maxgorilla

MaxGorilla_BW_page2

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:14:19 GMT

MaxGorilla_BW_page2, originally uploaded by kevrichter.

Page two of this two-pager.

Kev

MaxGorilla_BW_page1

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:13:38 GMT

MaxGorilla_BW_page1, originally uploaded by kevrichter.

Haven't posted here in a LOOOONNNGGG time, so here's page one of a two page story I did a while back.

Kev

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad update!

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:07:02 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad is now up to page 94.

It's been a little while since posting anything here, I've been on holiday for a month. But I still managed to produce two new pages WHILE on holiday. I couldn't have a completely vacant month of Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad.

Anyways, things should be right back on schedule now, although with a 'new' schedule. I know, 'another new schedule' right? But until I can earn a full time living from this, the schedule needs to work around me, and at the moment my main priority is finding a job. So, look for new pages Monday, Wednesday & Friday.

I'm also working on my pages for the first official print appearance of Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad. This is an anthology, based on one central theme, which luckily fits in nicely with the MaxGorilla storyline. I'll let everyone know about this once I've submitted my pages.

Thanks everybody, take care!

-Kev

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad is now up to page 87

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:33:02 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad is now up to page 87.

My last post here on LiveJournal I mentioned that Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad will be a daily, Monday to Friday, webcomic from now until further notice. So far things have been progressing quite nicely, I have missed the odd day because of job-seeking commitments, but over all I am happy with the way things are going. I have also picked up quite a few new readers, which is awesome, and I hope everyone is enjoying the story.

If you haven't checked in on the adventures of Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad in a little while please do so and let me know what you think, I would love to get your feed back.

Thanks everybody, take care!

-Kev

Page 77 and a new daily schedule!

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:34:34 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 77 is up online.

Since my last post here on livejournal things have changed quite drastically in my life, forcing me to change my previously posted idea of producing a 'chapter' every month. What is this change you might ask? Well, I was made redundant, thus I am currently looking for a job and focusing my attention on this endeavour. Why did I lose my job? Only the big bosses know this, but myself and three other guys are currently looking for work because the company decided they did not need our department any longer.

Anyways. So here's the new deal with Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad. Because I have a bit of time on my hand I really want to post new pages every day, Monday to Friday. I have always wanted to post new pages daily but could not do so because this has been something that I create in what little spare time I have. I will try my best to keep to this daily, Monday to Friday, schedule but this is also dependant on what ever happens with my job searching, as this is rather important. Keep checking back daily, or sign up to my rss feed if you like, to keep up to date with the latest happenings in the world of Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad.

I hope you enjoy reading my comic daily, let me know what you think, good or bad. So head over to MaxGorilla.com right now!

Keep well folks,

-Kev

Page 77 and a new daily schedule!

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:33:16 GMT

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad goes MONTHLY!

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 22:58:32 GMT

Hello everyone,

As from the month of September 2007 Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad will become a 'monthly' webcomic.

Does this mean that there will only be one new page every month? Most certainly not! There will always be more than one page a month, I'm thinking in the region of six pages on average, but this will all depend on the story itself and how much I need to tell in that specific chapter. Some months chapters might be broken into two parts if there are too many pages to be completed in one month. The idea here is to more flexible in my story telling. I wanna have more fun. I wanna be able to stretch a scene over a couple of pages without worrying about producing a page with two panels for example. As has been the case, I've been trying to get as much info as possible into my pages because I have only been able to produce two pages week, and I personally can't give my readers a two second read after waiting three or four days.

I'm really excited about working this way, and I hope that I can pull it off well enough that my loyal readers will appreciate the monthly wait. I do realise that all of this goes against general webcomic delivery of content, whereby you should be updating as often as possible, but this is something that I need to do and at the end of the day I've gotta please myself first, otherwise whats the point of all the sleepless nights. I will be updating with extra content, images etc, thoughout the month, as well as whatever news I have.

The official release day for new pages, or chapters, will be the last Friday of every month. I picked this day as it seems easy enough to remember, I hope.

Two new pages are up online as well, pages 74 and 75 can be found at MaxGorilla.com.

Anyways, thank you so much for your support and for being loyal readers. I hope to deliver the best comics that I can and I hope you enjoy them.

Take care everybody,
-Kev

Page 73 and an idea!

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:51:34 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 73 is up online.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the way I produce, and present, Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad. Because this is a comic that gets updated every few days I have been trying to write each page to be interesting in and of themselves, and to obviously be a part of the bigger storyline as a whole. The problem this presents to me is that I have to get a lot in on each page and it really affects the flow of the story if read as a whole. I was aware of this at the beginning but it’s becoming something that I am not entirely comfortable with at the moment. I want to have bigger panels and action flowing nicely across a few pages etc etc, but I feel that I can’t do this because, to me, presenting a minimal amount of action panels on a page doesn’t give the reader much to read. Because people are only getting a new page every couple of days I want to give them more to read.

