Post by Jeff on May 22, 2006 7:58:16 GMT -5
Ep 17: The Dark Grapple Saga
In addition to expanding the cast and universe of ACT, I was really hoping to start building a continuity at this point, where events that happened now would have lasting effects down the road. I felt the combination of continuity and a "full" universe of supporting characters would help make ACT more than just some gag-a-week amateur comic. I wanted to make characters and stories you could care about a little, even while laughing at them. ACT was still striving for this feeling up to its final episode and, to some extent, I believe it succeeded.
I've always been a comic book geek. At this particular point in my life, I'd been a huge X-Men fan. X-Men, itself, was a comic that contained a vast universe of supporting characters and a rich continuity/history. Much of that began with The Dark Phoenix Saga, a storyline in which one of the fan-favorite heroes (Jean Grey) became inexplicably possessed by some alien force, thus turning her costume red converting her into a terrible agent of evil destruction. The event caused ripples that continued to affect the team thirty years later.
Naturally, I could never hope to emulate such a success in an amateur humor comic, so I decided to spoof it instead. It just so happened that I owned Inferno, the red counterpart to Grapple. Now all I needed was a lame excuse to make one become the other. I easily worked it into the Phil storyline (concieving the idea prior to shooting episode 16, which is why Phil decides to kill Grapple at the end of it). There'd be no full explanation as to what the heck happened, just like in the real comic. Meanwhile, having a secondary character with the powers of a god seemed like a fun addition to the comic, especially since I was still looking for ways to characterize these ebay-assembled Autobots ("okay, that'll be the demonic, all-powerful one").
Dark Grapple was a character that I never spent enough time exploring. We came back to exploring the nature of his dark powers twice (once in The Matrix Resolded story arc and once in the final story arc as well), but there was so much left untouched. In terms of characterization, I believe he only goes on to recieve a decent amount of attention during his theological crisis in Night of the Photoshopped Images. Again, there was so much to left to do with him. We were only begining to question whether or not he was a force of evil in the last few episodes of the comic.
In terms of special effects, I'm still copying/pasting the cave here, though it looks a lot better in panels 1,2, and 5 than it did throughout the last episode. Dark Grapple's levitation panel marks my first time using Photoshop (in ACT or anywhere else). I used the lasso tool to cut Dark Grapple and the other characters out of an image and superimpose them on a white background with "power lines" shooting out from a point behind DG. The lassoing took a tremendous amount of time and precision. Though I later learned of another way to isolate specific images in a photo, I've never found one that hasn't required lots of time and precision. No wonder everyone doesn't do toy comics.
In the original picture for this panel, DG attained his levitating pose by extending the ladder on his back so that it pushed against the floor, thus allowing me to balance his weight between his downward extended tiptoes and his ladder.
The panels in which Phil kills Grapple were really awkward. How do you show a completely unposable teddy bear killing another toy? I suppose this could have been funny if I'd been able to make it more clear. As it stands, it's hard to figure out what the heck is happening until Trailbreaker announces that an Autobot has just died in the third panel.
I guess this is the start of Trailbreaker's rebellious streak. It's the first time Trailbreaker shows any real personality, and Ihonestly don't like what comes through. No one likes the holier than thou guy on his high horse. That's probably why I fail to significantly include Trailbreaker in stories until the arc where I draw attention to the fact that I've been failing to signficantly unclude Trailbreaker in stories.
In addition to expanding the cast and universe of ACT, I was really hoping to start building a continuity at this point, where events that happened now would have lasting effects down the road. I felt the combination of continuity and a "full" universe of supporting characters would help make ACT more than just some gag-a-week amateur comic. I wanted to make characters and stories you could care about a little, even while laughing at them. ACT was still striving for this feeling up to its final episode and, to some extent, I believe it succeeded.
I've always been a comic book geek. At this particular point in my life, I'd been a huge X-Men fan. X-Men, itself, was a comic that contained a vast universe of supporting characters and a rich continuity/history. Much of that began with The Dark Phoenix Saga, a storyline in which one of the fan-favorite heroes (Jean Grey) became inexplicably possessed by some alien force, thus turning her costume red converting her into a terrible agent of evil destruction. The event caused ripples that continued to affect the team thirty years later.
Naturally, I could never hope to emulate such a success in an amateur humor comic, so I decided to spoof it instead. It just so happened that I owned Inferno, the red counterpart to Grapple. Now all I needed was a lame excuse to make one become the other. I easily worked it into the Phil storyline (concieving the idea prior to shooting episode 16, which is why Phil decides to kill Grapple at the end of it). There'd be no full explanation as to what the heck happened, just like in the real comic. Meanwhile, having a secondary character with the powers of a god seemed like a fun addition to the comic, especially since I was still looking for ways to characterize these ebay-assembled Autobots ("okay, that'll be the demonic, all-powerful one").
Dark Grapple was a character that I never spent enough time exploring. We came back to exploring the nature of his dark powers twice (once in The Matrix Resolded story arc and once in the final story arc as well), but there was so much left untouched. In terms of characterization, I believe he only goes on to recieve a decent amount of attention during his theological crisis in Night of the Photoshopped Images. Again, there was so much to left to do with him. We were only begining to question whether or not he was a force of evil in the last few episodes of the comic.
In terms of special effects, I'm still copying/pasting the cave here, though it looks a lot better in panels 1,2, and 5 than it did throughout the last episode. Dark Grapple's levitation panel marks my first time using Photoshop (in ACT or anywhere else). I used the lasso tool to cut Dark Grapple and the other characters out of an image and superimpose them on a white background with "power lines" shooting out from a point behind DG. The lassoing took a tremendous amount of time and precision. Though I later learned of another way to isolate specific images in a photo, I've never found one that hasn't required lots of time and precision. No wonder everyone doesn't do toy comics.
In the original picture for this panel, DG attained his levitating pose by extending the ladder on his back so that it pushed against the floor, thus allowing me to balance his weight between his downward extended tiptoes and his ladder.
The panels in which Phil kills Grapple were really awkward. How do you show a completely unposable teddy bear killing another toy? I suppose this could have been funny if I'd been able to make it more clear. As it stands, it's hard to figure out what the heck is happening until Trailbreaker announces that an Autobot has just died in the third panel.
I guess this is the start of Trailbreaker's rebellious streak. It's the first time Trailbreaker shows any real personality, and Ihonestly don't like what comes through. No one likes the holier than thou guy on his high horse. That's probably why I fail to significantly include Trailbreaker in stories until the arc where I draw attention to the fact that I've been failing to signficantly unclude Trailbreaker in stories.