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.