Creative Limits

I cannot hope to ever create anything as beautiful, hilarious, or long lasting as Achewood.

Simple, complicated and built firmly upon itself, the comic uses character development to humorously point out flaws in modern society. Here's a recent strip:
Read that, then read this and then this. Now you have an idea, kindof. I have to admit I haven't read all of it, theres so much to go back and consume. I am told that the series is 100x better if read from the beginning, as the humor is reoccurring. What can we learn from achewood? Persistence matters. Start with an idea, carry it out well, rewards will come.

Ah how fear of failure strangles the mind...

Dino Comix

DINOSAUR COMICS is a deconstructionist, post-modern web comic written by Ryan North. Why po-mo? Basically because they use the same images over and over again to tell a different story every time. The only variable is the text! The humor is pretty tame, and uses a pretty common statement--> comment --> statement --> counter-argument --> statement -->punchline formula.Go here if that's too small to read. Anyway the three main characters play off of t-rex's absurd realizations. Whats amazing is the amount of content that North has been able to generate; his creativity works within these set boundaries and doesn;t seem to miss a beat. If this much story, meaning and mildly entertaining humor can be translated in simple reiterations of the same media......then there must not be any limitation to the number of stories, interpretations, and truths that can be communicated through literary works (simple comics and novels alike). What I'm saying is that Dinosaur Comics inspires me: there is no limit.
I don't think I will use any of the methods from this one in my work, the meta-comic thing is cool, but can only communicate in short snippets. I want to write an epic.

Age Of Conan

So our web comic story thing is going to function as a video-game script. There, I said it. It is important to set parameters within which the story can be refined. To continue my research in the field, my obsession will become Funcom's new massively multiplayer online role-playing game Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

The game features pretty impressive graphics (closer and closer to reality every day), an interesting combat system and enough storyline to play around with for years to come as the game is based on Robert E. Howard's fantasy novels from the 1930's. Also interesting will be the cultural undertones featured in the game, as Funcom's team is based in Norway (their PR guys are terrible to listen to, god thing they have these guys:)

I am most curious about two aspects of the game:

First, combat has been changed from the traditional runescape-esque click and hit format to a more dynamic blocking/counter-attack system coupled with first-person views for ranged classes. If you don't know what this means, basically the extent to which you are able to interact with combat scenarios has been improved significantly. Or has it? We'll see. (what does this have to do with a web comic?! very little directly, except that the same plot devices and uses of digital media will apply, as I believe many digital media genres will merge in new and beautiful ways in the future).

Second, the game is very, very adult. Rated M, it features nudity, gore and depravity in concentrations never before seen in a massivley multiplayer game. Their world is dark, dseased and sexy. Perhaps they are making the world more "real" by allowing vice. Will this attract a lot more players (adult males being the target) as they see their friends slaughtering topless amazons in dynamic combat? Yes. Is that a good thing? Hmmmm...

I will play the game (as a ranger), but Dragonlord is still out of commission. More about this alternate world soon.

Computer Games

I am going to play Age of Conan, and I am going to take notes. One of my essay topics this finals period is to figure out how mature content adds to AOC's immersive qualities (cleavage+fatalitites = profit). Dragonlord, my computer, is still less than functional. I built him so that I could play vanguard, the beautifully failed World of Warcraft competitor, and now I am ready for the next game...

As this blog is about the creation of a graphic novel / video game sotryline ,I guess I should explain my history as a gamer:

City of Heroes:

It started with the terrible family pc and a little java-powered game known as Runescape. I joined the game when there were three servers, brought my friends in and we summarily killed people. The game had a magnificent quality about it: the "wildy", an area filled with treasure, rare creatures and people to kill. The catch: Everyone was allowed to kill everyone. The screwing around that the wildy facilitated has defined my idea of enjoyable gaming. Remind me to talk about the "wildy" some more, as the same system should be used in our project.

Then there was Acheron's Call for a bit, CS, Halo pc, battlefield 2, BF 2142... but non matched COH:

City of Heroes is an MMO in which you and a group of ventrillo-enabled friends become superheroes and beat on villany. The game featured amazing costume creation, no itemization (focus on gameplay) and the coolest travel powers I have ever used. (You can fly, 2nd life is a cheap immitation).

Anyway the point is that I lost myself. I was lifeguarding and playing this game, all day, every day. My social life remained stable; my best friends played with me... AS SUPERHEROES. This is what people fail to understand: MMORPG's, played with people you know from reality (or not, takes longer to make friends) are almost as viable a social interaction as reality-based conversation. Sure body language isn't there, but (generalization) males tend to function better in group-based activities. Like saving the world. World of Warcraft soon followed, I played a Tauren Warrior and had a blast executing gnomes.

