Now that I have your attention, Vast Error isn't ACTUALLY cancelled. The headline really got you going for a second there though, right?
There is, however, about to be a major shake-up on the VE front from today onward. So stop running around while screaming in distress like you're paid by the decibel and listen up!
Today, I am stepping down as Vast Error's creative director and head writer.
For some of you, this probably sounds like earth-shattering, heart-breaking news, so let me field some questions before you all get carried away:
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
There's no major reason! Well, okay. There is, but it's not some treasure trove of internal drama, anger, regret or fallout. I just personally feel like I've hit a majority of the points I've wanted to with the comics development as its co-creator.
But how? VE is doing better than ever! Last year we got accepted into the HICU, we raised $8.5k+ for charity, we've got some strong plot beats that are finally getting hit after years of build up; it's going great! You'd think ambition would continue to skyrocket!
And it was all very exciting! But for me, reaching those milestones made me feel content with halting the grind. In the months after, I could feel the infernal machine that made me eat, breathe and sleep VE finally start winding down. I learned so many skills and evolved so much as a creator, a director of many hats, a storyteller and even an artist! I'm ready to put those skills to work in a different environment.
It was a tough call, because I haven't outgrown or even fallen out of love with VE! I just feel like it's finally time for me to spread my wings, get out of Bart's shadow, and focus more on DCRC as an independent comics platform like with the upcoming reveal of PROJECT JUMP.
WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN WITH VAST ERROR?
The comic is going to be put on an short-to-medium pause (resetpause?) while we all take a breather and do some internal restructuring to work on a new pipeline with a collaborative backlog model for both panels and writing!
Heather is going to be spearheading the charge in my place, with Eddie continuing to work as editor-in-chief, and the team has already begun forming a new writer's room with both strong new additions and people that have contributed with writing in the Vast Error setting before.
Expect more details and other announcements about this soon!
WILL YOU STILL BE INVOLVED WITH VAST ERROR AT ALL?
Me and Heather are still going to handle drafting the rest of the major beats and making sure everything that gets put out fits our vision for the story. In that respect, you could think of me as the story's producer and creative consultant!
I also still intend to do writing for the comic! It'll just be on more of a "when I can" basis. I'm also doing the scenario for the Murrit Dating Sim, and continuing to headline the A3A1 Walkaround since it's already so deep into production!
Otherwise, I'm mostly going to take a backseat to what Heather and the rest of the team feel right to do with our outlines.
WILL ANYTHING ELSE BE AFFECTED?
Not really! This comic is, and always has been, a volunteer passion project. It's going to stay that way moving forward.
Making VE has been one of the most fulfilling experiences I've ever had. I cannot express just how grateful I am for all of the hours I've spent and working together with people I love in order to create a story that has, for all intents and purposes, made fan project history.
VE has never just been me, though. Even though I sat in the director's chair and made the final calls, I did the easy part. It was always the countless hours of dedication from our team that allowed a project that Heather and I cultivated as dorky teenagers to become something far greater than we could have possibly imagined.
DCRC and all of the opportunities I've been given literally would not exist without VE. I can't wait to see where it goes in the future, and I hope you all are excited to see where that future goes too.
It's scary diving into the unknown, but it's always better to take a chance at greatness than to never move at all.
Thank you all for everything you've given me for the last 14 years of my life.
Have one last Simpsons, for the road.
- Austin Van Landingham
Posted by Austinado on 12/4/2024.
Live from my desk in a pair of Homer Simpson donut pants, it's DCRC News at 12:00pm! Or whenever this is posted in your timezone. Time is fake! Who cares!
Starting off our day of review, a new VEMT release dropped late last month!
This is the first collab project for the music team that I didn't personally help direct, instead a lot of it was helmed by our site producer ValantWynn! She was the one who had the genius idea to make an album focused on the events of Act 3 Act 1, and I think it came out just as great as everything else we've ever done. This album also works as a feature for several new members of the VEMT, so go give them some love! You can always listen on the VE Bandcamp as per usual, but we're also hosting this album on the DCRC Youtube as an alternative!
We used to have a VEMT Youtube channel a few years ago, but for several baffling reasons, it's completely inaccessible now. So we're just going to work on mirroring all the albums there instead! I'd like to drop them in order when we have all of the current discography in video format, so look forward to that!
Now for our TOP STORY.
DCRC is now the publisher for an upcoming Rhythm-RPG called CHORDIOID! It's made by one of our long time collaborators Ash Taylor, and has contributions by a few other members of our crew too. We've already dipped our toes into making video games with Snowbound Blood, but this is the first time we're helping another group of people get their production out the door.
CHORDIOID has a demo that's going to be dropping on 12/16/24 and you can watch the announcement trailer for it above! It'll be on Steam and Itch, and we'll be sure to post about it more on our socials as those dates draw near. CHORDIOID will be joining the DCRC core line-up for the sites major revamp in the near future, and you'll be able to see more of it then! For now though, check out the CHORDSITE for more details!
