Archive for ‘2. Drunken Discussions’
11 items.
I absolutely love sub-plots in a game. They aren’t directly related to the main plot (which I actually have one, surprise, surprise), but sometimes you can get extras out of it, like better equipment, more experience, or even opening up new doors. So, the idea that a player asks for a sub-plot, or is offered one, is one of those appealing things to me. Some of my favorite games, Torg for example, players can request a sub-plot that seems interesting. In my Exalted games, I do the same thing: offer the players interesting distraction. Sometimes they take them, sometimes they don’t.
This is the end of the second arc. I seem to have done the gray-scale thing again, maybe that would be a good indicator of the end of the arcs. Of course, then I’d have to change it since this one uses more than one shade of gray! I’m going to try a couple new artist things with the next one, mainly because I want to see if the format I’m trying to do for a computer game would also work for this comic. It is a, um, flat style of artwork instead of the pseudo-perspective I’m using now that is a royal pain in the ass to do. It looks nice, but I wonder if a full-on 2D would look more fitting with the style.
Comment
A little bit of cosmetic changes to the trip. I forgot to update the legal section and the title to Webletter Pro BB. The font, despite having nearly the same name as Webletter BB, which is a free font from Blambot, has a much different kerning. Because of that, I can get a bit more on a line while still being readable. So, I condensed the legal statement down to two lines and the title down to one. Oh, if you are curious, the “All Rights Reserved” is part of White Wolf’s legal statement not mine. If I had my druthers, I’d be using Creative Commons.
I struggled with the results of Death of Obsidian Butterflies since it is unreasonable to expect my computer to render millions of tiny obsidian butterflies. So, I went with the cheat of a “pile of black” and some butterflies on the top. Originally, I had the remains of the Fire Dragon-Blooded in the pile, but you can’t see it. Obsessive attention to detail? Maybe.
The rest of the monologue by Winds Come Darkly and introduces Saber’s iconic anima banner. For those who don’t play Exalted, when a Solar uses a large amount of energy (magic, Essence, motes), they light up in a glow. At a certain point, they have a huge iconic display which kind of gives their personality or Exalted nature away.
Death of Obsidian Butterflies is a spell in Exalted that affects a 30 yard by 100 yard area with a ton of sharp, killing butterflies made of obsidian. It is room-clearing spell, but takes a bit to get off, hence Saber telling Glorious to guard. The little speech isn’t canon, but a nod toward the Dragon Slave from Slayers.
The sorcery font was Blambot’s and, not that you probably notice, it is rotating from frame to frame. 
A two-parter told from the point of view of Winds Come Darkly. I had to add a bit of detail to Glorious’ iconic banner so it looked like a cat licking itself. Yeah, it is. Don’t worry, next week will show Saber’s iconic anima banner. It… isn’t much better. I’m pretty happy how the glows turned out for Glorious and Saber, but not sure about the fire dragon-blooded (that’s the red guy).
Glorious has no concept of Limit Break. He does have his Kittah Breaks which are basically the same thing, except he encourages them instead of dreading them. It didn’t come out as well, but the little black bar over Glorious says “CENSORED”. You can imagine what’s underneath.
I added this strip to help explain the previously one. Apparently, I’m having a bit of trouble telling a clear story and explaining my plots. Or at least the reasons for the names. Most of the questions I had were “there is Glorious Saber” and the woman is also named “Saber?” when they only called each other “Glorious” and “Saber” since the beginning. Bah, one silly joke ruined by unclear descriptions.
And I assure the reader, this is probably the last explanation strip. The next one is actually filled with plot-like goodness, or at least I hope it is. And the beginning of the plot starts with three words: “I gotta pee.”
Fourteen strips to finally explain the name of the comic. Some of the people commenting on it kept calling Glorious by his full name, Glorious Saber, but apparently also called Saber “that girl” which means I was less than clear on the names. This means that I wasn’t as clear as I could be when it came to naming people. I thought I was being clear, but I missed things.
This is a talkie, which I’m trying to cut down on. But, this starts to show the relationship between Glorious and Saber. There are a lot of reasons they travel together and their shared name is actually one of them.
Apparently, Glorious is a lot more observant that I originally planned, but a little comment on The Freedom Stone forum about his idiocy adding to Awareness just sealed the deal. Plus, it cuts off a couple episodes of them dancing around their secrets and moves the story forward nicely. Plus, I thought it was funny. Therefore, Glorious acquires a new and interesting personality quirk.
And I got rid of the mouths. They really didn’t add anything for me and they seemed to get in the way. Maybe I’ll try again later.
Got this out a bit later than I wanted to, but it is out and that’s what is important. It seems like most of my jokes, I had this one planned for weeks, seem to be centered around bad storytelling. But, I’m getting a lot more comfortable with creating the graphics and they are actually growing on me.
Originally, I did the ninja for GenCon 2007, but no one got that far in the plot, so I stole it for this plot. Actually, the next couple of Solars are going to be from the GenCon miniature sets I made (54 tokens made, 6 used).
Well, adding a couple changes to the artistic style with this one. Mainly switching to a single font for everyone and trying to make it a bit easier to read on everyone. I’m also adding mouths, not sure about it, but you got to start somewhere.
This is also the first time I have extras on the picture. I decided extras can only speak in punctuation and are just grayscale.