Stolen Pixels #161: Rorschach Interview, Part 3

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jan 19, 2010

Filed under: Column 13 comments

If you’re not running a joke into the ground, you’re doing it wrong. The Rorschach series continues here.

This is the first comic where you can see the audience. I do not think I want to use that camera angle very often, because populating the stands was pure tedium. I only did the first few rows of one section (probably had twenty people in all) and it was already a bit hard on my framerate. I’m not even sure it would be possible to fill all the seats. I think somewhere around the halfway point my computer would give up.

 


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13 thoughts on “Stolen Pixels #161: Rorschach Interview, Part 3

  1. SteveDJ says:

    A true cliffhanger?!? Oooh, I cannot wait…! :-)

  2. Peter H. Coffin says:

    Nah. A cliffhanger would necessitate a cliff, which would require a requisition for a set-redressing,

  3. Rhykker says:

    *THUD*

    ~We’ll see about that~

    Hahahah

  4. Girl Gamer says:

    This is fun! Can’t wait to find out how it ends.

  5. Florin-Vlad says:

    about that audience: you could describe it using text :P

  6. Vladius says:

    I have to say, this Rorschach thing is turning out to be my favorite Stolen Pixels arc.

  7. Honestly, I didn’t notice the audience the first time I looked at the strip. The effort/effect here seems to be way off balance for you, so I’d say skip the angle.

    Actually, though, I think it would be funnier to do that angle if there wasn’t any audience at all, implying that the “reactions” from previous strips are all canned sound. An empty auditorium, or even better, just another wall of a set (with people painted on it?) would be a gag in and of itself and justify the effort of making it without causing your computer to chug so much.

  8. Teldurn says:

    I also had to go back and look at it again because I didn’t notice the audience.

    Still hi-larious stuff!

  9. Xyllar says:

    If you ever feel you absolutely MUST use that angle again, may I respectfully recommend you add some lighting in the audience? I felt like I could barely see the results of all your hard work.

  10. John says:

    Yeah, despite having read your comments here before looking at the strip, as soon as I looked at the graphics my brain forgot I was supposed to care about people. They’re so far from the action they might as well not exist.

    Is that what you’re supposed to use a pattern for? :)

    Or, expose the audience as actually only being four people in folding chairs as part of the gag, ala Night After Night with Allan Havey. Ding! Out of material.

  11. Anaphyis says:

    Audience? Excuse me for a moment *browser zoom to 300%* ah, there they are. It’s tragic that you went through so much work and yet I nearly couldn’t praise you for your love for detail as the missing lighting made the audience a blob of shadows at 1600×1200.

    Anyway. I wonder what wacky hijinx Rorschach will come up with in the next episode.

  12. Nyaz says:

    Audien… ooohhh, there they are. That was probably a lot of work for nothing, I’m afraid. And would this really be filmed in front of a live audience anyway? I just imgagined a few Combine soldiers running a camera each and a boombox doing the laughter.

    Because, you know, there’s a curfew and everybody’s at home praying for their lives.

  13. Neil Polenske says:

    Wouldn’t it have been easier to just rendering out the pictures of the audience in their rows and then using it as an image plane on a flat surface? Especially considering it’s for still images and they’re so far away.

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