Web Comic

By now, Zyggy should have posted the 10 strips for the comic project. To save time during the busy busy busy busy busy finals week, He's posting everything once, and I'm going to link to his site. A such, the comic may be found here:

http://zyggy567.blogspot.com/

Right, one half of the author's perspective,go. Me and josh have a very scattered set of artistic strengths...very few of which were applicable during the creation of a traditional web comic.Neither one of us is the best at drawing and, I having tried to make a completely computer generated comic in high school, knew that wasn't the way to go. We ended up using something we both know well instead. The Warhammer 40,000 universe has been a gaming force since the 70's, and has a ridiculously detailed setting, created for a models and miniatures. Me and Zyggy both play the game, and have modest sized armies, of minutes we have modeled and painted ourselves. The offshoot of this is the following: we can use our miniatures and a camera, along with image editing software, to make a comic set in the WH40K universe.

This comic ended up being more of an experiment than a serious permanent attempt. The biggest problem we encountered, beside lack of editing experience, was the scenery. Taking pictures with a camera presented a big problem, it was probably very apparent in the end comic, that we couldn't look at all the pictures we took ahead of time. The end result was lots of editing for lighting, and lots of shaky shots that we couldn't fix. This was also re result of it being hard to hold a camera still outside. It also means we can't control weather, or the light of the sun. That being said, we made due with what we had, once the camera was returned. When me and josh look at the finished project, it's not exactly how either of us expected it to turn out. I ended up taking the pictures, and doing the particle and special effects. Josh did framing, and wrote the dialogue, though we both cam up with the plot before hand.

The plot itself features out courageous five superhuman space marines, squad Avernicus. It is technically a point of view comic, in that it is narrated form the point of view of the squad's rookie, Maxwell. After a short synopsis of the universe in the first two comics, we see the site of an embattled planet through the visor of a space marine, Max, as he emigres from the fog, eyes glowing. Unfortunately, the text we had on comic 3 was erased when we attempted to upload the comic, we could never fix the problem either. As he fights an Ork invasion, the other four members of the squad are revealed. "Nickles" the cheep humor and comic relief with the flamer. Isac, the heavy munitions officer, and the pseudo big brother of the group. Sergeant Avernicus, the leader of the squad, and Lucas, waring terminator armor, which is about as close as you can come to wearing a tank. He;s good, he knows it, and will make sure you do too.

The comic proceeds, introducing character during a fight scene, and introduces character, and sets up a plot leading to a confrontation with a big ork force, that took out some of their comrades. In the original plot plan, we had about four times the story panned out, but expected to be able to squeeze it into the same number of comics. We failed at that, and decided to end it where we did, to get it in on time.The big twist, was going to be when we changed viewpoints, and showed the entire story form the Ork viewpoint. Seeing that all orks are born from a fungus, and in the universe, all have an innate psychic mind over matter field they don't know about, ti would have been a very different viewpoint indeed.

This comic WAS a leaning experience. If me and Zyggy, or just one of us, decided to continue this comic idea, or in the same style independently, at on or two comics a week, I feel like it would be doable. Given the change to take more time on picture gathering, and making sure all the edits came out perfect, it might have been a great comic. Indeed, we are still talking about the possibility of flowing it up after winter break, or staring a new story line, at a decent pace, much more sanely. Here's hoping.

module 4, part 3.

Everyone had warned him. Everyone in the town said it wasn't worth it. Zeke never listened to everyone anyway. Now he had 2 extra legs, a tail, and was stuck up a creek without a paddle-or a working motor, nothing to say of the correct appendages to use it. What a day.....

The village is in a fortunate island, an island in the world that had no dead zones for magic, or technology on the mainland. Your phones would work, just as well as your thinkagrams. Not too many visitors from the outside world, they had to go through the reefs, and do it without tech or magic sails, because of all the shifting dead zones around the island. The satalight tv always made it through though, it was weird. But I digress.

Zeke was always the odd man out. no head for numbers, and no skill with spell weaving, he was always behind everyone else. What did he care.... He always dreamt of leaving the island, going somewhere else, where he could fit in. His family loved him, he had friends, but it just didn't feel right to him. He kept building a boat, took him years too, with every thing he could. Eve found an old clunker of an engine, and stuck a propeller on it.He even swiped an old map from the library, must been a hundred years old. He got a gps too, but that wouldn't always work out on the currents. Zeke dreamed of the day he would ride out to the first island he could find.

