Post by Jeff on Dec 16, 2003 13:49:21 GMT -5
Ep 02: False Start
Just how far could I take this ebay spoofing thing? Clearly, I was going to have some fun with Poseidon (still unnamed, at this point). How in the heck did the seller who sold him to me get the idea that he was a Transformer? That became the subject of this episode, with Poseidon trying to fool Prime into thinking he can transform into a Dodge Omni (my wife’s old pile of junk car).
Inevitably, having Poseidon try to pass himself off as a Transformer changed his personality, right off the bat. He was now the wise guy I’d intended Trailbreaker to be, while (as far as anyone could tell at this point), Trailbreaker and Grapple were faithful little average Autobots. This episode started a long-lasting trend that both worked for ACT and really limited it, where Poseidon was the featured favorite character and the surrounding cast couldn’t measure up, in comparison. To this day, there are still a few sites linking to ACT with descriptions about how cool Poseidon is, and no mention of the rest of the comic.
The next step in plotting this episode was to ask myself who Prime had bought these toys from. Was I going to take some photograph of a dude sitting at a computer, responding to Prime’s negative feedback, or could another toy robot have sold them to him? This ended up being the perfect way to introduce Fred, as well as give him a reason for attacking the Autobots.
For the cameo shot with Fred, I wanted to put him in front of a real ebay feedback screen, and I wanted that screen to really have a negative feedback on it (I had no idea how clear any of this would appear in the photo). As a result, my home computer inadvertently became Fred’s base of operations in later episodes. The negative feedback Fred is looking at is one I left for an ebay seller who had recently screwed me over.
Since first episodes never look good in hindsight, I decided to carefully look over the first episode and reconsider its style before I even got started on episode two, rather than continue with something that wasn’t working. Blurry images aside (I hadn’t really figured out how to minimize those yet), I felt the two biggest problems with episode one were the word bubbles and the length. As a result, I fixed up the word bubbles a bit for episode two, and settled on a fixed six panel length for each new episode.
It was then that fame and success turned me to a life of sex, drugs, and self-destruction.
Just how far could I take this ebay spoofing thing? Clearly, I was going to have some fun with Poseidon (still unnamed, at this point). How in the heck did the seller who sold him to me get the idea that he was a Transformer? That became the subject of this episode, with Poseidon trying to fool Prime into thinking he can transform into a Dodge Omni (my wife’s old pile of junk car).
Inevitably, having Poseidon try to pass himself off as a Transformer changed his personality, right off the bat. He was now the wise guy I’d intended Trailbreaker to be, while (as far as anyone could tell at this point), Trailbreaker and Grapple were faithful little average Autobots. This episode started a long-lasting trend that both worked for ACT and really limited it, where Poseidon was the featured favorite character and the surrounding cast couldn’t measure up, in comparison. To this day, there are still a few sites linking to ACT with descriptions about how cool Poseidon is, and no mention of the rest of the comic.
The next step in plotting this episode was to ask myself who Prime had bought these toys from. Was I going to take some photograph of a dude sitting at a computer, responding to Prime’s negative feedback, or could another toy robot have sold them to him? This ended up being the perfect way to introduce Fred, as well as give him a reason for attacking the Autobots.
For the cameo shot with Fred, I wanted to put him in front of a real ebay feedback screen, and I wanted that screen to really have a negative feedback on it (I had no idea how clear any of this would appear in the photo). As a result, my home computer inadvertently became Fred’s base of operations in later episodes. The negative feedback Fred is looking at is one I left for an ebay seller who had recently screwed me over.
Since first episodes never look good in hindsight, I decided to carefully look over the first episode and reconsider its style before I even got started on episode two, rather than continue with something that wasn’t working. Blurry images aside (I hadn’t really figured out how to minimize those yet), I felt the two biggest problems with episode one were the word bubbles and the length. As a result, I fixed up the word bubbles a bit for episode two, and settled on a fixed six panel length for each new episode.
It was then that fame and success turned me to a life of sex, drugs, and self-destruction.