again. Hope you’re happy! 144 characters thought bullets aren’t going to cut it this time. Prepare for incoming TRUTH BOMBS.

First off, we released the now-tentatively-in-quotations “finale” of our Ronin Dojo: Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. Watch before reading what follows.

We debuted it at our live panel famed East Coast anime convention Otakon (more on that next post) and it was an incredible experience. Thank you to everyone who came to watch and to anyone who talked to me at the panel or elsewhere at the con. You made my weekend.

Then I read the Youtube comments and, much like Barry, feel like there are some things I HAVE to address.

Ronin Dojo’s not ending. I teased on my Twitter, but no, there is much left in store for Mark, Barry and Mr. Henderson. Look for Episode 4.5: The Denouement (look it up, it’s a good word to know) in relatively short order, which was always in the cards from when we wrote the original 4 episodes nearly a year ago. After that we have some planning to do, in terms of whether we’ll go right into the next Ronin Dojo cartoon (in which Hank Henderson will kick your dick in with awesomitude) or do our new concept.

Episode 4 boards.

Here’s the news early so you can prepare yourself: We’re going to do a series of cartoons at some point in the future that aren’t Ronin Dojo, and aren’t 100% geek referential. The sensibilities will be the same, we just may not have characters talking about the idiosyncrasies 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons so much. I swear on the plots of land that will in the very distant future become the graves of my parents that the new stuff will be funny and great and you’ll love it. And if you don’t, get in touch with me and we’ll settle it the only way I know how. Please see Episode 4 for the manner in which this will be done.

Speaking of the highly-controversial-in-my-own-mind finale, I want to impart some behind the scenes facts that could inform your Youtube comment. It’s a losing game to get into the habit of addressing negative comments, and to the internet’s credit, no one was really outright mean in the comments left on Episode 4 (so far). You’re free to say what you want about our stuff, and in a way I’m glad some people are invested enough to let us know if they weren’t 100% feeling it this time around.

Me on vacation, working on Episode 4.  Animation is a bitch.

But the one thing I want to staunchly assert is that this ending was the ending we had planned all along. It may have even been the first idea we had when we knew we wanted to do a continuing story for RDCCDX. Giant robot fight to close out. It’s unexpected and abrupt, but that was kind of the point. When you look at it as the final punchline in these four scripts you’ve written all at once, it feels like good pacing. But maybe the time it took to release the episodes hurt the impact. I don’t know, it’s something to consider. We did not write ourselves into a corner or run out of jokes, though. I pull my jokes from a bag of holding, son! Shit has no bottom. Giant robots were our plan all along. So maybe we sucked to begin with. We’ll do Rebuild of Ronin Dojo in a few years to fix it all and sell more merchandise of our characters in sundresses.

Of course, no one reads the video descriptions on Youtube, let alone seeks out my practically defunct personal blog, for more information on our work, so this post was just an exercise in making myself feel better. Which I do, considerably.

Please direct other Ronin Dojo fans to this post on your favorite Ronin Dojo fansite forum (there are none).

So For Tax Reasons has some really for real work going on that is very exciting and very time consuming. I’ll be sure to drop more information when it becomes appropriate, but for now, here’s what went on for the better part of yesterday and last night. This is what it looks like when you animate for a television show in an apartment in Queens.

There was a fourth computer going in another room assisting with coloring.

Holy cats, people. Youtube is bugging the fuck out lately. But we won in the end, and now you get what we’ve been promising: INTERROGATION VACATION, Episode 3 of the Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. CAN YOU DIGG IT?

Emily Tarver is back voicing Agent Wilkins in this episode of thrilling heads talking at one another, as is Tim Martin voicing. . . well, watch the episode. Continuity!

Thanks for watching and keep an eye out for the next episode next month, as we quickly approach this epic’s endgame. Hopefully you’ve been so eager to see what kind of shit Mark and Barry have found themselves in that you’ve already watched the episode, otherwise this closing image isn’t going to make a lick of sense.

Well, that idea about posting all the time was a disaster. I’m breaking my hiatus to tell you how much I wish my mom wasn’t such a hippy and had gotten me something like this when I was a kid:

More on G.I.Joe later, but even sooner than that. . . RONIN DOJO. Final cut of the new episode is rendering as I type/you read. Emily Tarver is back, and so is Tim Martin, but he’s not voicing Seth. You have like 20 minutes to guess who he’s playing this episode before its posted.

