T w e n t y S i d e d

Wow. Now THAT was a productive weekend. I have 8 comics (13 pages total) all done, and two more written. The eight aren’t in sequence (I have a few gaps where I need to fill in events) but I haven’t had a weekend with this much output since I started the project months ago.

I also designed a couple of t-shirts, beat XIII, and worked some more on another humor project I have going in the background.

This means that unless I go crazy and trash what I just did, all of the strips for the next two weeks will have been written on the same day. I wonder why creativity works like this. The past three weeks I’ve had to fight to come up with new material. Today I wrote several weeks’ worth of material. I feel like I could sit down and write more, but I need a break.

I really wish I knew what regulated this spark. Lunar cycle? Sleep patterns? Diet?

I haven’t been listening to music for the last couple of weeks, but today I got the urge to put some music on. Did I want the music because I was feeling creative, or was I creative because the music was on?

Hmmmm. I threw my back out Saturday night. I took some Vicodin today to try and loosen up the muscles. I certainly hope that isn’t the cause. I’d hate to have to go to the doctor to get a perscription for pills to make me funny.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I started out answering this question in the comments here, but the response got too long.

The big challenge of getting proper screenshots is that often the shots I need just aren’t available. Keep in mind that John Rhys-Davies, Viggo Mortensen, and Ian McKellen are all more or less normal height. That means any time we see Gimli or Gandalf standing together in the same shot, we are looking at some sort of special effects. These shots are actually pretty rare.

So, I have some directories dedicated to as many combinations as I can find: Gimli + Legolas, mountain background. Gimli + Legolas, forest background. Gimli + Legolas, indoors. Etc. Etc. This way, when I need those two talking in the same panel, I look in my collection of pairings and see what I have available.

The rest of the directories are just sorted by setting. Rivendell, Cahadras, Moria, Woods of Lothlorien, the Elven City, River, Amon Hen, plains, Fangorn, Rohan, exodus, Helm’s Deep, etc.

That’s it. Not much of a system. I’d get more detailed, but it’s actually hard to re-use shots. The movie does a great job of keeping the scenery varied, but this works against me when I want to use a shot from the woods of Lorien as part of Fangorn, for example. The two places have different lighting, different contrast, different color balance, and the woods themselves don’t look very similar. So, even if I find a Lorien shot that doesn’t have any now-departed characters in it, I probably still can’t use it because it won’t match visually.

Although, I think I need to create a “Stareagorn” directory. I’m sure I could come up with a couple of gigs of Viggo zoning out, falling asleep, or stoned out of his mind.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This is getting out of hand….

My library of screen captures for DM of the Rings is now 5,531 files, which take up just under 6 gigabytes. They are sorted into 54 folders, according to the barely-serviceable system of organization I’ve managed to devise.

We are exactly half way through the second movie, although I’m not sure that we’re half way through the comic. I skipped over half of the first movie, and it wasn’t until Moria that I made a point of putting in all of the major plot points. I’ve since become aware that the story is a non-renewable resource, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Early in the strip, I’d skip scenes freely if nothing funny came to mind. Now I milk each section of the story for gags because I don’t want to run out of movie. On the other hand, I’m leaving out half the story (Frodo and Sam) at this point, so it’s really hard to tell when the strip will end. Comic 100? 200? I don’t know.

Looking back, I do think I’m getting better at making these. The early comics look cluttered to me, and they flow poorly. The latter strips are easier to read, have more compelling screenshots, and I’ve gotten much better at finding just the right facial expression for the given situation.

I like the turn things took when the party split. The large cast made it hard to define anyone. Now I have three distinct players to work with, and their personalities tend to write a lot of their dialog for me.

My original idea was to go for 24 strips, with the comic ending at Amon Hen. I actually have this “final” strip made. Once the thing took off, I started inserting strips into the original continuity. This is why we have 12 strips take place while in Moria, and only one strip on Mt. Cahadras.

I thought I’d be sick of these by this point, but it’s actually more fun now that I have a process worked out. Someday this story will end, and when it does I’m really going to miss it.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.