Penguinbros.com

I’ve decided that I need more science-fiction in my life. With that said, I am announcing my enlistment in the Squawker army. Effective immediately, I will be posting the minutia of my penguin-y life whenever I feel like it.

Even if we don’t have the flying cars, or meals in pills, we can still have the all-encompassing invasion of privacy.

Now let me tell you something about Red Penguin you probably already knew — he is the coolest guy around. He’s always going on adventures and making amazing stuff. For his birthday I wanted to give him something special, so I’ve written him a song about a story that’s been bouncing around Frosty Village, about a secret box, and one penguin’s dream of flight…

Happy Birthday, Red Penguin!

A couple of weeks ago I attended Pink Penguin’s birthday party (we fly together, if you catch my drift). Anyway, she received this unexpected gift courtesy of one Miss Critter:

This is not a dream, nor is it a prototype for an upcoming line of penguin plushies — no! It’s just the darn cutest thing imaginable. Click on the image to enter the Penguin Gallery, or click these links to see other angles of Miss Critter’s masterwork.

I’m hoping this wouldn’t be a bad place (or time) to remind our readers of NonCon.

NonCon: A three-day convention of anime and gaming hosted by Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Featuring six webcomic guests:

1. Richard Stevens (Diesel Sweeties)
2. Jonathan Rosenberg (Goats)
3. Steven Cloud (Boy on a Stick and Slither)
4. Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie)
5. R. K. Milholland (Something Positive)
6. Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content)

Registration is $15 for the weekend, and gives you unlimited access to our fun and family-friendly facilities. And yes, we do have Super Smash Bros. Brawl. We hope to see you there!

Last semester I wrote an academic paper on Alice in Wonderland, specifically about the internal logic of Wonderland as it related to Alice’s changes in size. Anyhoo, it seems that this work has not gone unnoticed. Do check out this letter I received in the e-mailbox today:

We were very pleased to have the opportunity to read your thoughtful and
original essay on Alice’s changes of size, which was sent to us by Prof.
Willard, and are interested in publishing it in the Knight Letter, which is
the magazine of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America (LCSNA), most
likely in either the Spring or Fall 2008 issue.

I’ll post again when there’s more to be said. Until then, O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Etc. Etc.

Ah February, also known as “the ‘bru.” Woke up to a light hailstorm. That’s always fun.

Things have been kind of crazy since I got back to campus. My sleep schedule is no longer extant, and it’s been causing me to hallucinate — and that’s why I haven’t updated the website yet. Lolz!

In more serious news… on the weekend of the 22nd of this month there will be a convention held at Vassar Campus in Poughkeepsie, NY. This convention is called NonCon, and it will not only be attended by me, but the following webcomic guests:

1. R. K. Milholland (Something Positive)
2. Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content)
3. Richard Stevens (Diesel Sweeties)
4. Jonathan Rosenberg (Goats)
5. Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie)
6. Steven Cloud (Boy on a Stick and Slither)

And I hope to see you there as well. Leave a comment if you’re planning to attend!

An utterly epic day-trip has reached its conclusion. Here I sit in Spokane International Airport, slightly brokenhearted for having to leave the headquarters of Cyan Worlds.

Cyan: the geniuses responsible for the games Myst, Riven, Cosmic Osmo, and many others. Their creative all-ages-friendly brand of entertainment has captivated me for as long as I’ve operated a computer, and so to finally meet the man behind the Myst, Rand Miller, and to tour his wild Chocolate Factory (Dark, 75% Cacao) was simply a dream come true.

Flying into Spokane, I was pleasantly surprised - as a penguin - to see the signs of winter. But there was something to it that wasn’t so grey. It was almost… blue? Anyhow, I took a couple pictures from inside the cabin to capture the sensation of flight. Off in the distance a snow-capped mountain proudly stood — Mount Spokane I was later told was its name.

Rand and Tony Fryman were there to greet me at the quaint terminal. We drove down the highway, taking in the sight of proud douglas firs (if Twin Peaks has taught me anything, it’s that douglas firs are commonplace in Washington state). We stopped at a bistro and enjoyed a lovely meal of soup and sandwiches and a bit of chocolate (”The chocolate, my friend,” Rand intoned with a nod to Atrus).

At long last, we reached the indomitable Cyan Worlds! Strong and mighty she stood, caked with a bit of winter snow. Rand brought me inside and showed me the digs: props and costumes from Riven, various awards and conceptual art. But a meeting took Rand by surprise, and so he passed me off to his younger brother, Ryan. He brought me to the lower levels, where I experienced The Vault. Inside were many rare and unusual variants of every Cyan product known to man (including a previously unknown Peacock, a Hypercard-based music sequencer). It was there I saw an original copy of Manhole, published back when Cyan was known as “Prolog.”

Ryan brought me around the offices of the “bad boys” of Cyan. People like composer Tim Larkin, Manny Trembley and Eric A. Anderson — creative team behind the webcomic Panda Xpress!, and webmaster Ryan Warzecha. Piles and piles of URU concept art were dumped at my feet for my perusal. When Rand’s meeting ended, he gifted me with Riven and Myst posters, a coffee table “making-of,” all of which he signed. This was in addition to a Myst IV coffee mug and pen he had given to me earlier. Finally, it was time to return to the airport, where we tearfully parted ways. Okay, nobody cried but at least one of us was holding back.

And here I continue to sit, in Spokane Intl. Airport. There is no non-stop back to Antartica — this is going to be a long night… but a good one!

Hey guys, if you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone, and have installed the latest firmware (you’ll know if you did, it cost $20), bookmark Penguinbros and put it on your Home Screen. You’ll see that it has a custom icon! Man! We are some of the first! Google don’t have one, Meebo doesn’t have one… HECK! APPLE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE ONE YET! Just saying. We first.

I’m off to college tomorrow! Woop!

WHAT IS THIS?!! Blue putting on hammer-pants? Purple doing the Charleston? Lime grows huge, but her head stays the same size? What madness! This and more in the new Frosty Village: You Know the Drill!

Stay tuned!

Look to antiART for my latest stroll around the Photoshop block, Keep Walking.

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Yes, it certainly was an interesting last few months: In school, I directed a stage production and was taking a course on fairy tales! Isn’t that something? And next semester I have a class about videogames! Speaking of, I forgot to mention that in the month of October I was hired to beta-test a new computer game called Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle, which is exclusively available for purchase through Fanista. It’s for the Mac and PC, so if you’re reading this I’m assuming you have the equipment to run the game. “Hexisle” is an x-tremely fun action-puzzler, and I recommend it to you all.

In light of my beta-testery, I have been invited out to the snowy plains of Spokane, Washington to visit Cyan Worlds, the developers behind Cosmic Osmo’s Hexisle. Now this is something of a pilgrimage for me, since these people were responsible for my favorite games of all time, such as Myst. You may recall that over the summer I was involved with a certain fan-convention called Mysterium. This is no coincidence, friends.

A trip report upon my safe return (and no need to pack warmly — I am a penguin after all).