You there, Stalker, come over here.

Okay, couple of quick notes:

I'm playing too much S.T.A.L.K.E.R. right now.

We may or may not be working on a Thanksgiving Special, that may or may not intertwine both Opti-Pessi and BLU.

There will most likely be a delay with Opti-Pessi Season Two as I am moving this weekend, which along with the previously mentioned causes more delays.

It's A Special, It Doesn't Have To Fit The Main Line

I am doing some maintenance on our stored images, some images in old posts may no longer work. At least until I bother to fix them.

We are planning an early release special for Thanksgiving, or maybe we aren't... The suspense thickens...

Have a taste:

Never tell your password to anyone.
McNaire: Cool, that worked for once
KoreRat (uc): Whoa, this is a first.
Garin: Sweet
KoreRat (uc): Are we going to use this for constructive things? Or just being ourselves?
McNaire: Hmm...
McNaire: HMM....
Garin: why does it have to one or the other?
McNaire: I give up
McNaire: What's the answer?
Garin explodes form the wrath of god
KoreRat (uc): Purple.
Garin: i shouldn't have said
Garin: yellow
McNaire: M'kay. I just thought, since Garin was asking me about Korerat replying we could save some time (And my fingers)
Garin: cool,
KoreRat (uc): Let me get my "thinking music" going...
KoreRat (uc): There, Sabbath.
Garin: anyway all I have for an idea so far is some king of character gathering,some video game reference, and a violent thanksgiving reference
McNaire is listening to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along. "I know you guys thought this was lame, but this music is catchy.:P"
Garin listens to TSO
KoreRat (uc): What's more catchy than, "I'm going off the rails on a crazy train!" ??
McNaire: Actually a lot of Japanese stuff, but that gets stuck in your head
KoreRat (uc): But on point, I think it would be cool to do a Turkey day bit.
Garin: likse that one HORRIBLE flash song....
McNaire: Don't go there Garin
McNaire: Anyhow
KoreRat (uc): hehe
McNaire: We can, but what's the theme?
KoreRat (uc): Opti's first Antlion Day?
McNaire: let's catalog T-day themes. "Football, Turkey, eating alot..."
McNaire: Why would Opti go for antlions?
Garin: no other food
KoreRat (uc): Better yet, Opti just realizes that its a real holiday.
KoreRat (uc): And tries to seek out its history.
KoreRat (uc): But we make changes, like the antlions and turkeys.
McNaire: Nah, I'd rather have him looking for the fabled Plymouth Rock
KoreRat (uc): first settlers into Combine and Indians into refugees.
McNaire: So we get great shots of him holding a rock and talking to it
KoreRat (uc): Adopting a pet antlion, and Pessi wanting to eat it?
Garin disconnected.
KoreRat (uc): He thinks Antlion day is in support of Antlions, so he finds one, then Pessi makes it for dinner.
McNaire: Can we make the antlion smaller and cute?
McNaire: brb
KoreRat (uc): I might be able to deflate them, or see if there is something on gmod.org
KoreRat (uc): kk
KoreRat (uc): Oooh. L4D models, we could do a special with them celebrating thanksgiving in the zombie apocalypse..

Ess Tee Ay Ell Kay Ee Arr

Spent a good portion of the evening working on getting the Credits page updated. I think I have everything on there now. Even added a few things to pop in with Opti-Pessi: Season Two.

McNaire and I did some shooting tonight also, then he managed to spend two hours messing up and fixing GMod. I don't think he fixed it yet, just gave up due to fatigue. A few jolly good laughs.

Still planning on posting those last few BLU's. But there is a lot going on in both the McNaireHood and the KoreRatHood. So, may be a little longer.

One of the reasons might have something to due with the fact I bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl the other day, and have already logged a good ten hours in it. Sadley, I don't think I've done much of anything yet...

Anatomy of a Comic is completed. Part five was written in about two minutes, and when I re-read it a few hours later I didn't feel like it came across how I ment it too. So I re-wrote it, so give it a second look. And if you missed it read the whole thing.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Five

In the final installment of Anatomy of a Comic I will go over posting.