And on the lighter side, we have behind-the-scenes streams happening every month over on our Patreon for $6.44 and up patrons!
Seeing new material early for VE used to be a rare sight, but now you can watch panels get made in REAL TIME with REAL COMMENTARY by REAL TEAM MEMBERS like Sparaze and Tyson and usually anyone else that's not me! But if you listen real carefully, you might hear me do something stupid in the background.
That's it for DCRC News! Tune in next time for when we finally get around to posting that QNA WITH ANDREW HUSSIE from the 13th Anniversary Stream!
Until then: Keep it unreal!
Posted by Austinado on 11/12/2024.
Things are still trucking along over here at DCRC! We've had a far busier year than expected, which means no downtime to release extra goodies for Hollownull or anything else. But we've been developing several projects in the background, and as 2025 rears its ugly head, there's looking to be a lot that's going to change around these parts.
For now though, Tazjec's scene selection is underway! And over the next week or two after writing this, we're planning on sending down a couple non-update drops for you.
Also, the high-quality rippers over at SiIvaGunner just released the TWELVE BY TWELVE FUSION COLLAB over on their Youtube channel. Give that some love.
Posted by Austinado on 8/2/2024.
SUMMER 2024 CATCH-UP EXTRAVAGANZA
The worst season of the Deconreconstruction year is well and truly upon us. With its scorching heat comes a drought of updates, leaving the inhabitants of our fair website like thirsty little flowers left to wilt in a climate they weren't made for. Unlike the noble cactus, who take the lack of status pretty well on account of the fact that it does not have to be shoved into a lousy metaphor.
Sorry for the impromptu break! No real reason for it. We just get extremely busy and a little miserable with the constant intake of natural Vitamin D in our systems. We weren't slacking off! We were just not allowing ourselves to rot in front of our screens and tablets all day every day. I know, I know. "Too many excuses! Back to toiling in the mines!" We feel the same way as you do when we're alone, covering our faces with blistered hands, trying to hide our tears.
So what's been going on with us since March? WELL...
3/22/24 CHARITY LIVESTREAM- As per the last newspost, for our thirteenth anniversary Heather and I both committed to doing a twenty-four hour charity livestream with a lofty goal of $6,000 USD. All proceeds going to Palestine relief.
We thought this might have been a little excessive, but it turns out our fans are even more insane than we thought. Because we raised over $8,550 USD instead.
There's genuinely too much that happened for me to give you guys a full recap of the event. But luckily, the stream in its entirety has been archived on the Deconreconstruction Youtube channel. We had amazing guests from all walks of Vast Error and Vast Error adjacent life, released tons of official panel redraws from prolific artists and friends we have in the community, shared several previews of new music coming in the near future, and even had some mysterious interlopers from beyond pop in. Our friends at SiIvaGunner might just be planning something big too...
We had a few hiccups in trying to process the donations during and after the event, but we were able to mostly get it to work out in the end thankfully. Here's our receiptsfor posterity!
Beyond that, there are still several goal incentives we have yet to do. I promised chat that I would buy this ultra rare Kid Cuisine Furby, and I intend to deliver as soon as I have plentiful dosh. My son WILL come home. I'm going to name him Crump.
Anyway! Look forward to a CHARM GEOCACHE, CANON FANTROLLS, A QNA WITH ANDREW HUSSIE, A MURRIT DATING SIM and a RERUNS/WARTORN TRAILS ARCHIVE in your probable future. I can't promise how long it will take to complete these, but I can promise they will happen.
Thanks for making me a halfway decent pizza and watching me play Bart's Nightmare! Let's do it again sometime!
SNOWBOUND BLOOD- The long-awaited, palpably-anticipated, multiple-novel-length, multimedia-narrative-nightmare that has been Snowbound Blood: A Vast Error Story has finally come to its conclusion. It's not getting up again anytime soon, so I feel like I'm well within my rights to utilize past participles.
The epilogue is something I feel you truly have to experience to believe. I had my hands all over these final scenes, and it gives you something you won't find anywhere else in the Vast Error mythos you won't have again for a long while. But play the rest of the game first! Don't just skip to the end! You'll find nothing but judgement there, or even a distinct lack of it. Whichever sounds scarier to you.
We intend to release the game's original soundtrack in the very near future! It just needed a lot of track art. There's also plans to give the current release one last big update to punch up some dialogue, clean up some extra code and make the product the best it can possibly be. Other than that aforementioned Dating Sim though, we'll probably be leaving our visual novel run here for now.
So long, Regulator. It's a beautiful morning.
WALKAROUND- One of the most substantial previews we showed off during the 3/22 stream was an alpha build of the upcoming Arcjec and Taz walkaround.
Talksprites have all been assigned and given concept art, more work on the overworld has been completed, menus have been designed and that huge honkin' document that outlines the entirety of the game has been finished!