The idea I have had for quite some time now is to produce around six to ten pages a month which contain a ’chapter’ in the story, and present it all in one go, not one page at a time. I feel this would give me the opportunity to present my story in a more traditional comic book way and I can give the reader more to look at and enjoy, I can focus on pacing the action, or even quiuet moments, over the course of a few pages and not worry about these moments being broken up by the current method of one page every few days. Of course this would present other problems, such as traffic to the site being reduced, and people possibly forgetting about the comic because of having to wait an entire month for the next instalment.

At this point, all of these ideas are still floating around in my head and I haven’t made any final decisions. I need to think about this some more. Let me know what you think.

Keep well folks,

-Kev

Page 72 is up!

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 10:32:37 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 72 is up online.

I had fun writing this page, as I did exactly what came to mind and went with it. I usually over think everything and end up loosing the initial feel I was going for and just confuse myself. I still feel my scripting needs A LOT of work, and have even thought of possibly getting someone to help writing it, I don't know. I like to think that I am learning on the job and will get better with time, so bringing someone in to help out would not be a good thing. I think???

Keep well folks,

-Kev

Page 71 is up!

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:56:22 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 71 is up online.

Internet is finally up and running at home, and it's faster. Nice!

Keep well folks,

-Kev

Page 70 is up!

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:23:07 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 70 is up online.

I STILL don't have internet at home. I was supposed to back online yesterday but I still have not recieved my modem. Annoying to say the least. Anyways, I hope I can get this sorted out really soon.

Keep well folks,

-Kev

Page 69 is up!

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:11:54 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 69 is up online.

I hope you’ve all had a really good week! Me, I was really busy doing stuff I would rather not do, but it’s stuff that HAD to get done. I dropped another page this week because of it, which I’m not happy about, so hopefully this coming week I can resume my regular two-pages-a-week schedule.

Anyways, the latest page is up, I hope you enjoy it. This continues my use of traditional media, that is real pencils and inks, and I’m really enjoying it, I feel the pages have more life in them now.

My internet at home should be back up and running next week, the date given to me is July 23rd. I still haven’t recieved my modem or anything yet though, but I’m still hoping for the best.

Keep well folks,

-Kev

Page 68!

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:50:26 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 68 is up online.

This one introduces a new element to the story, one that I wasn’t too sure when I was going to use it, or even if I was going to use it at all. I won’t say what that idea is, that would give things away, but I will say that it’s something that was planned even before I began working on this. In the course of producing MaxGorilla, however, the story seemed to be going in it’s own direction and I wasn’t too sure whether or not this new element would fit the tone of the comic as it is, but it’s something that I do want in the story and hopefully it all works out quite nicely.

Thanks for your support,
-Kev

Page 67 and apologies!

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:18:49 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 67 is up online.

I must apalogize for not being around for the last couple of days AND for not updating with new pages. I had some personal stuff happen over the past couple of days that meant I could not get to work on Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad (or much else). I will try get back to schedule as soon as I can but this will probably mean only one new page this week.

Thanks for your support,
-Kev

Page 66 is up

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 07:29:58 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 66 is up online.

My internet connection at home is currently, well, non-existant, so if you are emailing me and not getting a quick response, that is the reason. The lack of connection is also affecting the posting of the new pages so there might be a few late posted pages until everything is back to normal, as was the case with this latest page.

Take care everybody,
-Kev

Page 65!

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:17:09 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 65 is up online.

Enjoy!

Take care,
-Kev

Page 64 is up!

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 19:26:23 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 64 is up online.

I had a couple database issues that delayed the posting of this page, but finally managed to sort everything out, so the page is a little later than usual.

Enjoy!

Take care,
-Kev

RSS now available.

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:53:58 GMT

After many months of contemplating putting an RSS feed on MaxGorilla.com I have finally done it. I was a little bit unsure of actually doing it as I knew absolutely nothing about RSS and don't even use it myself to get regular RSS news or whatever from other sites. I had a look at www.rsspect.com and found everything really easy to use and have now included the RSS feed on the front page, along with a 'sign up' block for readers to recieve updates by email, which will happen as soon as I update the RSS feed, which is nice and easy for me.

If you want to add Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad to your regular list of RSS feeds just visit www.maxgorilla.com and click on the 'RSS Valid' button in the right hand column, or click the link below:

Take care,
-Kev

Page 63 is up online!

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:40:16 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 63 is up online.

Enjoy!

Take care,
-Kev

Page 62 is up!

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:35:07 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 62 is up online.

Enjoy!

Take care,
-Kev

Grumps guest strip!

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:32:35 GMT

Hello everybody,

I had the pleasure of creating a guest strip for the very cool webcomic Grumps, which is one of my favorite webcomics. It's a weekly strip created by super cool cartoonist Chris Jones. Chris has taken a two month break and has asked many awesome cartoonists to play with his characters, and luckily I got to be one of them.

Grumps is DEFINITELY NOT for a younger audience, so if you are younger than 18 years old please don't go to the Grumps website without permission from your parents.

Anyways, here's a cool little flyer for the return of Grumps:

Keep well,
-Kev

Page 60 is up!

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:22:48 GMT

Hello everybody,

I haven't posted here for a while, I've been really busy with many things as well as trying to update the MaxGorilla.com website. I had planned a couple of extra features for the website but unfortunately ran out of time and have had to postpone them for the near future.

