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Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings CXXI:
Blasphemy!”
DM of the Rings CXXI:
A Sudden Spike
I’d love to know where this came from:
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My referrers is pretty much made up of the usual suspects. RPG.net. GitP. Home on the Strange. Den Beste. Also, Netvibes, Stumbleupon, et al.
I’ve gotten some visitors from Buzz.mn, which I think is mostly due to me leaving comments at Lilek’s new blog. The biggest referrer is Bloglines, but that is most likely people coming here via their RSS aggregate-o-tron. This means that Bloglines probably isn’t a source of new readers, but an entry point for existing ones. For reasons I can’t comprehend, Livejournal doesn’t even make the top 20. Over half my readers are from LJ, and they are more prone to share a link than just about anyone else. I can only assume the way LJ gives everyone a subdomain (someuser.livejournal.com) diffuses the apparent incoming links.
Anyway, I still can’t see a reason for the spike in traffic. I know no one person knows the answer, but if you’re a new reader (or, now that I think of it, not new) I’d love to know how you found me. I’m very curious what let to the above spike. (Note that the spike is more extreme than it seems – I took the image about five days from the end of June.)
Millennium Falcon: Lego Style
Yes, I’m reposting YouTubes as a way of padding out my meager blog this week. Yeah, I know: You’ve seen better, nobody cares about this meme anymore, everyone already saw this years ago and it was old then, etc etc. In any case, this is an amazing stop-motion video of a couple of guys assembling a Millennium Falcon – including the interior and many moving parts – out of Legos.
I started to write a comment here about how I’m thankful for all of the strange people out there on the internet who toil for my amusement, but halfway through I realized I’m one of those people.
Yikes.
What are the odds?
A roundup of serveral people who had interesting responses to my Seesaw probability theory:
Darkenna sets a non-believer straight in this thread.
Everyone knows that anecdotal evidence is the most convincing.
The science behind seesaw probability.
EDIT: Also, never mistake superstition for science! Or is that the other way around?
Cool!
I saw I sold several shirts at my Cafepress store. I’ve wondered who bought them. Well, here’s one. With a guitar!
Much Ado About Nothing
Now I feel just awful for getting worked up about Striker. The young man has posted a full retraction and an apology here. A video apology. He did this of his own volition.
He apologized publicly, so I’m going to do the same. Striker: I’m sorry I called you a moron. And an idiot. That was petty of me. I could (and should) have handled this without childish name-calling.
Striker really is a teenager. When I saw him I thought of a lot of the blunders I made as a teenager. Except, when I made my mistakes I made them in front of dozens of peers, not hundreds (thousands?) of strangers on the internet. When I wrote my initial post, I had assumed “this guy” was an adult, and judged his actions as I would a grown man. (I also judged his grammer the same way, which wasn’t fair either. I would cringe if the stuff I wrote at 16 was still around today.)
This is way too much angst for a situation where nothing bad happened and nobody got hurt. Striker also humbled me with the video apology: At 16, I never would have done that on my own.
I’ve removed the link to his profile. Please, if anyone is still giving him a hard time, I’m begging you: let the guy alone.
Also: Comments closed. I really would like to let this rest.
Webcomic Tools
In response to Roxysteve here, I’ll outline the stuff I use to make DMotR. (I’m sure he’s right: I’ve probably done this before, but it was ages ago and I can’t find it now.)
I use Comic Book Creator to make DMotR. The software is not the best. It feels half-finished. I suggest taking a good look at the free demo and deciding if the software will cut it for you as-is. It isn’t likely to improve anytime soon.
Last year they were talking about CBC 2.0, which was going to have a bunch of much-needed features. In the forums they mentioned they were aiming for 1Q 2007. We are way past that point and it hasn’t even gone into beta. I don’t know what happened, but I suspect development on the product has stopped altogether.
The biggest missing feature is the ability to move and resize panels. This is a pretty basic thing, and the software doesn’t let you do it. You have to use one of the existing pre-made page layouts. If you look at DMotR, you may notice certain panel layouts appear over and over. Another glaring oversight is that it can’t fill round bubbles with text: It puts text into rectangular regions within a bubble, which can eat up a lot of excess page real estate.
There are a lot of useless features in there, like adding clipart (yuck) and sound effects (wha????) to your work. It’s an odd bit of software, to be sure.
There are many other small bugs and annoyances. I’ve come this close to running off and writing my own software that can do panel layouts, round text bubbles, thought bubbles, and fancy bubble outlines. It would be a fun project, but I couldn’t do it AND write a comic at the same time, and if I stop doing comics I won’t need it. Hmmmm.
Sorry. Where was I?
I hear there is a program called Comic Life for Macs, but I don’t have access to a Mac so I can’t tell you if it’s any good or not. (Actually, being Mac software, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t intuitive and polished, but I can’t speak from experience. I’d put money on it being a cut above CBC, though.)
The other major tool you want is this: Blambot. Lots of wonderful fonts. Many are free, the others are a reasonable (to me) $20US. The fonts look great and the site doesn’t pummel you with nonsense like many fonts sites do. In DMotR, the king of the dead speaks using their outstanding “Manga Temple” font. Aragorn issued his first decree (and Boromir mocked the Elves) using “Ale & Wenches”. Some of the sound effects use “BADABOOM”. There are a few other gems over there you may recognize as well.
The main font I use is “Pig Iron”, which comes with CBC. Actually, I use “Pig Iron Bold”, because “Pig Iron Medium” wastes miles of vertical space for no apparent reason. On the other hand, “Pig Iron Bold” has a defective Q with too much trailing space, which I have to correct manually using image editing software, after I’m done in CBC. (Although you can probably find a few places I forgot.)
I use Paint Shop Pro 8 for retouching. I use it to color normal word bubbles yellow (for NPCs) because CBC can only do white chat bubbles. I have to do quite a bit of Photoshopping to make the King of the Dead talk in that glowing green text. I also use PSP to do the “photoshoping” on screencaps, in order to make composite images, flip the scene, edit out unwanted characters, or whatever other abuse I need to do to Peter Jackson’s work.
There it is. That’s what I use. Good luck with your project.
Which reminds me: This comic is popular enough that I’m surprised nobody else has done something similar. Harry Potter? Aliens? Spider-Man? X-Men? Star Trek? Star Wars? The Matrix? There are tons of movies which are well known and take themselves very seriously, which are the two main ingredients for good satire. I keep expecting another movie comic to appear someplace, but it hasn’t happened yet.
From The Archives:
What is Vulkan?
What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
Spider-Man
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction
Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
Fable II
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
Linux vs. Windows
Finally, the age-old debate has been settled.
A Lack of Vision and Leadership
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
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.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Grand Theft Auto Retrospective
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
My Music
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.