The irony of the gradual, then very sudden, departure of key figures from the 1Up Podcasts, is that, over the last couple of weeks, the number of internet radio shows I’ve been listening to has jumped significantly. Rebel FM gets credit for being the first, but Ryan Scott’s The Geekbox is also a worthy listen. It was great to hear a number of personalities I’ve grown used to having in my ear during the day back to business as usual, even if they weren’t collecting a paycheck for it anymore.

Then Robert Ashley, a freelance game journalist and frequent guest on the defunct GFW Radio, dropped A Life Well Wasted on us all, and changed the game.

His podcast title is close to my blog name, but SO MUCH BETTER.

I’ve seen it said by others today, and it’s the first words that came to mind about minute into the first episode: Robert Ashley made a gaming podcast that wouldn’t be out of place as a segment or episode of This American Life. This isn’t the unedited round table conversation that makes up your typical gaming podcast, or podcast, period. ALWW is written, researched, thought out and edited to tell a story; in the case of its first episode, it’s the death of Electronic Gaming Monthly, and subsequently the greater questions its shuttering raises about the print medium versus the internet. It’s an audio version of The Escapist Magazine, a comparison I feel completely confident with despite only hearing one episode. I trust Robert Ashley.

I’m excited at what A Life Well Wasted could be.  I doubt it will become a weekly show.  It’s a fairly production heavy affair.  But it’s clear Ashley has modeled it after This American Life and other public radio programs, and I wonder if he will open it up to other contributors.  Imagine a piece about griefing, or Second Life, by Shawn Elliott. A Sean Baby story, looking at the weird demographic that made up the Nintendo Power readership. Could other people submit ideas for stories, or even finished pieces themselves? I know it’s something I’d be interested in.  Maybe I’ll rough out my idea for a story in a future post.

This is essential, nerds.  I won’t even qualify this with a line like, “If the only interest in video games you have is shooting hookers in Grand Theft Auto, this may not be for you.”  This is for everyone.  Challenge yourself.  Robert Ashley has taken our stupid little obsession with video games and made it feel important.  And for a guy who often wrestles with the thought that he’s wasted his life, it’s reassuring to know that it was a life well wasted. LISTEN.

Here’s the result of more thought on the robot design. Originally I was going for something more detailed and more Zaku inspired, but it’s starting to look more Tetsujin 28. Which is just as well. Fewer lines means an easier time animating. If it comes to that.

I’m about to go to the gym for the first time since college, but here’s something I got down on paper, inspired by some sweet art books at the Asian book shop I was in today. Would have bought them if they weren’t so darn expensive. Anyways, expect to see some more robots soon. . . I need to start designing one for a new project.

Whoops.  I somehow turned off comments for the last two posts.  If you were looking to comment on those posts. . . feel free to do that now.  If not. . . carry on.

Yesterday I received this random text message from my girlfriend, who has read about as many comics as I have fashion magazines:

“Omg Scott Pilgrim just dumped knives!”

If that’s not a testament to the genius of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s work, I don’t know what is.

Scott Pilgrim

I’ve been in a bit of a Scott Pilgrim overload mode the past week.  Since starting to follow O’Malley on Twitter, I’ve be inundated with hype for the movie, the cast of which is chock full of hotties on both sides of the gender line. Plus Volume 5 is due out next week. And O’Malley will be in town all week for signings, promotions and the looming monolith of the New York Comic Con. In fact, he’ll be here almost a week from tonight:

I’ll definitely be there in line, debating whether or not I should mention to him what an incredible influence Scott Pilgrim has been on me and specifically the Ronin Dojo stuff.  There’s a secret special surprise piece of merch or something that’s be put together by Oni Press for the event and other signings all that week, so, y’know, I can’t fight it. Limited edition? Exclusive? Fanboy instincts take over at the mention of those words. I’m so there.

Indoctrinating outsiders to comics is something I’m hesitant to do. I know its a niche hobby, and I am well aware of how those pushy evangelists of sequential art come across to non-readers. But Scott Pilgrim. . . I don’t know. For my girlfriend, it won’t be a gateway comic to an obsession that will match mine. But it’s a book, a character and a story that boyfriends and girlfriends can enjoy together. Unlike Twilight. I am not reading that. Ever. Deal with it, girlfriend.

So they’re not actually werewolves, they’re shapeshifters?  THIS MAKES NO SENSE TO ME.