He finally finished it a few days ago, the boat he would sail away. He named it the escape, and loaded it with food, some gas, and a few batteries. He set out, leaving his home behind on the open sea. He even saw an albatross on his way out, which someone had told him was good luck, he wasn't sure who. Maybe he could kill it and make a good luck charm. He actually did manage to lure the thing down, with some food. It ended up choking on some gas, and he kept it around a few days... Thats when things got rough.

Zeke may have had a map, but he forgot to eve learn how to read one. His gps keep ending up not working because there were too many clouds in the way. Whenever he was in a magic zone, storms would swirl around him, like he broke some taboo. He lost allot of his food, and equipment right then. During the worst night, he ended up in a magic zone, and it seemed like a lighting storm was simply hovering over his boat. As soon as Zeke realized this, 5 bots of lightning hit him simultaneously. When he woke up is was daylight again, ans he swished his tail, and sniffed the see air with his long nose......wait. Why was he a donkey?

In his unconsciousness, he had drifted into a tech null zone. Magic keeping him in his form was still working, and he was stuck with no motor, little food, and no way to use a paddle. What a sorry state he was in. Zeke had to trust to the currents, and the wind to get him to an island soon, and he had the strangest hankering for carrots....

module 4 part 2

So, time for part 2 of the animantics project. I decided to be a complete nerd and take my found images from a web comic, and my audio from a Joss Wheadon film called Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.The Film first: Dr. Horrible is a sort of internet phenomenon, created during the writers strike in not too distant memory. It is a musical told from the point of view of a super villain, Dr. Horrible, and how he wants to beat his nemesis, Captain Hammer, winning the affections of his love interest, Penny, and gain entrance to the evil league of evil, led by the infamous bad horse. The song, brand new day, is when horrible becomes try pissed, at the "good guy" captain hammer, and decides to sing about it. I don;t really want to spoil such a good movie, but you should watch it if you get a chance, especially since it;s only 45 minutes long. It's on hulu, here: http://www.hulu.com/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog

Dominic Degan, Oracle For Hire, is a web comic that has been running since 2002, and whose update schedule has never dipped below 4 updates a week, and for the bulk of it;s existence, updated 5 or 6 times a week. It has a whole host of characters, with the main protagonist Dominic, being a seer, who has lots of abilities dealing with seeing the past, future, and present. His "rouge's gallery", if it can be called that, includes baddies like his brother, the necromancer, TIM (fan named), The Inferno Mancer, who channels the power of the lord of hell, and arguably his arch nemesis, Clesto Morgan, the one-time champion of Chaos and Darkness during the storm of souls. For the purpose of this animatic, I decided to switch perspectives a bit, making Celesto our Dr. Horrible stand in, Luna-Domonic's love interest, as well as an extremely competent elemental caster- penny, and Dominic himself as Captain Hammer.

Now, this didn't transfer over perfectly. I realized when watching the finished project that my timing is off in 2 or 3 places, but windows movie maker seems to be unable to let me fix the problem. Also, I didn't have a comic ready for Celesto and Dominic for ever occasion, so I improvised a little, bringing back TIM for a few shots, and making him our pseudo bad horse. If you have allot of free time, and haven't read DD, I also highly recommend picking it up. With a few thousand strips, though, it may take you a while to finish reading. http://www.dominic-deegan.com/

Module 4 part 1

This is my animatic project, a little late, because of time crunch issues, and the fact that I was running out of sleep recently, but here it is.

For my audio clip, I chose a 1:05 bit by one of my favorite stand up comics, Brian Regan. He talks about Evil Kenevil a bit, and remarks on how he figures evil is doing today, and how he thinks when he's being interviewed. The video more or less speaks for itself.

I ended up doing this whole video in MS paint, for a few reasons. The biggest one is that I'm tired of finishing all my work on paper, then having trouble scanning it in, having to touch it up, orient it, and have gobs of the quality ruined. I actually wanted to see how much detail I could get into a bunch of images created with the program as well. It's certainly not the best looking thing ever made, but it cam e out a bit better than I imagined. I also was able to sneak some trick in. I never had to draw a face, and evil was always in a helmet. I used a "bounce counter" to help keep flashback time. Also, to save image creation time, I was able to use the ancient and venerable technique of stock footage. :P

The Death of Obi One Kenobi

For module 3, part 1, I decided to take a classic Star Wars moment and put it to story boards. It turns out that I was far from the only one to have this idea. I'm actually missing one of my sketches. I really have no explanation, I did 8, and there's only 7 around now, so I'll upload what I have now.

