Yes, I know: I wish she was a game character, too. The past few days have been a bit of a blessing because they've let me catch up on my sleep... at the moment I'm putting off studying for my exit exams and am instead working on more constructive things like finally playing Black & White 2 (an insanely buggy but highly enjoyable strategy game), City of Villains (I finally caved and bought the collector's edition for the art book it came with), and playing the heinous Street Supremacy for an upcoming review (I'm pretty certain that Konami should be banned from making any further PSP titles). There might have been a movie or two thrown in there (Mirrormask was pretty bold and imaginative, to be honest), but I also spent a great deal of time pursuing my favorite time-killer: webcomics. Now, as you know, my little blog-comic is something I only am able to pull off in my free time because I'm one of those college students who has a life outside of classes. In fact, I'm probably one of the least impressive students you'll ever meet since I tend to spend more time sleeping through my classes than actually attending them; I'd much rather hang out with my friends, work at one of my five jobs on campus, do freelance photography or graphic design for various Whitman groups, or fulfill my obligations as the managing editor of a certain gaming site. As a result, I don't actually have all that much free time at the moment... when I actually finish with school this semester, I'm hoping real life will allow me to slow down and devote a little more time to my art and give my friend, Doug, and I a chance to get our idea for a real webcomic off the ground. Over the past few years, these comics have become a bit of a hobby for me because
a) many of them are better written than most mainstream comics available for sale
b) several of them feature better art than you'll see in most mainstream comics
c) new issues/strips are often delivered on a much more regular basis than, say, Rob Liefeld was able to do when he actually believed in the concept of deadlines
d) many of them are a lot more mature than the aforementioned comics
e) reading them sure beats the hell out of listening to some stupid lecture about oppressed Japanese factory workers in the 19th century for a stupid exit class. So, what makes for a good webcomic? Well, it usually helps to actually have someone who can draw, but that isn't always necessary. Just look over at Daffyphack's page. Matt here has proved that stick figures can still be hysterical. Hell, your images don't even have to be from something you've drawn, you can just put in speech bubbles over pre-existing ones (but they better be damn good captions), as in the case of the Half-Life 2 comic that's skyrocketing to infamy on the web. What is really the key ingredient for a winning formula is the strength of a comic's writing. It doesn't matter if you're being funny or serious: so long as you manage to write well, you'll manage to secure an audience. It doesn't matter if you're trying to be funny or serious or heartbreaking; the beauty of the internet is that it allows you to actually touch people across the globe with your thoughts and words. As a result, if you can write memorably, you'll most likely find people who appreciate your gift. So, now that I've waxed poetic and given you my opinion about what makes a good webcomic, I'd like to offer you some recommendations for some series you might not have heard of before (I'm assuming you're all aware of the collective brilliance surrounding Penny Arcade and Applegeeks), and, if you're willing, I'd like to hear some of your suggestions for other good stuff to read: Alpha Shade: One of the more serious and ambitious forays into the online comic industry, Alpha Shade is a work in progress that features some truly innovative web design, a great anime/western fusion art, and an epic story about lost ages of mankind featuring dragon-like creatures and talking cats (trust me, they're way cooler than that talking fleabag from Sabrina the Teenaged Witch. Atland: Nate Piekos's brilliant fantasy satire is one of the most sarcastic and funny strips one can hope to find on the net. Imagine Penny Arcade in a Tolkeinesque world and you'll have a good idea about what Atland is like. Nate's currently asking for readers to submit art for his upcoming book, so this week's image is my version of what I would have Juno the Huntress look like had I created her. Fantasy Realms: Remember those amazingly pretty but rather shallow Warlands comics that were published by Image Comics a couple of years ago? Imagine those quality images and instead use characters that are actually more than your lame sword-swingers, and you've got this gem. GU Comics: Woody Hearn takes a slightly more mature attitude to his daily panels by often covering stuff that a lot of the average consumers may not be aware of, such as how LucasArts and SOE are both scrambling to cover their asses after the NGE fiasco to Snoop Dogg's upcoming involvement in the industry to the overall ridiculousness that permeates much of the MMO community. The art is great and the writing is wonderfully sarcastic, not to mention Little Gamers: A disturbingly simple and devastatingly funny comic brought to us from the faraway land of Sweden, Little Gamers uses the always classic idea of combining disgusting cuteness with side-splitting vulgarity in the form of some foul-mouthed Muppets whom are practically impossible to not like.

You wish you looked this good. For a long time, I was convinced that I was going to be a comic book artist. It's my parents' fault, to be perfectly honest; since they taught me how to read from a combination of Hooked on Phonics workbooks and Superman comics, my teachers always were complaining that I was a bright student but would either start to draw or read if I found myself bored with a lesson. When I was 9, I was diagnosed with an essential tremor in my hands which explained why my handwriting was so damn illegible most of the time. One of the ways I was able to overcome this was through excessive practice with drawing: essentially, I can't draw a safe line to save my life, but if I kept on making little ticks on the paper with my pencil I could achieve the design I was going for. When I was in high school, I started looking into comics as a career and became disillusioned with the idea because I realized I could never keep up with the deadlines (while practice made perfect, the precision came at the cost of multiple hours when other artists could knock out similar works in a fraction of the time).

