Rockmelon Soda

Chapter 15 of Mari’s stories. This one is about The Forest.

You can read it here.

Chapter 14 of Mari’s stories. This one is about a girl named Tomi, and her doll Tomoe.

You can read it here.

Chapter 13 of Mari’s stories. This one is about balance, and is told by Mrs. Beedog.

You can read it here.

Chapter 12 of Mari’s stories. This one is about videogames.

You can read it here.

Chapter 11 of Mari’s stories. This one is about making mistakes.

You can read it here.

Chapter 10 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Mama’s guitar, and Senor Perrito del Burrito.

You can read it here.

Chapter 8 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Earth Day.

You can read it here.

Chapter 7 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Music.

You can read it here.

Chapter 6 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Papa and the Inufantry.

You can read it here.

Chapter 5 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Taka and Aki.

You can read it here.

Chapter 4 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Eleanor.

You can read it here.

Chapter 3 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Dr. Patches.

You can read it here.

Chapter 2 of Mari’s stories. This one is about Joe the Roofcat.

You can read it here.

A little story about Mari, as told by Mari herself.

Read it here if you like

Hi there, friend. Here’s TJS7, the long-awaited premiere of Season 2.

For best viewing quality, click full screen and then click the little square icon to view at actual size.

I want to thank the Rockmelon Soda community, who has hung around here all throughout the terribly long time it’s taken to finish this episode. You can join that awesome community if you’d like. We mainly hang out in the Rockmelon Forums, the forum for people who don’t like forums.

I hope you enjoy this episode. If you like it, you can help support future episodes of TJS over at our Patreon page.

Several people have asked about the updates I’ve been making to characters for TJS Season 2, so I figured I’d make a post to show what’s different and explain the logic behind some of the changes. The short version is that I’ve been fixing things that have always annoyed me and just generally making everyone prettier to look at and more versatile / easy to work with.

For the long version and a peek at Season 2, hit the jump.

Read More

The Journalism Show: Episode 06 from Topher Cantler on Vimeo.

I’m especially pleased to present this episode, as it’s the season finale. It’s also the first one to be available in HD, as all future episodes will also be. (You’ll have to view it on Vimeo to see it that way, though. Sorry.)

This marks the end of TJS Season 1, and it’s the Katamari episode. Couple of things:

1. If you’ve got some kind of photosensitive Epilepsy, you may want to rock some meds, or skip this one. There are a lot of very blinky things happening. Sorry. :(

2. If you’ve got an iOS device, Vimeo has recently released an app, so you can watch TJS on your phone or iPad if you want. It’s pretty neat. It also affords me the opportunity to stop bothering with Youtube, which is something I’m seriously considering, because Youtube sucks.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. You can click the image above or hit the Episodes page to watch it.

Most of all,thanks for watching TJS!! I won’t be taking too much time off between seasons — just enough to tidy up some things around the shop here and freshen up some character packs. TJS Season 2 will start in the Fall, and the Beedogs will be back, with new and improved visuals.

Episode discussion, like everything else around here, is in the Rockmelon Soda forums.

Finally.

Episode 05 is a tribute to Street Fighter, and features a guest appearance by Capcom’s own Seth Killian. Click the screenshot above to watch it on the Episodes page. I hope you like it.

Please excuse the shitty audio. Somewhere along the line certain parts came through quieter than others, because Flash sucks at everything. That was as good as I could get it without redoing the whole thing. (it’s also off by a frame, but let’s pretend not to notice, ne?)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Sorry it took so long. <3

And as always, episode discussion and all the good stuff is happening in the forums.

Pinky swear, he says. Terrible.

Just thought I should update to let everyone know that episode 05 is indeed on the way soon. What’s taking so long? Well, there are a few reasons it’s not up yet.

Firstly, the whole “redoing the entire episode from scratch” thing, as outlined in the last update. Secondly, I’ve been working a new day job for the past few months which has been devouring a considerable amount of my time, so I don’t get to dedicate 80+ hours a week to TJS like I did for the first 4 episodes. Add to that the fact that this one is packed full of human characters that take much longer to draw and animate, and there you have it. The June episode becomes the September episode. Lateness. It’s dreadful and I’m sorry.

But the good news is that this second version of ep 05 is turning out better than the original, so it’s my hope that it will have been worth the wait. I’ve been grinding away at it every chance I get, and will have it finished for you as soon as humanly possible.

As for the front page here, it gets neglected due to a combination of my hatred for WordPress and ongoing consideration of redoing the site entirely, and the fact that – no, really – all the action around here takes place in the forums. The community here never ceases to amaze me with how awesome they are, and if you enjoy the show I invite you to come join us.

In the meantime, work continues and nears its completion on episode 05, and I hope everyone will enjoy it!

It occurred to me today that I spend so much time in the forum I forget to update the front page for my RSS friends and those of you who don’t do the whole forum thing. Whoops. I’ll be better about that from now on, pinky swear.

In any case, if you haven’t heard, I suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure last Friday in which I lost absolutely everything I had stored on it. Aside from all my music, software and 4 years’ worth of artwork, photos and personal stuff, that “everything” unfortunately also included Episode 05, which was already about half done.

Sometimes life gives you lemons. Other times it’s a fierce kick in the throat.

But the good news is, I had the first 4 episodes of TJS backed up, along with my character packs and everything I’d done up until about the first week of April. Now that I’ve picked up the pieces and gotten things relatively back to normal, I’m in the process of rebuilding the fifth episode. (Here’s a peek at the revamped show intro if you’re interested.)

So I just wanted to apologize for the hideous lateness of episode 05, and let everyone know that production is back on track. It’ll be a few weeks late, but it’s on the way. I hope you understand.

In the meantime, you can catch me on the new podcast Electric Hydra, or on Sega Addicts as per usual. And there’s still a ton of awesome stuff happening in the TJS forums, so if you dig The Journalism Show, drop in and hang out. If there’s anything else you’d like to see on Rockmelon just let me know. <3