There have got to be people clawing at their enclosures, frothing at the mouth to get their hands on this. I can't blame you! There's so much OOMPH even in these little snippets! Surely the Tazjec Scene Selection Section (SSS) is the game, right?!?!?!
Unfortunately, creating a mini-RPG up from nothing is an arduous task that requires all hands on deck to complete. And a lot of our hands are too sore from the regular mining duties to commit fully to consistently grinding on another project of this scale. We learned that the hard way! Neither of us are gonna be ready to handle this thing until we take a long period to lock in and toil away at whittling down this one giant developmental roadblock.
You'll know when that happens. For now? Trust the process.
DUODENARY- A new side album by our favorite EDM and Jungle beat god Goomy premiered a couple months back! It's a concept album about the twelve aspects of existence and those that define them.
As always, you can find it up on our Bandcamp and can download it for free along with all the other Vast Error Music Team projects!
NEW MERCH- Not much to say here, but we've had some new (and reworked) merch put out on SHOP@DCRC!
You guys know what's up. Give it a gander and see if anything suits your fancy. I'm a big fan of the Act 3 Act 1 Cast Buttons done by Neptune, myself! But everything is expectedly spectacular.
DCRC 2.0- The website will be going through some changes over the course of the next year or two. We're slowly but surely becoming less of the hosts of Vast Error and more of an independent multimedia hub for all kinds of creators, at the very least internally. This will also come with changes for Vast Error's reader experience as well, some of which we've been promising for years, but it's mostly the other stuff. This is the fabled release of DECONRECONSTRUCTION 2.0.
What are we scheming? New and exciting comic projects, son!
It's been talked about before, but we already have plans to adopt Run With Scissors to the site. Since then, we've also decided to take on ANOTHER COMIC that will be added to the site once DCRC 2.0 is fully engaged.
We'll be keeping the list of new material tight-knit as to not broaden our horizons too far, but needless to say, it's been an exciting change of pace. I even designed us a little mascot on a piece of scratch paper!
Why is this relevant again, though? Why are you putting all this extra slop in my Vast Error news soup?
THE NEW DCRC IP- This is why.
I haven't talked much about this! It didn't even get brought up during the charity stream section where it was initially revealed! That's because I wanted to give it a quick spotlight here. This is DCRC's first TRULY ORIGINAL IP.
I've been slow-cooking it with a bunch of our most talented comrade chefs along with these constantly outgoing Vast Error soups. Ciro and Hallie, two artists that we've worked with for years, will be leading the charge in the art and design department, and I've brought some of the strongest soldiers I've worked with to help flesh it out into something truly awesome.
Internally, we refer to it under the codename PROJECT JUMP.
I'm not at liberty to speak much about it this early on, and truthfully, you may not see much of it again for a long while. But what I will tell you is that we're intending on making this new webcomic project something truly special that hasn't been tried before to my knowledge. I want to approach it as though it's a new evolution of webcomic formulas, or perhaps a better term would be a SYNTHESIS of them.
What's it about? Can't talk much about that either! But if I were to give you an elevator pitch...
Put NO MORE HEROES, VENOM, JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE and CHAINSAW MAN in a blender, puree that shit for about five minutes, and slug it down like you're a bodybuilder on a narrative protein diet. You might just get a taste of what I'm talking about.
That about wraps up this catch-up! To summer-ize what you can expect for the rest of the year:
- UPDATES OF MANY VARIETIES - MUSIC - CHARITY STREAM GOAL RELEASES - JOY AND WHIMSY
"Catch you on the flipside, dudemeisters!" I say behind tears, before tripping over a stray rock with a face on it and dying instantly. It was a mercy killing.
Posted by Austinado on 3/18/2024.
On this fine Monday, I'd like to proudly announce the plans for Vast Error's 13th anniversary! God, this project is as old as me and Heather were when we started making it. Isn't that terrifying?
This year we'll be hosting a 24 HOUR LIVESTREAM on the DCRC Twitch channel, not only to celebrate the occasion, but also to receive active donations in support of two Palestinian relief efforts: E-SIMS FOR GAZA and CARE FOR GAZA.
All proceeds earned during the event will go to the charities mentioned above. Our base goal is to fundraise at least $6,000 USD in aid, which sounds like a lot for a webcomic hosting site whose main export is, for all intents and purposes, a fan project. But there's one thing we've learned after doing this gig for so long: ambition and effort can go a long way if you know where to direct them.
And we don't intend to just stream. No, that's too easy. We also have several guests who will be joining us throughout the day, along with special events and incentives that will either happen on stream or coordinated afterwards as a direct result of your donations, with stretch goals that go up to $10,000 USD. This includes PREVIEWS, RAFFLES, MERCH REVEALS, PANEL REDRAWS, MUSIC PREVIEWS, MESSAGES FROM BEYOND, and MORE!
We'll be posting more about the event in the coming days leading up to its start. It would be great if you all did the same!
Let's make this the best birthday we've had yet by shattering those numbers and fighting for a better world.