Somehow, I wound up in a multimedia class in high school that introduced me to Adobe Photoshop and all the glories it contained. Suddenly, I didn't need a pencil to make art: I had a mouse, and I could use that just as quickly (if not quicker) as the next guy. Over the years, my talents with the program expanded and I found myself working on everything between photos and graphic design while gradually filling up my sketchbooks on the side.

Something that I've learned to love about Photoshop is that it's made my dream of doing comics (even though they only get completed with an occasional frequency) into something achievable. Now, I realize that I most likely won't ever be able to make a living through this, but I have no doubt that my knowledge of and experience with the program will help set me apart from other job applicants. Since I'm not really feeling all that witty, deep, or gaming-oriented at the moment (though I was halfway tempted to rant for a while about the hateful pettiness of some people), I figured I would give you a quick walkthrough of how I make the art that graces my blog: Step 1:The Sketch This is pretty self-explanatory. I usually end up doodling in one of my myriad sketchbooks (seriously, I've got three or four scattered between my apartment and car, along with an ungodly number of pencils) until it starts to look like something and then I begin the arduous process of actually transforming it into something recognizable. In this case, it was a drawing of a woman that keeps on popping into my head (most recently she appeared in one of those dreams where you discover that you're the savior of the world... or something... the details have grown a little fuzzy... but hence her appearance in armor). Step 2:Importing Into Photoshop and Outlining The first part is pretty easy to do: depending on your setup, it can be done in one of two ways. The first is to scan the image (which in this case, I did at 300 DPI), or you can follow the second approach by simply taking a digital picture (normally not the best way to digitally convert art, but since it's just being used as a rough guide, who cares, right?). The second part is a little trickier and a bit time-consuming: using the Paths tool, I do a basic set of outlines (in this case, a black one for the woman and a dark brown one for her hair). Step 3: Coloring It In This is where my Wacom tablet comes in handy, because I can color my art using the pen pressure system in Photoshop and get some really nice shading effects. I start off with a bigger brush and just broadly cover each area until I have the basic palette laid out and then proceed to trim it down with the Eraser and Path tools until each color fits into its allotted areas. After that, I start painting over each layer with similar colors in order to create a basic shading/highlighting effect and finish off the trick by turning down these layers' opacity levels. Around halfway through the project I decided that I wanted her to have green eyes instead of blue, as you can see in the final image.

Step 4: Finishing Touches Now that I've finished the coloring/cleaning/whatever, I start doing things like adding in a background. In this case, I did a really simple sky design which was nothing more than rendered clouds in Photoshop that I subsequently enlarged and then put through the Poster Edges filer. After this was done, I zoomed in to 100% (the image is actually about 29 in X 41 in) and proceeded to go through the image itself and do general cleaning up (this consists of deleting rogue spots or filling in small holes that aren't visible in smaller views). After that, I add my signature and the Devil's Playthings frame and we're finished! Consider yourself edumicated :)

*whistles that stupid song from Pinnochio*
One of the many hats I wear here at Whitman is that of Theater Photographer. It's actually a pretty sweet gig: approximately once a month I get called over to our nationally ranked theater (seriously, we're apparently The Princeton Review's Darling lately), shoot a bunch of photos, and then burn them to a CD so the director can select which 15 or so shots they want to put on display in the entry hall. The next day, I pick up the CD and a list of desired photos, and then I go and print them up at Wal-Mart's Kodak Photo Center. For all this (approximately 4 hours of work), I get $80 and reimbursal for my expenses. It's a pretty sweet student job, plus I get to kill time at Wal-Mart and make fun of the baggy jeans with dragons embroidered all over them. Normally I'm given about 5 to 7 days of notification for a photo shoot. This time, I was given 2-3 hours notification because the stage manager dropped the ball and forgot to have me contacted (hey, it's her first time, we all screw up...). While I almost couldn't make it, I decided that photography of any kind is more fun than studying for my history oral exams, so I ended up trundling down down to the theater (fortunately, my camera equipment was in my car).

Now, those of you who know me are aware that when it comes to photography, I'm pretty damn good. My uncle, who lived with Ansel Adams in Yosemite for a few years, is the man who trained me and gave me the bug. So, if my cash isn't going towards food, rent, games, or computer equipment, it goes towards my camera (my next investment is either going to be a fisheye lens or a ringlight that works). I'm known around campus for my professional behavior when it comes to taking photos on behalf of the school paper or any other group that hires me, and I've won the school award for photojournalism two years in a row. Yeah, I know, it sounds like I'm bragging; I am, a little. But I'm trying to explain that I'm also someone who doesn't half-ass this stuff. Normally I have backup batteries for these assignments, just in case one craps out. Last night, because I basically didn't have a chance to check my batteries before I went over to the theater, both my batteries died on me and I had to run home and get my charger. Thankfully, I only missed a couple of minutes and managed to charge the batteries up during the play's intermission. Between the two partial charges, I closed out the second half of "Caucasian Chalk Circles" (yeah, I know, it's a bizarre title... it's some strange translation from the play's original German) without incident.

