Xii Mii? Giimiie a Break….

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July 17th, 2008

Xii Mii? Giimiie a Break….

Okay you guys are gonna have to bear with me on this… I just wrote a two page post here and Firefox crashed when I hit Spellcheck and I lost the whole thing… So yeah that was annoying. Anyway on to the subject of the day. E3 is here and that means news! So for the most part I’ve been paying close attention to the Microsoft announcements cause I own a Xbox 360… and wow… yeah… lots of stuff.

First of all I’m really happy about alot of the titles that are on the way to the system. For the most part they look great. I’m a fan of Zombies, so seeing Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil 5 was a real treat. Also I think that the aquisition of 4 Square Enix titles (3 exclusive) was a great move on the part of Xbox. So for the most part E3 has been kinda nice to watch. You know, if you ignore the whole “Look how rich we are… you give us so much money,” speech. But I suppose that’s forgivable… when the industry does better, we get better games.

But there was one announcement that kinda overshadowed everything else for Xbox fans…. the Dashboard update…. You know in the past, all the dashboard updates have been mostly good news… Added features and content, problems being fixed… stuff like that…. but not this time. This time it was about change, radical change. The new dashboard is…. in a word, uninspired. No more blades, a lack of apparent customization…. a general simplification if you will. And simple is clean… so good right? I guess… except…. theres something else that’s new…. the AVATAR…

But wait! We already have Avatars right? That’s my gamer pic right? The one that I spent money on? The cool little picture that I searched for through piles and piles of content and then forked over good money to download and post next to my gamercard? That Avatar? NO! Not that one…. a new one… a….. familiar one… one with a body… and a oversized head…. I think I’ve seen these before…. THEY’RE CALLED Wii Miis!!! Why are you doing this to me?! Are you gonna give me my money back for the gamerpics that I bought? Do I HAVE to have this little jerk waving at me from the dashboard?! Look there’s a reason that Xbox Live is the most popular online console service… one of the reasons, I’m sure, is that it’s not made for 4 year olds! Why don’t you give us some alphabet blocks to play with! Come on! One of the things that drew me to the Xbox in the first place was it’s more mature feel… It had a no nonsense, kitch free kind of attitude about it… and it’s game library reflects that… so whats the deal? You build up a brand identity and once you’ve got your audience good and invested in it…. you throw them to the curb in favor of what? Stealing Wii fans? You gotta be shitting me…. I don’t care how customizable the little tool is… I don’t want him… If I did…. you know what I would have done? Come on this is easy….. I WOULD HAVE BOUGHT A Wii!!!!! Oh man these things are lame…. Look I know you think since PS3 is doing it and Wii is doing it, that people want it….. but did you ask anyone? Okay…. did you ask anyone except your Grandma? Look if we have to do this thing… can you at least make them, I dunno, less lame? If the little dude could be a monster or a goblin ore something I might be onboard, but as it stands…. No way!

Now all that being said there is a feature being introduced to Xbox Live that I love…. You know how you can talk to other players on live right? And its great until the douchebag with the most foul mouth you’ve ever heard jumps online and starts calling everyone a *insert racial slur here* and you have to either remove your headset or go into a private chat with one of your buddies? Well that was all well and good… as long as you were only playing with 1 friend…. if there was more…. well you’re just SOL…. if the game didn’t have a “mute individual player” feature you either had to stop talking or just deal…. well now Xbox will have the “Party” feature that will create a private chat room for up to 8 people…. That is awesome! I have been waiting for this for a long time! No longer will I have to immerse myself in the putrid reality of rabid annonimity…. finally I can chat on Live, with my group of friends, and still lay a beating down on random opponents… I can’t wait…. and if I have to put up with those stupid Xii Miis to get it…. I will….

Let me know what you think…. Drop me a line at feedback@moltenink.com or just post something in the discussion board… lord knows it needs some love….

RAWB

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 6:24 am and is filed under Comic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

^ 2 Comments...