The big change that has happened with the latest page of Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad is that I penciled and inked the entire thing the traditional way, yes folks I used real pencils and brushes and inks. Pages 2 to 59 are all digital pages, I used Painter for penciling and inking along with a Wacom tablet of course. I made this choice at the very beginning because I wasn't too sure of how I was gonna do things, how much detail I wanted in the comic, what kind of inking and panel layouts etc, and so I thought using digital would give me the freedom to change things on the fly, redraw a panel, move panels around, scale panels up or down that sort of thing. Basically, I wasn't confident in what I was doing and needed the security of knowing that I wasn't making any permanent marks on paper, I could change things as needed. But I have always wanted to create my comics the traditional way, I just love the feel of drawing and inking on paper, and I have reached the point where I feel more confident in what I am doing that I can commit myself to illustration board and not worry about screwing it up. I will still use digital methods, I may still produce entire pages digitally depending on how I feel or what it is I am doing, and I feel confident enough in both areas. It's nice to have both options.

Anyways, Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 60 is up online.

Enjoy!

Take care,
-Kev

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad T-Shirts!

Wed, 16 May 2007 00:24:38 GMT

Hey, folks, cool news:

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad t-shirts are here!

The store is open. There are logo t-shirts, as well as this shirt featuring a new image not seen anywhere else yet. Male and female shirts are available in various sizes.

One of the ideas that I have for the t-shirts is to have monthly exclusives, whereby each month there will be a new design available for one month only. Hopefully this will keep things fresh and interesting. I will probably start this next month once I am back to the two-pages-a-week schedule, but I will keep you informed on this in any case.

I hope you like the shirts. More merchandise is planned for the future, so stay tuned for further information. Any suggestions for shirts, or other products, please let me know.

On a totally unrelated topic, I am currently re-reading the Akira comics, I have the Dark Horse collections from a couple years back (although I don't seem to have parts 4,5 & 6 for some reason). I am really enjoying this series, everything about it is just SO GOOD, the art, the pacing, the storytelling, just all of it. This is quality comic storytelling at it's best, with interesting characters, and plenty of action, suspense, drama, more action, humor, just everything. A must read!

Take care people,

-Kev

A month of Fridays for Max And The Gorilla Goon Sqaud!

Wed, 02 May 2007 22:48:00 GMT

Hello everybody,

This weeks Tuesday page is LATE. Very late indeed. So late that it's actually gonna be a Friday page. The reason for this is that I have decided that May is going to be a month of Fridays, which means there are only going to be new pages uploaded every Friday. But this is only for May, it most definitely is NOT a new schedule or anything. When June comes around I'll be back to releasing new pages on Tuesdays and Fridays.

I have stated in the past that I do NOT want to produce anything less than two pages a week. I feel for an ongoing graphic novel length story there needs to be pages on a regular basis, with as little breaks as possible (ie days between pages). Webcomic fans enjoy reading their favorite comics regularly and having too long breaks between new pages can really have an effect on how the story is perceived and how well it's working, or not. In print you can rely on the fact that the reader can move between pages at a certain pace set by you in the way you crafted the story and the page itself, but with webcomics there's this break of a day a more between single pages that really has an affect on how the creator needs to approach telling their story. I struggle sometimes trying to find the correct balance in telling the story I want to tell while keeping the single page interesting enough that my readers haven't waisted their time clicking on MaxGorilla.com for the latest page only to find that not much happened. I am also aware of the fact that I would LOVE to collect this story in printed from once it is finished and that the pages will have to read well together at that stage as well, and as I mentioned above, the reading experience of a book and a webcomic are very different. And that's probably why the newspaper style gag strips are the webcomics that have had the most success online. Anyway, I will endeavor to continue trying to tell as good a story as possible for the web, first and foremost, and I'll tackle the collecting of it in printed form when the time comes.

And now after all that, the reasons for May being a Friday only month. Basically, I need the time to focus on all the other aspects of MaxGorilla.com that I just do NOT get the time to do. Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad is only worked on in my spare time, I would love to work on it full time (you would definitely get more than two pages a week then), but for now that is just not possible. I do everything for this webcomic, I write, draw, ink, color, do the website, promotion etc etc, all of which takes up literally every bit of spare time that I have (when not spending time with my wife and son of course) as well as some of those much needed sleep hours. I wish the process went alot quicker but, like I've stated in the past, I will NOT compromise the quality of work just for the sake of 'getting the page out'. The MaxGorilla.com website is basically the same as when it started up back in October last year and I have plans for it that I have not had the time to focus on, and will not get if I don't do something about it. I will keep you updated with what I am working on through the month and will probably update the new bits as I work on them.

Whew, now that you have read all that (I'm assuming my loyal readers will have:)) go and enjoy nine minutes of the new Pixar movie Ratatouille. I seriously can't wait for this movie, it looks absolutely fantastic and is a MUST SEE when it comes out.

Keep well folks!

-Kev

Page 53 of Max and the Gorilla Goon Squad now online!

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 01:49:37 GMT

Hello everybody,

Max And The Gorilla Goon Squad page 53 is up online.

Enjoy!

Take care,
-Kev