So, boys and girls, here's the lesson of the day: next time you call on me at the last minute to do your dirty work, don't **** at me if I'm not as prepared as I should be. Now, after reading about this, I'm sure you're wondering how the pictures themselves came out. You tell me:

 

At least Jennifer Connelly has the good sense to get out while she still can.

Dear Uwe Boll, Please stop making movies. Seriously.

I'm not saying this because it's the hip thing to do and I want to be a part of the In Crowd; no, I'm saying this because I have actually seen your (I'm using this word in the loosest sense possible) "films" and know for a fact that they are so bad that their distribution might actually be considered war crimes. If you think I'm wrong to say this, you're an idiot. It's that simple. So why exactly do I want to smack you after watching some of your movies? Let's take a look: House of the Dead: When I'm watching a zombie flick and I want the cast to get eaten because that means I'll be able to get out of the theater that much faster, that means it's a bad movie; when I want the nubile young coeds (with breasts so perfect that not even God can claim credit for their construction) to actually get dressed so they can run into the woods and get eaten so I can go home and get drunk to forget about how awful the movie was... well, we have this movie.

There are so many things I would love to yell at you for regarding this flick: the rotten dialogue, the retarded plot, ludicrous action scenes (just when the hell did the scantily-clad rave-goers earn their black belts in Kung Fu?), and the fact that you have created zombies who look more like clowns than members of the undead legions. Oh, yeah, what's with all the stupid video game footage? The game's graphics looked dated when this hit theaters two years ago; now they just look embarrassing. However, this movie has done the unthinkable by ruining hot naked women for me. You should be ashamed of the fact that my friends and I (all men) were shouting for the girls to get dressed. Also, the titular house is far less impressive than that of the arcade series: a better name for this movie would've been The Garden Shed of the Dead. Alone in the Dark: OK, so maybe House of the Dead was a fluke. Maybe you just needed to get one really bad movie out of the way before you could start entertaining us with decent movies based on decent franchises. I mean, it's got Christian Slater and Stephen Dorff, so it can't be all bad... right? Right??? ... ... ... Oh God, I had no idea how wrong I could be. I'm repressing most of this movie from my mind at the moment (though I have to admit that I can't shake the image of Christian Slater looking like a throwback to the 1980s Lone Wolf Hero character), but I just can't get over the fact that you actually tried to make Tara Reid seem like she had an IQ score higher than 20 by making her wear glasses and her hair in a bun. Also, watch the special effects featurette: the poor guys basically sit there and apologize for how **** everything looks by explaining the budget and time constraints you saddled them with. Bloodrayne: How the hell do you keep on recruiting all-star casts? I couldn't care less about Kristiana Locken and Michelle Rodriguez, but you got Udo Kier, Ben Kingsley, and Michael Madsen! Not only that, but the screenplay was by Guinevere Turner, a writer whose good reputation (earned by penning the masterpiece that is American Psycho and the enjoyable The Notorious Bettie Page) you have sullied by putting this piece of offal up on the silver screen, and somehow you still made this into a terrible film. I'm pretty certain no one except yourself cared about the lesbian kiss scene (mainly because it was pointless and stupid, partially because you made Locken look like Carrot Top's hideous love child), nor could we care any less about the incomprehensible plot, and all of us wish you'd shut up about the fact that you used real Romanian hookers for the scene with Meatloaf because they were cheaper than actresses. You should be proud of one thing, though: you are in the same class as George Lucas when it comes to taking first rate actors and getting them to give to give the most wooden performances of their careers. Really, way to go. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale: I... oh, screw this. Sticking my head in an oven is more productive than watching any more of your godawful movies. Anyone who wants to can watch the trailer on your own damn site and see just how worthless it looks. Calling a ravening horde of monsters an "army of ruffians" is almost as comical as the fact that they look like they're a gimpy group of muppets. It's no wonder the only financing you've been able to get is through that now-defunct piece of German tax law which let investors write off any losses in the movie business. One last thing: Worst. Movie. Title. Ever. Now, to be fair, there is a certain enjoyment to be had when watching your movies. Every Friday, we have "Bad Movie Night" at my apartment. This involves a group of my friends and I sitting around the TV and making fun of whatever flick we've picked out for the week. Two weeks ago it was Alien vs. Predator, last week it was Doom, this week it's been House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark. Normally, booze is consumed in order to alleviate some of the sting brought on by watching these movies, but we realized that if we incorporated drinking games with your movies some of us might die of alcohol poisoning. But this admission in no way means that any movie of yours is "good". In your recent ego-drenched interview with Eurogamer, you stated that,

 

"The dangerous thing right now is that a lot of people bash me without thinking about the movies. It's fashionable to hit on Uwe Boll, and this is what I don't get. And I don't get why this comes so harshly from the games press,"

as well as there are plenty of people who like your movies out there. I hate to break it to you, but twenty or so people don't make for a fearsome fanbase. Your movies really are that terrible, stop pretending otherwise. Do us all a favor and get out of the film business. I don't care what you end up doing, so long as I never have to hear from you again.

I hope you have a heart attack, you worthless hack.