Hi everyone! I’m sure you’ve been wondering why there haven’t been any updates in... a long time. Well, I don’t waste your time: the VN adaption of Odd Nauseam is cancelled.

I know. This sucks. I’m sure some of you are disappointed. You were probably excited to see new Odd Nauseam content, and now I’m letting you down, yet again. It doesn’t feel good for me to have to do either. But I need to be honest with you and myself: I just don’t have the time or motivation to work on it.

Part of the reason I decided to do this project in the first place was to help me learn how to make visual novels in Ren’py, but I’ve basically already done that after working on other projects for the past year. And, well... if I truly had the passion to do something Odd Nauseam related, I’d probably try to continue to comic, which is another thing I definitely don’t have time for.

(If you read other webcomics? Take the time to go thank the writer/artist for their hard work. It’s extremely time-consuming and often thankless and I promise you they’ll appreciate the kind words.)

I feel disappointed in myself for doing this. I’ve been dealing with a lot of shit this past year and the last thing I want to do is let myself down again, much less you guys. But that’s just the state of the project right now, and I think it’s very unlikely I will ever be finishing this.

Thank you, as always, for reading, enjoying, and supporting Odd Nauseam. I love you all. <3 If you want to keep following me in the future, you can head over to my art blog at @oddlazdo or my twitter here.

Stay joyful, my friends <3 <3 <3

I finished the last pose for Joy’s talksprites, so here they all are, completed! At least for now, assuming I don’t change my mind and want/need to add more, ehehe.

Finished some more poses for Joy’s talksprite tonight! I’m going to do a few more extra poses, and then it’s back into Ren’Py to code the next scene!

The background that was featured in yesterday’s video is done! Woo hoo! (The bottom one is the final version, if that’s not clear, lol)

With this done, I’m gonna work on some additional talksprites. And then I’ll be ready to code the next scene!

Hi everyone! A new video update is here for August!! While working on a background, I talk about the game's progress, Joy and Greyjaw, the house ghost Scrivener, and my other projects.

I’m hoping to finish this BG tonight, but here are 3 more progress pictures I haven’t posted here yet! (reminder that I post far more frequent updates on my twitter!)

Working on the next background for the Odd Nauseam VN! It’s an adaption of this background (top image, obv) from a panel from the third page of the comic. After messing with the perspective for an hour until it was just right, I have the basics finished and I’m ready to start drawing.

cleaning out my old deviantart account and ran across this old sketch of some halloween art from 2011.

i still like it a lot... 🤔

Hey everyone!! I made a video showing off the beta of first scene in visual novel form! Should I do more videos like this? And, do you guys want me to read out the lines and do silly voices? I guess I could... try... if it meant making future videos more interesting ^^; anyway... It’s nowhere NEAR finished, but if you’re curious on how progress of the VN is going, check it out! ✨

VN Devlog #2: backgrounds!

Hi there, y’all! Popping in with another update to share on the progress for the VN!

It’s been a bit slower than I’d like since I’m still working on Saucy Suitors at the same time, but I’ve began work on additional talksprites and on backgrounds. Do you remember the very first panel of Odd Nauseam, with Greyjaw sleeping in bed? That scene is also at the beginning of the VN adaption, so I’m currently drawing her room as the VN’s first background!

Here’s some progress pics after 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours of progress. The coloring in the 3rd picture is just roughly blocking out the colors and shadows - the final version will be more refined (but still a little sloppy looking to keep up with the aesthetic from the comic). What do you think so far?

Joy and Greyjaw both got an additional pose for their talksprites AND other outfits! There’s their orange uniforms for when they work at the diner, of course, and Greyjaw also has her pajamas. But I’d like to show those off in a future devlog when I have sprites for other characters to show you guys, too!

VN Devlog #1: Lo, it begins!

Hi there, y’all! Did you have a good March? If you’re reading this thinking “WHOA, a post to the Odd Nauseam tumblr?! I thought that webcomic was dead!” then you probably missed the longer post I made about six weeks ago about the future of the comic and world of Odd Nauseam. Click on over to the front page of this Tumblr to read that post, if you missed it.

For the rest of you: hi! I’m back after doing NaNoRenO! I made a demo/proof of concept for a future VN called “Saucy Suitors.” If/when I finish making it, it’ll be a dating sim where you get to romance anime bishonen personifications of table condiments. It’s fun and silly so far and I had a blast working on it last month. You should definitely check it out if you’re interested! You can find it on itch.io here. I know the people who read this blog want Odd Nauseam content, but I honestly learned so much about VN development by doing NaNoRenO. That experience will definitely help me out when it comes to making the Odd Nauseam VN!!

As for that project, here’s an update on my progress so far.

I’ve got talk sprites finished for both Greyjaw and Joy. Greyjaw looks pretty much the same as she did in the comic, but Joy got a slight redesign! What do you think? Like it? Hate it? Let me know!

While I’m working on all the art assets for the VN (mainly talk sprites and backgrounds), I’ll be working on the script for it, too. That basically means all of the text in the dialogue boxes - both narration and the character dialogue. A few weeks ago, I went through the entire comic and basically transcribed everything that happened and all of the dialogue into one big Google doc. From that, I’m going to clean up the dialogue, tweak the story and add plenty of narration. I also want to add the extra story elements and dialogue options that I mentioned in my last post. I don’t know how long that will take, but it shouldn’t be too long - especially if I hunker down one weekend and just get it all done. That’s what I did for my script during NaNoRenO and it worked pretty well. Maybe I’ll do that this weekend!

