Sean Howard
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Sean Howard (nickname: Squidi) is the author of the pixel art comics A Modest Destiny and The Starship Destiny.
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Comics
A Modest Destiny
A Modest Destiny (AMD) was a daily pixel art web comic. It was launched in 1 January, 2003 and released a strip daily until 28 December in the same year. On 16 March, 2004, A Modest Destiny: The Dreaded Vampire Lord Fluffy began, and lasted until later that year.
The comic followed the adventures of a young fellow named Maxim and was told in flashbacks. The comic was set in a fantasy world, dotted with modern mentality and references.
The first story arc ended in 2003. Howard announced the site changing the AMD universe for a science fiction space opera by the name of The Starship Destiny, unrelated to the original AMD. Not being completely satisfied with the way TSD turned out, the site returned to a new season of AMD.
This new storyline took place after the first AMD, but didn't feature Maxim or the flashback narrative. Instead, it followed a bad guy, a vampire named Fluffy who had been tamed by society, and some lesser used characters from the first season. The Fluffy storyline is mostly referred to as AMDF. About halfway through the season, the comic's format changed. While still updated daily with new comics, the story then only ran during the weekdays with one shot gag strips featuring characters from both AMD and TSD on the weekends.
As of September 2004, the AMDF storyline came to conclusion.
The third and final chapter of A Modest Destiny began on 1 January, 2005 with a major change in the comic's style. The comic now features backgrounds drawn on the creator's tablet PC in Adobe Photoshop instead of backgrounds drawn using the typical pixel art style.
During the month of December 2004. there was talk in the site's forums that the pixel art characters would also be replaced with characters drawn in the same style as the backgrounds. However, to the disappointment of some fans and the relief of others, that plan did not come into fruition.
The Starship Destiny
The Starship Destiny (TSD) launched on 14 January 2004 and was going to contain three parts, each containing a story following the same characters, each story having its own plot, climax, and resolution. However, it was discontinued on 14 March, 2004 in favor of another A Modest Destiny storyline. Another "episode" of the story, The Starship Destiny: City on the Edge of Not Ever started mid-2004.
Rather unlike Howard's previous comic A Modest Destiny, TSD follows the adventures of a group of characters in the future, and these characters inhabit a world which could easily be likened to that of a space opera rather than the fantasy world of its predecessor. Like AMD, TSD makes heavy use of cliche and mocks established sci-fi conventions. The crew, led by a square-jawed outlaw and including various robots, both psychotic and paranoid, a brain in a jar, a computer and an alien doctor, are chased through space by a bounty hunter through an asteroid field in one early encounter.
External links
- Squidi.Net (http://www.squidi.net)
- Squidi.Net Forums (http://www.squidi.net/forum/index.php?)