A little background: Obi One is engaged in mortal combat with Vader, while the rest of our heroes are trying to get back to their ship, the millennium falcon. Our first panel was of the heroes arriving in a nearby corridor, but as stated, it went missing. They are also unable to move because there's a group of storm troopers guarding the falcon. Before they have a chance to come op with a plan, Obi One and Vader's dual reaches a nearby door. The following panel simply shows their battle from a different angle, showing the storm troopers noticing the loud fight. The camera changes again, to Luke and his team's point of view, as they see the soldiers running in a different direction for some reason. Something I noticed through all these shots is a pit on the room where the falcon is. I included it in all the drawings I could, because it gives a point of reference for all the different groups looking into the room. Soon, R2-D2 and C3PO, as well as Luke and company, make a dash for their ship. Luke stops, realizing that it is Ben fighting Vader that captivates everyone's attention. Ben sees they young boy's concern, smiles, and raises his lightsaber high. Vader slashes at Ben, and Ben's robe falls to the ground empty. In my last panel, Luke crys out in anguish, at the loss of his mentor.

Module 3, part 2

Once again, this is a story board sequence I worked out all on one abnormally large piece of paper, and scanned in several times, resizing things so that all the frames are relatively the same size. This, along with my less than perfect drawing skills lead to the low-ish quality of this set of story boards. If the images aren't clear enough, i will now relate what they are supposed to be.

I found the script for Jurassic park 3, and decided to take scene 4, and story board the beginning of it. The fist panel is of 2 plastic dinosaurs rwaring, and growling at each other. The next series of panels zoom out, and show the setting. A father, watching his toddler play excitedly in a sandbox with toys, while his wife stand over him with a newborn. To add to the suburban sense of the perfect, normal family, I added a grass yard [with sprigs of grass], a picket fence, because there always there, and a bright sun. The exact lines that follow detail the father telling his son he's playing with the toys wrong, because he's having the two plant eaters fight each other. He then picks up a meat eater, and starts having it fight the other dinosaurs. The boy starts crying a bit, probably at having his toys take away, and played with by his father. The mother ends up reminding the father that the son would be the one playing with the toys, so the father gives them back, saying "right, right, nice dinosaurs".

I would comment, that though I have seen this movie, it was several years ago, and I don't remember this scene at all. Soon, I'll probably go and see how close my story boards match the actual visuals of the movie.

Module 3, part 3

I drew this set of story boards up all on one paper, and re sized and separated them, putting them in one file. Th quality took a little bit of a hot in the process. But I digress. This is the story of a cosmic can of warthog soup. The first panel is simply of our "ship" finding it;s way to earth, passing a wayward satalight on the way. The second is the aerial view of the human residence that is about to have it's warthog population increased by 1. Drawing on both some original ideas, as well as my fondness for the loony tunes of my youth, I decided to mess around with my setting a little bit. The soup can;s thrusters fry a passing bird, mid flight. It also does a jump over a suspension bridge, on it;s way through town. On it's way out of the city, it passes an apartment building, and messes up the satalight dish (probably of the device it encountered in orbit) messing up a man's tv reception. After all of this, our errant warthog crashes through a barn, makes a long streak crater in the ground, almost hitting a cow. Perfect landing. He then proceeds to kick off the door to his soup can/ship, directly into the face of the farmer in residence. He then dramatically steps out, clanking on the container, and adjusts his sunglasses and jacket.

Module 2, last entry

This assignment was to create a comic , presenting water, a fence, a family, a wall and a dog, in that order. I had a rough time coming up with an inventive idea, and I'm not as proud of how the scans turned out for this assignment, but here it goes. The idea behind the strip is that it's a man escaping from prison. The first panel is supposed to be a man's foot after he steps in a puddle. Don't worry if you don;t see it like that, the scanner wasn't able to get the whole image perfectly. The second image has the same man escaping over a hole in the barbed wire of the prison fence. The 3rd panel goes double or nothing, with our man on the run climbing over a wall, towards a yard. I didn't really like this panel, because I didn't get the details too well drawn in. If you read this blog, you also already know how I feel about drawing faces though. In the last panel, before the man can get to the family, a dog chases him away, completing our comic to-do list for the day.