Really, do I have to tell you how to post a comic on the Internet? Because I'm assuming that you would already know how. Therefore this final instalment of Anatomy of a Comic is kinda pointless.

You want people to see you newly created GMod comic, right? You got a few options; First you can email it to all your friends. Have no friends? Well in that case you can store it on one of the many image sharing sites(photobucket, imageshack, etc) and post it in a forum of your choosing. Don't feel like getting banned from the forums for stupid reasons? Well then you'll just have to make your own site to release your comic. There are hundreds of options out there for free hosting, and plenty more if you want to buy some web space. I personally recommend Blogger, but McNaire pesters me into going with Word press.

Of course, if you set up your own site you might need to do some PR work to help people find it. But watch out, some places(like the Steam Fourms) will ban you for 'advertising'.

You still want more? Well I'm not gonna site here and teach you how to set up the site, write the HTML, or come up with a eye-pleasing layout. I'm afraid you're on you own with that...

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Four

Continuing my overview of creating a GMod comic, I will now discuss the editing process.

The process of editing your collection of shots into a cohesive sequence that matches along with your script is actually quite daunting. Or so I assume, as I don't do the editing I'm not really sure. I went and hired a guy to do it for me, but I asked him and this is what he said.

McNaire:

Well to start with, if this was a one person project the whole thing would be alot easier. It's always tricky having two or more people see what the other is thinking, so sometimes I've had to really mess with the shots given to me to make them work. But first and foremost, if you're doing a comic with someone, and you want them to edit, this is a NO-NO:

When you have anywhere from 3-6 shot choices for each frame, this is a nightmare to work with. I often jump back and forth and even return to select a new shot later and it's nigh impossible to do that without frustration. Thankfully I've broken Korerat of the habit and now he gives me this:

Which is much better.

To start editing, I first and foremost recommend getting decent editing software and no, MSPaint is not that. Just get something with Layers. I personally use Photoshop 5.5, years out of date I suppose, but good enough for what I do. In my little bit, I'm not going to really tell you how do things, it's not something short and there's plenty of tutorials about using PS and the like. Rather, to keep Korerat happy, I'm going to share my method and steps I use.

1)
I have a starter file with the comic header and footer already there. Also contained in the .psd are all the basic fonts and colors required for the comic (Font bubble colors and the like). This is basic for Opti-Pessi, a little more complicated for BLU:




2)
After reading the script I pull up the various shots to see what they look like and make sure they will work. Often Korerat likes a certain angle or shot, but once text would be added, the shot doesn't work. The bubble would hide pretty much everything interesting. This is also a danger if you like shooting first, then finishing the script later. As another side note: If you must have a certain angle, then I suggest getting three shots, one close, one a bit back and one rather far away, that way you choose the best one to fit the text.

3)
Start placing the shots. If it's like Opti-Pessi, where the last comics had no frames, then you have to take extra time to figure out what size you want each frame and how big. This is something that is also good to figure out before shooting the shots. A close up with two people is pointless if the frame has to be tall and narrow.
I always drop the whole shot into the comic then resize it to the size I need. This has two benefits. 1: You can make it just the size you need. 2: It make the shots look better. Because we use GMod, many of the shots look a tad...jagged. It's because everything is made of polys and antialising doesn't always look as good when a single frame. When shrinking it to the size I need, PS does its own antialising, smoothing out the picture so things blend better.

4)
After the frames are done, the next thing should ALWAYS be the text. It's tempting to do the PS work and adding effects, but once again, if the text bubble forces you to hide it, it's wasted time. I have found a really easy way to do good looking bubbles, and I might share that sometime.

5)
Clean-up and effects. I will not go into detail here, but you might be surprised at what was missing or in the original shots that I added/removed. This is one area where you often might go fishing for another shot to make editing easier.

6)
Send the comic to the first guy to get his approval. This often takes a few times as he catches all the little things you missed. He usually will be all high and mighty about it, disregarding the massive amount of time you have spent squinting at the screen to get what HE wants, but doesn't know how to do.

