T w e n t y S i d e d
Here is a strip about Velvet Assassin. Or about the History Channel. Or both. Sort of.
I am not crazy about how it turned out, particularly panel #2. “Old guy talking” turned out to be harder to pull off than I thought. Most stock photo sites are designed around the idea that you’re building advertisements, and so 90% of the pictures are of young women smiling. I couldn’t find anything in the “old and dull” end of the spectrum. And no degree of photoshopping could get rid of that “ask your doctor about Viagra” vibe the picture has going.
Ah well.
Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
Quakecon Keynote 2013 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
What is Piracy?
It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.
Project Button Masher
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
Deus Ex and The Treachery of Labels
Deus Ex Mankind Divided was a clumsy, tone-deaf allegory that thought it was clever, and it managed to annoy people of all political stripes.
That should really be the History Channel’s official slogan. Can you imagine how much their viewership would increase if that were the case? :)
You could have used a picture of yourself with a fake moustache for added hilarity.
I can’t tell you how many times I would try to find stock photos depicting age diversity. I got tired of designing websites using pictures of nothing but twenty-somethings.
My graphic artist & I used to have contests to see who could find a stock photo of someone over the age of 40 first. Sometimes it would take us over an HOUR to find one!
I like Viagra Man’s title: History-Type Guy from a University.
Yup.
Leslee
I liked the History Channel before they put that lil´ show that explained battles using a ripoff of Rome: Total War. It got worse, tough. After that, shows about UFOs, about the templars, Da Vinci, and about all known prophecies got more than a half of the programation time. The rest was about World War 2 or about how awesome egyptians and mayans were.
At least, that´s on my country.
If you can’t find the exact photo you need, ask us, the readers. We might have the one you are looking for…
Martin!
If I’d been drinking coffee at the time I would have spit it out at “Stop Saying History is Boring”
Priceless
@acronix: I couldn’t agree more about how downhill they’ve started going. History Channel used to be fantastic, but they’ve fallen into this trap of attempting to create mass-market programming.
Discovery was going through exactly the same thing a few years ago. The only thing that was ever on was garage mechanic shows. They’ve since gotten back into programming that is far more educational and have really found an interesting niche with docu-drama stuff like Deadliest Catch.
History Channel should take a page out of Discovery’s book and get back to what made them great in the first place.
hehee Funny strip
@acronix. It’s the same here. I loved the History channel for a long time but now it’s nothing but doomsday prophecies, aliens, and world war 2 re-hashes over and over and over and etc… So I mostly avoid it unless they have a specific program that I’m interested in.
On Topic: I have to say that the professor actually has that certain self-righteous smug look that most of the History channel mooks have on their faces. So it works.
Why go with a stock photo? You could easily run a scan from the dust jacket of a book written by a real history professor. Or, better, the famous image of JRR Tolkien that graced the back cover of LOR books back in the seventies and eighties. Instant recognition, and an added joke of labeling JRRT “Prof Oldington.”
I like Zom’s idea better, but Henebry has a good one as well.
And yes, I’m sure if you called us readers out in force we’d be able to find something.
@acronix: History Channel wasn’t using a rip off of Rome:TW, it was *using* Rome:TW. Or at least a special version of the game engine made for them by Creative Assembly before R:TW was released. I saw some stuff at the time about how they teamed up with BBC and History Channel to do that.
I thought that stuff was pretty cool and at least gave some idea of what the battles might have been like without the cost of doing a “historical reenactment”. It’s not anything like the alien crap, IMHO.
Oh my god, that old man looks so much like my music teacher. Spooky.
After reading this, I can see what you mean about History-type Guy, but when I first saw the comic I thought that panel was great and didn’t find him to look at all out of place.
Put in another vote for “old guy was funny” and “ending history channel slogan was hilarious”.
@acronix The History Channel seems to have been about World War II for a long time (lots of available images and video). When it seems worse than usual, we just call it “The Hitler Channel”.