{"id":6148,"date":"2009-11-24T13:20:22","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T17:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=6148"},"modified":"2009-11-24T13:21:31","modified_gmt":"2009-11-24T17:21:31","slug":"stolen-pixels-145-re-your-box-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=6148","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Pixels #145: Re: Your Box Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new comic is up<\/a>. It’s about the proposed box art for Mass Effect 2. Note that it borders on false advertising. I mean, look at it<\/a>! It shows commander Shepard looking angry<\/em>, when anyone who has played the game knows that he has the emotional range of Ben Stein at his own wake.<\/p>\n

Below is some director’s commentary on why I’m not quite happy with this one.<\/p>\n

This one is a rarity for me: The photoshop comic. Once I was done with it I was immediately and painfully reminded of why I don’t do these photoshop jobs very often: I’m never happy with them. <\/p>\n

The first suggested cover just has a two written on it. Fine, although looking back I could have made that more funny by exaggerating the slapdash “2”. I think having the “2” on a yellow stickynote would have worked better. This is the problem when you’re trying to photoshop something that is supposed<\/em> to look cheap: It looks like a hack job instead of satire.<\/p>\n

The “Space Tits” one was also supposed to look cheap on purpose, but when I was done I was vexed at how it looked like I was just lazy. It was supposed to look like one of those terrible cheap B-movie posters \/ VHS covers. The kind of packaging which screams out “this product is of the lowest possible quality, but will afford the viewer with numerous occasions to see breasts”. <\/p>\n

The final cover is supposed to be the “punchline” – it’s a remix of the original cover, replacing the Mass Effect characters with Master Chief, Cortana, and that Arbiter Dude Thing. To get the visual joke you have to understand who these characters are, and you have to get why this would be an insult to both games, and you have to have the real Mass Effect cover (from the top of the comic) fresh in mind so that the similarities hit home.<\/p>\n

I fussed with this one a lot. The sad thing is that this took far, far longer than a Breen comic, and ended up looking like I barely spent any time on it at all.<\/p>\n

I doubt we’ll see another photoshop comic until I once again forget how unsatisfied I usually am with the result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new comic is up. It’s about the proposed box art for Mass Effect 2. Note that it borders on false advertising. I mean, look at it! It shows commander Shepard looking angry, when anyone who has played the game knows that he has the emotional range of Ben Stein at his own wake. Below […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}