I am currently working on the Mangadolls: Holiday Wallpaper Pack, which will soon be available in the manga shop, but that isn't the reason I had to post today. I want to talk about the iPhone itself, and how truly useful a tool it can be if it is kept in mind. For example. I went to get my car washed today and it usually amounts to fifteen minute, or so, wait while they work on it. In the waiting area, I saw a woman with her iPhone out tapping away at the screen. I don't know what she was doing, but it was certainly a way to pass the wait time. I sat down and pulled my iPhone out and, for the first time, really experienced the value of the Edge Network.

In the past, when I would go to that carwash, I usually has my PSP with me. The PSP is web enabled, but it is WIFI only, and the carwash has no WIFI network. While it was cool to sit in my favorite Thai bar, which had WIFI, and blog from my PSP, there would be no such luck at the carwash. Today, though, since I had my iPhone I could check mail, search the web and do all the cool things the iPhone can do. I even found a webapp which happens to be an iPhone tailored Japanese/English dictionary with kanji lookup!

So what does this have to do with the end of Christmas? Well, that's another part of the story while I was out and about today. I was pulling into a plaza to go to the store when I saw three police cars lined up in the parking lot. People were staring, but I generally didn't see anything going on. They weren't after me, so I went inside. I took care of my business and proceeded to leave the store. As I walked out I saw it. Santa was being hauled out of one of the other stores by the cops. Ms. Clause was right behind him. I even heard a girl passing by say, "Why are you arresting Santa?" My iPhone was in my pocket and this would have been a perfect time to take a picture if I had remembered that the iPhone has a camera on it!

This isn't the first time I have come across something amazing and forgotten that I have a camera on me at all times now. The funny thing is, this is something I had always wanted. When digital cameras became popular, I always said I will wait until I have a simple camera, small enough to keep on me at all times. Then I will get one. Now I have one and rarely remember it's there! This is my first cell phone and first digital camera, though, so I guess I should allow some time to get used to it. I just hope it's before the next cool thing happens.

Tags: iPhone

The writer's strike may have put a dent in some of my favorite iPhone sponsored TV shows like Moonlight and Chuck, but it's not stopping me from writing new iPhone manga. I forgot to mention that my latest release Blood Isle is up and available in the Alchemy Manga Shop, joining the recent Evidemic released last week. Blood Isle is a story I like to call a fantasy with a twist you won't believe. It follows an axe-wielding barbarian woman called Ozelle as she moves through the battles waging around her on this island. This is just the beginning of an iPhone manga series I am very excited about and so expect to see a lot more of this story as it develops. The twist in question will become more apparent in the next chapter and things really explode from there!

It was a fun title to work on as I chose to experiment with the look and feel of the piece, deviating from the sharp look of the previous titles to try something more painterly and earthy. I enjoyed playing with colors, foggy settings and depth in the scenes. Because the world of iPhone manga allows for a blend of techniques from print and screen graphics, there are a lot of interesting directions to go artistically. I am sure I wll discover and expand on this as time goes on.

Coming up this month, in time for the holidays, will be a new CG collection titled Manga Dolls: Holiday Wallpaper Pack. It will provide a way to give some sexy holiday cheer to your iPhone with some different holiday backgrounds. The CG collection will contain 16 beautiful background images featuring the cutest characters around in holiday themed environments. This will be the first of many seasonal CG collections to supplement the iPhone manga available in the store. CG collections are extremely popular in the digital manga world of Japan, and as more artist create content for iPhone Alchemy, I hope to have some image collections from some of the greats overseas in the store very soon.

Even though I'll be after great iPhone formatted manga content from a variety of artists in Japan and globally, that won't stop the development of my original stories. Look forward to the next chapter of Heaven's Burden, coming later this month, along with continuing stories of Evidemic and eventually, The Legend of Zahur. Also, the web app I mentioned previously is underway for the iPhone and should be showing up in the next couple of weeks. I feel like I'm on a roll now and I am having a ton of fun. Things are just beginning to accelerate!

Tags: Blood Isle, Mobile Content, Manga