Module 2 part 3

Module 2's assignment was hard just because I had to come up with a good story. This was kind of pieced together, thinking back. I did try to stay with the fable/proverb feel of the painting itself, and make something kind of original, though I don;t really expect any awards for it.

Grid assignment

This is my poetry in comics assignment. The idea was to make a 2 panel grid, and have sequential "I used to _______", then "but now I ________". I decided to take one image, and split it into panels. I couldn't find a good way to flip my pic, as I had originally planned. It was supposed to symbolize the dark turning to the light, instead of the other way around. Well, aside from that, I tried to have a mix of serious and silly transitions, mostly just putting in whatever cam into my head at the time. enjoy.

Dr. Who, and the Waters of Mars

For the making a trailer assignment, I chose to pick a trailer for an upcoming special for Dr. Who, the longest running science fiction show in the world. I've been a fan for a while now, and I've been kind of looking forward to this coming out soon. The trailer itself seems to be aimed at both viewers new to the series, with a bunch of action scenes, and for fans, hinting, or directly referencing pieces of lot that have been in the show, like the "knock four times" comment. I figured this trailer would give me plenty of material for my comic style trailer.

Knowing that the people who have seen this show is in the minority compared to those who haven't, I didn't try to catch the trailer too much with my image trailer. I instead took several screen caps, mixed up the order, and made sense of it with captions. The movie *my* trailer descries would take place on a space ship, leaving mars for earth, and being attacked by a monster made of water they picked up at takeoff, who had taken humanoid form with a space suit. Going, back, that's something Dr. Who might try to do anyway. Something I find amusing is that the easiest person to make look like a monster and antagonist, is in fact the main character of the series, the good doctor himself in a space suit.

Here is a link to the actual trailer for comparison, enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClNAiVhcIMA





Here is also a version with my ideas for captions and sounds:

comic captions assignment

The idea for this assignment was to take the image above, and add captions that would turn it into a story. I chose to make the story more akin to a setup for further story than a complete narrative. I basically used the first page to set up a state of normalcy, to match the images there. The second page is more of set up for action to take place on another page. I left it open ended, for now, but even added page numbers to make it seem as if there is more to come. My perfered ending is that the man swims across the lake to help the boy and save him from the dog, what's yours?

Calvin and Hobes

This assignment was about finding a Calvin and Hobbes comic with no words that I liked, posting it, and explaining why I like it. So the first thing I;m going to do is post some excellent fan art instead of the actual comic... To be fair, this picture sums up quite allot of the comic in one image. To do represent all that the comic series is and all the ideas it gets to would probably be impossible in one image though.















I LOVE Calvin and Hobbes, and have read most of their strips after discovering them in middle school. I still love the tone and presentation of the comics to this day. I chose this picture because it shows allot of what was going through Calvin's head when he was off in his own world of fun. I may have spent more time there than he did when I was in that age range. I also was a dinosaur freak too. Digging up some of the old comics not only reminds me of the time I spent reading them long ago, but the period when I had more time to just sit and stare into space, thinking about this and that, or having imaginary adventures with all my toys. Though I never had a stuffed tiger like Hobbes. In retrospect, that would have been awesome too.

Module 1 part 2: How to Make a d&d character

I decided to do my "How To" page on something almost all pencil and paper tabletop games have done dozens of times. Unfortunately, for those who aren't combat vets of dungeon sieges, this is slightly less intuitive. This hypothesis was only confirmed when I showed gamers the drawing, and they instantly understood it, and everyone else was trying to figure out what was going on. I used comic boxes and scale to try to impress what my personal ideas about gaming entail.

The first box, top left, has 3 people thinking about what to do with their epic heroes. The stick figures are generic representations of stereotypical adventurers. One has a sword, one has magic, and the other a bow. The stage looking multi sectioned thing is a "dungeon master screen," A staple of many games. I didn't give the players faces for 2 reasons. The first, and more symbolic reason is that of deciding on one's identity for the game. The second is that I can't really draw faces well. This will probably occur in many future works I submit, so get used to it.

The next panel is the step that everyone love or hates, depending on the person, and the game- doing the math. I tried to make it look as if the person was rolling the dice you see on the table, and I kind of succeed. This step is crucial for most games, if time consuming, but one or two hours of creating a character can translate into weeks and months of actual play time. The "final panel" is that of a player submitting his character to a GM, or game master, for final approval. You may noticed the cross fingers of said player, hoping to be approved, and to get onto the game.