My year spent without a computer was good for me. I hung out a lot, I enjoyed the MMO that is reality. Life has been enjoyable. Yet I crave the drug that is immersion. I miss exploration on a scale that this world can't quite provide. More than anything, I miss the team.

So is Dragonlord holding me back from playing Age of Conan? Can I afford to live two lives again? What will happen if I gain free access to my drug of choice?:

No, Yes, and I will make full use of the little time I have to enjoy myself.

Dragonlord

This post is written for me, forgive the lack of pizazz.
When I was very small, all I wanted was a Nintendo 64. My parents bought a family computer instead, with which I dominated Dark Forces 2, Red Alert, Tribes 2, Sim Copter and a variety of other semi-classics. But then games started requiring faster graphics and sturdier memory. Tie Fighter lagged. All I wanted was to seamlessly merge with the media I was consuming. Lag was my reality, but Dragonlord was my dream.

Dragonlord is my computer, I named him six years before he was built. He was assembled from pieces while I was in Europe and the manufacturer sent his monitor to the States. Six months of staring at my glowing, GTS 8800 powered, water-cooled fantasy followed. The monitor was eventually shipped over, and seized by customs. Another couple months. I went home for the summer, left him, decided to stay in the states and only collected him this may. (I still have yet to play a game on this damn computer).

The story is actually pretty good if you're still with me. FedEx dropkicked my glorious machine, stripping every screw in the case and allowing everything to bounce around on its way across the Atlantic. I opened the package and despaired. Then I went to work.

All the pieces were structurally sound, the coolant hadn't leaked, all was well. I assembled it, he eventually turned on.... but no video output. Took another computer, swapped graphics cards, swapped power supplies, ended up swapping motherboards to find out that not only were both sticks of RAM toast, the motherboard was as well.

And now I sit here, Dragonlord complete with parts amputated from a lesser machine, and it appears that I have forgotten the administrative password.
I don't know the password. I have been struggling for 2 days to bring Dlord back to speed and now only a password holds me back. All I want to do is play AGE OF CONAN, all I have ever wanted to do was immerse myself in an alternate reality for awhile (after finals), but somehow I remain happily tethered to this reality.

I'll get the keys and open him up, it's just the ironic reality of reality that gets me sometimes.

Avatar

This is just another online Avatar, I am signing up for the "Truth and Beauty Bombs" forums, going to try to familiarize myself with webcomic culture, get some info... they're funny, I want friends.

Anyway the site makes you link your avatar picture, and I'm too lazy to use photobucket, so "TADA!" that Turian Council member from Mass Effect, the greatest game of all time ! (?).




This is how I would look if we were all plugged into the matrix and we could choose our physical self-representations. Yeah I know you don't care, but this could be important when we start talking about futurism; how will we represent ourselves when physicality no longer matters?

You have my answer.

Flavor

Every well thought out sequential artwork uses language, graphic representation and space to communicate a certain "flavor" to its readers. To find my own flavor before I start writing, I thought I'd taste a bit of everything. www.xkcd.com is a webcomic about "romance, sarcasm, math and language" written by Randall Munroe:



His ideas concerning romance, mathematics and self-observation blend together into a distinct flavor as Munroe becomes more confident in his ideas. I'm impressed by the power behind this comic considering the lack of artistic talent expressed:


Munroe's recepie? He appears to take his daily thoughts (girls, math, truth of reality) and simply communicate them at will. The themes are random, but the delivery and central message hold constant. The images become less detailed, with the latest, most flavored comics limited to 2 demensional stick figures.
One reason why we are able to process and appreciate these absurd statements is because the characters are easy to associate with. As Scott McCloud explains in his work, "Understanding Comics":

Universality vs realism, where do I want to place my work? Do I want to use stick figures? No, but I would like my characters to be universal. I'm thinking my heroes could have their facial features hidden behind some sort of mask or visor as heroes often do(ex: master chief, samus, iron man). Attention to detail and can be limiting when the ideas being communicated are what's important.

I also appreciate Munroe's perspective on things in general; the guy worked at NASA and knows his sorting algorithms. Interestingly, it seems that this level of mathematical know-how (shared by one of my main characters) does not hinder real expressions of love or meaning but makes emotional communication clearer, less verbose.

Speaking of which, this post was too long and didn't make much of a point. It's too wordy, but it's a start.

Also, I will be referring to my comic/creative piece as "2045" until I tell you about it / come up with a name. It'll come together, I promise.
-Cos