TalEsen
July 18th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Hey man, great stuff here. I was looking to see more information on you (ie: how you work, Photoshop or Illustrator, what kind of wacom you use, right handed or left handed, things of that ilk) but it seems that your “About Me” might be broken. Well, keep up the good work. It was cool to see you. I will stop back.
Rob Lundy
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:08 am
hey Tal, I’m glad you like the strip and yes… the about me link is broken… or maybe broken isn’t the right word… haven’t gotten around to doing it is probably a better way to put it…. lol… anyway to answer your inquiry….. The entire strip is created start to finish in Photoshop…. even the rough work…. It takes me between 4 and 6 hours to totally complete one of these bad boys… And I do use a Wacom, but it’s actually a 20″ Cintiq Widescreen…. I’m a digital animator by trade and I was able to purchase it through my work via a financing system they set up for the employees… I am right handed, but the cintiq is actually set up for both righties and lefties….
Hope that helps… it’s always great to get comments from readers… Drop by any time…

The Process: Writing

September 22nd, 2011

So week after week I find myself doing something that I never thought I’d spend so much time and effort to improve…. Writing.

Maybe it comes from my art and programming backgrounds, but I am constantly trying to find some kind of formula or exercise that will make the construction of a storyline an easier process. Now that may feel like a kind of clinical and antiseptic way of approaching what is very much an art form. But to be perfectly honest, that’s how I approach my artwork. Now granted, that isn’t how I always thought of art, but in college I learned that a well drawn character begins with a solid construction from basic shapes, so why should writing be any different?

I tend to start my writing sessions by recapping what is happening to the characters, what they might be feeling, thinking, what they want to do… just something to get the writing juices flowing. A little like a warmup sketch.

The next step is for me to write out a series of Plot Points I want to hit. I don’t try to fill up every slot in a month of comics or anything, adding in more points between them to achieve a proper pace for the story can come later. I just throw in anything I can think of that I’d like to have included in the storyline. These Plot Points can be as detailed as fully fleshed out comic scripts or as vague as a single sentence that gives a loose idea of what will eventually become a script.

At this point I look over what I’ve got and I just kinda guess at where I need to add another strip or two between the existing plot points to correct the pacing. This is one part of the process that I don’t fully understand myself. Pacing is just one of those things that I can just tell is off by looking at it. I know it’s not particularly helpful, but it’s true. Sometimes I can just tell that I need to add a strip before a change in location or subject matter, like it needs a transition… I dunno, it’s hard to explain.

This is the point when I’ll often have a hard time coming up with ideas for those filler strips. Luckily I recently discovered a writing trick that helps me come up with some new ideas. It’s a variation of brainstorming I think of it as “the what if game.” I just make a big old list of what ifs that relate to whats currently happening in the strip.

What if the car breaks down on the way to the hospital?
What if Brody discovers he’s allergic to the gel in disposable diapers?
What if Abbey goes into false labor?
What if Max breaks his arm and they all end up in the hospital together?

You get the idea…

So this list will generally generate enough options that SOMETHING in there will spark my imagination that will eventually become a joke. You know it’s been said that ideas are cheap, that the execution of those ideas are what matter. This is true for writing comic strips. I have learned that ANY situation can become a joke, you just need to find the right angle to approach it from. Humor comes from the unexpected. Present a problem or situation and then resolve it in a way your audience wont expect and you illicit a humor response.

The last thing I do when writing a strip is simplify it. Again with the writing as a formula…. This is the point where I take the joke I have and I optimize the script. I try to take the most basic essence of the comic and I try to reduce it down to as few words as possible. Editing down your scripts is important, but there is such a thing as doing it to aggressively. You still need to maintain the tension in the strip. By tension I mean you need to build up the tension in your first two or three panels and then release it on the final panel. That tension can be lost if you edit the script down too far. But that’s what I mean by optimizing…

Anyway, that’s my writing process… Hope you guys find it interesting.

I’d love to hear from you guys regarding your own writing tricks and tendencies.

Rawb

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Where there’s a whip, there’s a way…

May 26th, 2011

Sorry about the lack of updates lately guys… I picked up a neat little contract to work on in my spare time and it has completely dominated my time over the last couple of weeks and will continue to do so for a little while longer. I’m not sure how much I can share about the project at the moment, I’ll have to defer to my collaborators on divulging information on it. But I will say that it is very much the kind of thing you all might be interested in.

I’ll be back with some more information as soon as I can.

Rawb

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