The rest of the page is done in landscape. The assignment specified comic format, but I decided to take advantage of that in a different way. The panels at the top are the real world, in which all the set up happens, and in which the players are bound to that reality. The landscape, and battle scene have no borders, in my attempt to represent the unbounded possibilities of the world the game has created. This is technically against the assignment, but I figured I'd go for it and see what happens. I also attempted to put in a background that would imply a large world, full over verity, and wonder, not just the foreground of the completed characters, fighting goblins on the road. The end message I attempted to give off is related to the power and fun of imagination and gaming, when you can step into that new reality.

module 1 part 1

For this assignment, I decided to plot a progression of video game graphics through time. I should mention that pencil scans don;t quite translate perfectly to j pegs, especially the way I tend to draw them. Excuses aside, I looked up some of the classic game art of the industry, and tried to replicate some. The first Image is of the first game created with a graphics component, called space wars. I should not that this is not the original art work, but closer to a more modern version that I have played many times. Still, space wars was one of the first great arcade 8-bit games.

If you don't recognize the 8-bit Mario, I really have nothing to say to you. This is actually the second major incarnation of Mario, not counting jump man, and was around in the 80's. It's not until I tried to draw Mario out in his pixilated form that I realize just how strangely proportioned he was back then. His facial hair takes up more space than his arm! Next up, I decided to skip a few generations and go to a 16 bit sonic. This was late 80's early 90's tech, though sonic stayed relatively unchanged until he hit 3D with everyone else. I ended up drawing him out, and then making his curved edges squared off, as that's how he looks up close. The last image is supposed to be a 3D version of Kirby. I wanted to put a 3D drawing in for the last one, and I didn't start with Kirby. I tried link, and Donkey Kong, but I couldn't really get either one. it just didn't feel right, so I went with our pink puffy friend. I also tried to frame the whole thing on a computer screen, so that it would be more apparent it was all computer generated art.

If your unfamiliar with the mentioned characters, here is a helpful image I used for a few drawing ideas

http://www.infendo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/img1.jpg

In no paricular order....

Right, so this is the 3rd part of the 1st module. It also happens to be the first part that is ready to go online right now, so without further ado:
My chosen image.













and my before image.



Looking at the rest of the posts that were up, most students seemed to have modified images in the same style for the woodcuts to make their images, so i attempted to do the same, though it's not exactly perfect. My before image is supposed to be a man taking a message out of a bottle he found. This explains what the same man is re-searching/translating in the next image. I couldn't find a good image of a scroll or cork in the same style, so you may notice I actually used a feather in the bottle instead. I figure this leaves some mystery as to what is in the bottle, an dhow he found it. Was it some coded message? Plans? A scholar's comments on a piece of art? Who knows.

About those assignments...

Recently, a few Graphic Storytelling assignments were due, and were supposed to be posted to this blog page. Some readers may be noticing the absence of said assignments. Unfortunately, I haven't posted them for a few reasons. First off, Ive been rather sick, and lost allot of time, and I;m scrambling to make up work in most of my classes as a result. Next, because though I brought a nice, shiny combo printer/copier/scanner to RPI this year, I seem to have misplaced a power cord for the device. All the assignments are pretty much done, I just have to figure out where to go to scan them in. This will most likely be done tomorrow, as I still have a bundle of other work to finish today, and I;m stuck in my room making sure I don't fall behind any more. In the mean time, here is something rather awesome.

So this is a blog

This is a blog that I've more or less been assigned to create for my Graphic Storytelling. I haven’t really been in the blogging community at all, but I figure this will probably be more fun than anything else. Little bit of background:

I'm a Games Simulations Arts and Sciences (GSAS) major at good old RPI. My area of expertise is Game Mastering, as well as playing, for a bunch of different pen and paper systems here, including (yes) D&d, as well as GURPS, Exalted, and soon, Sufficiently Advanced. I also am a big fan of Manga and anime, as well as comics and cartoons from the western world, as well as web comics. There’s allot more, but that will probably show up as relevant.

My real name isn't Wash, but it might as well be around here. I look like Alan Tyudic in his roll form the Firefly television series named Wash, and it stuck (watch Firefly, by the way). Now, back to class.......