Post by Jeff on Jan 5, 2004 11:43:27 GMT -5
Ep 09: Value Meal DX
So Poseidon's out on the town, absorbing human culture. Obviously, this necessitated a gag centered around alien robots misunderstanding a popular aspect of Earth culture. The gag had been done so many times before in so many places that I wanted to find something that hadn't been touched yet. The McDonalds Super-Size option seemed like a good one to try.
In Japanese robots (which I was getting into, at this point), each is usually released on a normal scale and a super sized DX scale. Thus the title of the episode. Leave it to me to make obscure references in the titles that I'd never actually try in the episodes.
I was getting pretty sick of shooting the dim inside of the Autobot ship at this point, so having them outside in a bright and open space was a nice contrast. Of course, it meant actually putting them next to the outside of the ship, which was grossly out of scale. But I think that ended up working well as a subtle gag.
This is the first time I had to create a prop in MS Paint (the McDonalds' bag). Since I still didn't know anything about Photoshop at this point, it was the only way to do most props, unless they could easily be cut and paste into MS Paint (a paper bag in someone's hand could not). The McDonalds logo is cut and pasted from the actual McDonalds web site (though shrunken down).
Again, I only put in a marginal effort to rearrange my tiny apartment for these shots, so table and chair legs are readily visible in the background of panels 2,3, and 6. I wanted to move them enough that they wouldn't be painfully obvious, but I actually liked having them in the background. It adds to that weird dynamic between the thoroughly convincing world of the Autobots and the constant reminded that they're actually just toys in my apartment.
So Poseidon's out on the town, absorbing human culture. Obviously, this necessitated a gag centered around alien robots misunderstanding a popular aspect of Earth culture. The gag had been done so many times before in so many places that I wanted to find something that hadn't been touched yet. The McDonalds Super-Size option seemed like a good one to try.
In Japanese robots (which I was getting into, at this point), each is usually released on a normal scale and a super sized DX scale. Thus the title of the episode. Leave it to me to make obscure references in the titles that I'd never actually try in the episodes.
I was getting pretty sick of shooting the dim inside of the Autobot ship at this point, so having them outside in a bright and open space was a nice contrast. Of course, it meant actually putting them next to the outside of the ship, which was grossly out of scale. But I think that ended up working well as a subtle gag.
This is the first time I had to create a prop in MS Paint (the McDonalds' bag). Since I still didn't know anything about Photoshop at this point, it was the only way to do most props, unless they could easily be cut and paste into MS Paint (a paper bag in someone's hand could not). The McDonalds logo is cut and pasted from the actual McDonalds web site (though shrunken down).
Again, I only put in a marginal effort to rearrange my tiny apartment for these shots, so table and chair legs are readily visible in the background of panels 2,3, and 6. I wanted to move them enough that they wouldn't be painfully obvious, but I actually liked having them in the background. It adds to that weird dynamic between the thoroughly convincing world of the Autobots and the constant reminded that they're actually just toys in my apartment.