See, the concept is not that hard at all. It just take massive amounts of massive amounts of Time. especially for someone like me, who is a perfectionist. And someone like Korerat, who has a degree in innocently managing to be a pain. :)

Stay tuned later this week for part five.

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Three

In this portion of my overview of creating a GMod comic, I will be discussing the posing practises I use to create my shots.

Before you load up GMod, it might be helpful to print out a copy of your script for quick reference, unless you got a fancy dual monitor setup. Lucky...

Now we load up Garry's Mod, and pick our map. To be honest I'm not going to go into major detail here, as posing is really easy to start. Trial after trial, with plenty of errors, and a few game crashes, will teach you how you want to go about it. Really I'm just going to offer some tips.

First we start with out 'stage':

Then we go through the rigorous process of adding our props to make it fit our script:

Sometimes you might want to add some background elements, even though it may not appear in your planned shots. Even if only a piece of it falls into frame it will add a sense of realism.









Next we add the ragdolls, or actors, remember to be careful and NoCollide when necessary:

Another good tip is to add temporary lighting. Place a lamp or two shining at your ragdoll to help see better.

And finally we take our shots. Panel one, the desk view.

And panel two, the door.









When doing a pose like poking out from a door, or around a corner, don't worry about the whole body like you would other poses. Unless you plan to have a behind shot, then it might be best to get the limbs looking right.









And there you have it. The best thing to remember is avoid the badly posed flailed limbs look, and the even worse face poses, extreme grins and such. If you spend the extra time on the the face and expression, the limbs and realistic looking poses, and added little touches to the background and just out of view areas, it will upgrade the quality of your comic immensely.

Stay tuned for part four early next week.

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Two

Continuing my overview of creating a GMod Comic, I will go over the steps to writing out an episode.

There are a few ways to go about this. But first, you might want to finalize you comic layout and panel counts. For these examples I will be using the Opti-Pessi eight panel layout.


The first is to simply sit at your computer(or grab a pen and paper), and write it. This example will be from the first four panels of the first episode of Opti-Pessi.

1) *wide shot of train station*
2) *opti and pessi sitting at table*
Opti- Can you believe it Pessi, we're back...
Pessi- *mumble*
Opti- And what a wonderful place too...
3) Pessi- Alright look! It's bad enough of I have to see that stupid grin of yours...
4) Pessi- If you're going to be following me around for the rest of my life...

The second method is to use a template, I like this method best. I tend to use these while at work. I made up a little sheet in Excel, made some copies(with the copier at work to save on my ink and paper), and while bored at work I brain storm. Below is an example of this method, while brainstorming I use quick sentences with basic information. The holes are filled in my head and everything is fleshed out when typed onto the computer.



The next method for writing is very similar to the above method, only different. In this form, you draw the comic. Below you can see the creation of Episode 13. This method only really works in cases of heavy action or specific angles desired. And is very helpful for pre-posing ideas.



The fourth writing method is to not write at all. I have done this a few times. It's a case of you load up GMod, you pick a map, you spawn your characters, you pose. As you go about this you think of what you what to happen, so you know how to pose. Sometimes you give yourself extra panels to play with, allowing for any idea changes in the script that you write during the editing process.

Those are the four methods I use to write both Opti-Pessi and BLU. There are other ways to formulate your ideas into a comic. And with time you will discover what works best for you.

Stay tuned for more later this week.

Anatomy of a Comic - Part One

Back in June I got a message from a YouTube user about the thought process and structure of production that goes into the creation of a single comic.

Hey, I recently discovered your G-Mod comic, and was wondering if you could give me a rough idea of how you go about one "episode"? I know it may be a lot to ask, but I'm an avid fan of Garry's Mod and would like to do something more with it than silly poses or the occasional submission to the Garry's Mod challenges! If you'd like me to be more specific when I say "a rough idea", just let me know.
Thanks very much, Steven

So, after four months I finally have the time, and actually remembered, to answer his question.


The first thing needed is you main character, or characters. The number is entirely up to you. The less you have the easier it can be writing dialog, while more can add to the feel. For Opti-Pessi I chose two, for BLU, three. One of the most popular GMod comics, Concerned, used a single character. You're best bet is to start with many, and as you write weed them out and/or combine them into fewer as you need.

