This week on ShiftyLook the first ‘season’ of Klonoa: Dream Traveler of Noctis Sol wrapped up, with line art by Hitoshi Ariga (Mega Man Megamix, The Big O) and colors by Espen Grundetjern (Street Fighter), so it’s the perfect time to get caught up on the webcomic series.

We have a short hiatus planned and then will be back to continue the adventure!

Click here to start reading!

Video game mega-site Kotaku has posted up the first teaser from the Bravoman cartoon I worked on with Namco-Bandai, UDON and the amazing animators at Copernicus. The cartoon is based on Matt Moylan and Dax Gordine’s Bravoman comic strip currently running on ShiftyLook.

Click on through to Kotaku to get your first taste of Bravomation or watch it on YouTube!

I’ve been writing comic strips for Namco-Bandai’s ShiftyLook website since May, collaborating on a variety of old and new franchises including Sky Kid, Wonder Momo, Dig Dug, Dragon Spirit and Klonoa. It’s been a really great experience working with a bunch of different artists expanding the stories from the video game source material.

This weekend Namco-Bandai launched the official Japanese version of the ShiftyLook site. Clicking through to check out Wonder Momo and Klonoa in Japanese is absolutely surreal. I’ve been such a big fan of anime and manga all these years and this is the first time I’ve seen my work translated into Japanese. It’s a little thing, but it feels like a neat milestone.

Anyways, if you can read Japanese you can click through and check it out. Even if you don’t, you still might find it interesting.

Over the weekend I flew to Los Angeles to supervise voice recording on the upcoming Bravoman cartoon shorts being developed by Bandai-Namco based on the awesome comic strip written by Matt Moylan and drawn by Dax Gordine from UDON as part of Bandai-Namco’s ShiftyLook web initiative.

It was a whirlwind 2 day trip but, even with the tight schedule and long hours, the voice recording went incredibly well. I can’t wait until next year when animation is all done and we can show off everyone’s hard work on the project.

Voice acting legend Rob Paulsen is the voice of both Bravoman and Alpha Man, with equally legendary Dee Bradley Baker as the voice of Dr. Bomb, Anti-Bravoman, our Narrator and Attack Bomber V-9 and Romi Dames as the killer-cute voice of Waya Hime. Adding to that mix is the Bravoman theme song created by Randy Rogel, Emmy award winning composer of Animanics and Batman the Animated Series.

Working with such incredibly skilled voice actors was an absolute blast. All of them were hilarious and fun while hitting their marks and delivering wonderful performances. As excited as Matt and I have been working on scripts for the short cartoons, hearing them act out the roles and knock it out of the park has really taken things to the next level.

I didn’t get many chances to snap photos as we rocked out a 10 hour session plowing through all the voice recording, but here are a few snaps:

Our crew plugging away at the sound studio.

Rob Paulsen thinks we’re doing a good job.

A quick photo with Romi before she heads out after a successful recording session.

Dee’s method acting a giant killer robot here.

A bit blurry, but here’s our gang at the end of the day. From left to right: Me, Rob (Bravoman’s voice), Rob (Namco-Bandai VP), Ash (ShiftyLook Manager), Matt Moylan (Bravoman Writer).

Wonder Momo, the idol girl cosmic hero strip Erik Ko and I write, continues on ShiftyLook with two new strips each week.

Jeff ‘Chamba’ Cruz just finished artwork on our Momo ‘interlude’ story recounting the origin of the original Wonder Momo from 1987 and it turned out great! He did a phenomenal job channelling the retro-art style of 80’s anime favourites like Project A-Ko and Urusei Yatsura to lend this fun mini-story an air of authenticity.

The interlude story starts here, so click on through and give it a read!

Over on Bandai-Namco’s ShiftyLook website, a brand new webcomic series has just launched.

Jim writing fantasy comics? Shocking, I know, but believe me when I say this one feels different from both Skullkickers and Pathfinder.

Dragon Spirit: Legendary Tales of Mythical Adventure Chronicles is a sarcastic and ridiculous approach to the kind of old school sword & sorcery story that permeated fantasy video games of the 80’s. It’s self aware and self deprecating.

With beautiful line art by Steven Cummings (Uglies Graphic Novel, Vent) and moody coloring by Espen Grundetjern (Street Fighter) it’s going to slay monsters and gather treasure with a new strip posted up every Sunday!

Click on through and check it out!

The first “season” of Wonder Momo just wrapped up with a surprising and fun reveal over on ShiftyLook, so you can now read through all 26 installments at once and get caught up with our silly joyous anime-sentai idol-hopeful storyline!