One of the things I’m most looking forward to when working on the Odd Nauseam VN is learning how to add sound effects and animations. It wasn’t something I had the time to master during NaNoRenO, so the Saucy Suitors demo doesn’t have much sound and has no animations. For Odd Nauseam, the comic has very lively character art, and I’m not willing to sacrifice on that element of the visuals for the VN. So this project will force me to learn how to do that kind of stuff in the engine I’m using!

Anyway, is there anything in particular you guys would want out of a VN adaptation of the comic? I can’t say I can promise too much, as I don’t want this project to take a bajillion years for me to complete, but if you have modest requests I can definitely consider them!

Next time I post, I hope to have a background and/or some more talksprites to show off, plus an update on how the script is coming along. I hope you look forward to it!

The Past, Present and Future of Odd Nauseam

*taps mic* Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?

Hi! Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re someone who used to read my webcomic Odd Nauseam, which I worked on from 2011 to 2013. I was in law school at the time, and working on the comic gave me a creative project to focus on when I needed to get my mind off everything else going on. After I graduated in 2013, I began to study for the bar exam, and coincidentally the first story set in the Odd Nauseam universe, “Welcome to the International House of Fail!”, wrapped up at just about the same time. The comic went on hiatus to give me time to deal with IRL stuff, and then restarted as we went into 2014, this time with the promise of a new story that explained the origins of Joy and Greyjaw’s friendship. But... updates started getting sporadic, and then, stopped entirely. And for three years, there was nothing but silence. Odd Nauseam basically died.

So, what happened? And why am I posting this now?

Well, let me say a few things. First, I want to apologize for anyone who was a fan of the comic and who was disappointed by my disappearance. Although my comic was never some kind of gangbuster in terms of popularity, I wouldn’t be surprised it there were upwards of 100 people reading it every week and wanting to know what was going to happen next. I had started to build a reader base after several years, and then I just... abandoned you. I feel bad that I could have let people down, people who cared about my incredibly weird story and characters. I am sorry that I went AWOL on you all. :(

Second, I have to admit that the reason I stopped working on the comic was not because I was too busy. Being too busy certainly eroded my ability to keep up with weekly updates, which is why I took breaks during 2013, but it’s not why the comic simply stopped.

To be honest... I was just really, really burnt out on working on it. It took me anywhere from 8 to 12 hours to work on a single page. My own goals for the comic included highly detailed backgrounds, a large cast of hard to draw non-human creatures, and hand-written speech bubbles and sound effects. All of this was very time-consuming. I had grown very tired of drawing backgrounds in particular - not because I hate drawing backgrounds, I really love doing them - but because each panel needs its own background, only for the reader to glance at it for a few seconds before moving on to the next panel. You can see in some of the later pages of Odd Nauseam that I started to abandon backgrounds in every frame in order to save time, but this made me much less satisfied with how each page turned out. Hell, even those hand-written speech bubbles often took up hours of time to get to a place where I was happy with how they looked.

All of this eventually just wore me down. I got sick of working on the comic. I needed an extended break from it, and that break turned into a permanent hiatus. So I’m writing today with a sad announcement: there is no plan to continue Odd Nauseam. I won’t be finishing the story I began before the comic stopped updated. I really do apologize for having to do that, but I simply lack the interest or motivation in continuing it.

Now...... that being said... the title of this post refers to “the future” of Odd Nauseam. What’s up with that?

Well, I am pleased to announce that I an adapting the completed story set in the Odd Nauseam universe, “Welcome to the International House of Fail!” into a free visual novel!

Yes, that’s right! As in, a game with text, pictures and sound where you get to make choices that affect the story and result in different endings. The game will also feature some additional conversations between Joy and Greyjaw that are not in the comic that reveals more about their relationship with each other, how they met, and what they do after the end of the comic.

The game is still in its early stages, but my hope is to finish it before the end of 2018! I’m helped out a lot by the fact that all the characters are already designed and the story is 80% already written, so I think this timeframe is doable.

So that’s the positive news I have to share with you today. :D I’ll be posting updates about the project to this Tumblr from now on - if you want to support me and the project, reblog my updates and artwork and tell your friends! It can be fun to reread the comic too (I had a blast doing so a few weeks ago... I even got a little teary-eyed, sniff).

If you want smaller updates, or if you’re interested in my absurd stream of consciousness daily thoughts, you can also follow me on Twitter. My account for creative projects is @oddlazdo, and my personal account is @lambdapower.

In the next few weeks I’ll be posting finished artwork and the such, and perhaps some more blog posts like this one about how development is going. (However, please note that there’s a Game Jam going on in the month of March called NaNoRenO, which is basically like NaNoWriMo for people who make visual novels. The goal is to make a VN in one month, and I’ll be participating, so I may not post many updates to this blog regarding the Odd Nauseam VN project until after that’s over. You can check the oddlazdo Twitter for updates on that project if you want, though!)

Thank you so much for reading and for being a fan of my comic. I’m hoping to make something awesome with this VN project and I hope you’ll enjoy the final product!

Love, Lazdo <3

Hello! Anyone still here...? No?

Well, if there is - there might actually be some new Odd Nauseam content in the works, although it may not be what you’d normally expect!

PAGE SIX

click through to read it full size on the site

comic updated today! whoaaaaaaaaa

instead of doing a preview graphic, i'll just upload the page. (who cares)

click through to read it at the website!

i think i'll do a blog entry on what's been going on with the comic sometime later today.

what's this.............................