Once you have established your characters, you work on your Synopis. You really don't need major specifics. For example, the Synopis of Opti-Pessi is, two brothers, one is an idiot the other arrogant and easily annoyed.

With your Synopis set you can now move onto a storyline. Here is where you work on the who, what, where, when, and how. Again, you can keep from the very specific. Say your character goes to the bank, instead of saying your character goes to the bank and speaks to the teller to get money out. Small details you can keep out.

You do, early on want to take time to decide on the rough layout of your comic. Is it going to be a simple one or three panel, common to newspapers. Is it going to be more akin to a full page comic six to ten panels. Or is it going to be completely random, and the panel count change from issue to issue. Again just a rough idea of this will be plenty, this early in creation.

With all the information you have compiled it is time to start writing! All of the above I pretty much keep in my head, occasionally revealing bits to McNaire when I remember to.

Stay tuned for part two, later this week.

Success is so sweet...

Super Sneaky McNaire Secrets

Here is some TOP SECRET footage of McNaire's new prototype Piegeon launcher.

mat_picmip

Saw a post over at the Ubercharged.net forums that mentioned a way to get the 'Ultra High' graphics. I looked into it it myself, and as you can see from the above image, it does work. I set it as high as -10, but didn't see any difference than -3. There is a lot of noticable slowdown along with it, but then my system could still use a few upgrades. Oh, and this will work(as far as I know) for any of the Source games, at least Orange Box and up.

BLU Fridays

BLU begins it's run tomorrow. It's a strictly TF2 comic that follows three members of the BLU team. If you saw the announcement six weeks back you already have an idea as to what it is. If not, read on.

BLU will be the next challenge set forth by myself to create a humorous and remotely successful webcomic. The challenge I have given myself with this project is to create a new comic weekly without a continuous storyline or arc of any kind. In concept this seemed an easy idea, in practice it has proven more difficult than originally believed.

This is also a far more involved attempt to pose with the models and props from TF2. While most things are handled the same as the HL2 props, some are more difficult and have extra joints. As seen in the sneak-peek release of the Heavy update issue I still have some tweaking to do both in my ability to pose and write.

With practice, hard work, and a lot of luck, look for BLU tomorrow and every Friday until I rack my brain dry. Then after that, when I run though all the cliches and over-played jokes.

Enjoy.

Vermin

Here's a new on for me...


What the hell is up with this bug?

The Side of Sniping You Never See...

Pigeons; High Spaces; Snipers; Come on, tell me this never has crossed your mind before...

The End of the Pigeons

This is why I should NOT have days off from work...



This is my Pigeon Launcher MkI. Ever since pigeons first showed up in Opti-Pessi, there's been a kinda inside joke about them. Any multiperson gmod server including Korerat and I are usually swimming with them before too long. So this the method of my dreams for disposing of them when the poop gets too thick. Here's a shot of it working:



And because it's a wee bit hard to see the pigeon that way:



I can out insanity Korerat any day of the week. :)

Viva La Vort - V2 Finale?

Viva La Vort

I think I listen to this song evryday, and the other night while driving home from work this idea popped into my head. This is just a sample, or test run and in no way near the finale version of what I hope this becomes.

The song is Coldplay - Viva La Vida, from the album of the same name.

Filmed in Garry's Mod for Half-Life 2.

McNaire + GMod = New Underwear

Bout time McNaire started to release some quality GMod/Opti-Pessi work...

Comic Short with a Side of Writers Block

Here is a short I made up randomly. McNaire had posed the Heavy, and after he left the server I dup's him and did the rest.




This is also a random pose I made, but I have no clue as to what the caption should be.

Old School Gold Rush?

I was looking around in my files and found that I had made a copy of the pl_goldrush.bsp map and stuck it in my GMod/maps folder. This was done before the changes to Gold Rush, thus making it a release version(before they removed the door). I added a '_v1' to the file name zipped it up and stuck it on File Planet. Feel free to grab it if you miss the old version. Link below.


pl_goldrush_v1.bsp

It's also over at fpsbanana.com too.