Post by Jeff on Feb 28, 2008 16:48:44 GMT -5
Ep 28: Another Evil Scheme (continued)
If the Autobots of ACT weren't heroes, and the Decepticons were more endearing than evil, then there was no reason for ACT to favor one side over the other. At least, that was the attitude I had in mind as I began telling these parallel stories, one featuring the Autobots and Prime's death/ressurection, and the other featuring the Decepticons and the introduction of Waruderos and sons.
Of course that fizzled soon after this episode, as I began to realize that I simply could not make Waruderos and the princes likable.
A lot of that is the fault of this episode. While it features some fun sight gags, a lot of the original concept does not come through, and (most importantly) it accidentally turns Waruderos into some kind of creepy perv, which was not my intention.
The original idea was to make another gag about alien robots attempting to comprehend our popular culture, correctly assessing that we consider pop icons like Justin Timberlake as important and worthy of our attention as foreign powers like Saddam Hussain and Osama Bin Ladin. How Waruderos and the princes would interact with each was really supposed to be secondary.
The final gag (on top of the very idea that Justin Timberlake would be grouped in with these other individuals) was supposed to be a dispassionate and culturally ignorant Waruderos attempting to blend in with a bunch of concert tramps, completely unaware of how ridiculous he looked. This was the same idea I tried with Poseidon back in episode 8 with the hat and the "brewski" comment. It failed back then, giving us the impression that Poseidon was a bit of a troublemaker, and it failed with Waruderos, instead leading us to believe that he was some sort of alien robot transvestite coming on to Justin Timberlake. After this episode, it was hard to see Waruderos as anything other than creepy. He never really gets any limelight again after episode 31.
The most disappointing part about Waruderos not working out is that the failure prevents the Decepticons from ever taking on the kind of equal presence that I'd envisioned for them in the comic. Barry and Garry hadn't really established their own characterizations in any sort of endearing way, Battle Buffalo was an expository non-entity, and all four of these newly established characters completely fizzled. I still had some hope of keeping Justin Timberlake around for laughs, and I'm not sure why I abandoned that direction in hindsight. It had serious potential.
However, the Autobots were certainly more compelling at this point (well, at least Prime, Poseidon, and Daniel were), and the rest of this story arc even presents a threat from within their ranks instead of from the Decepticons. Fred and the gang really start to get phased out in this arc, just as I was trying to include them more.
This was another early attempt at using photoshop, and it does look a bit raw. The George W. Bush panel was actually quite difficult to do, as there were surprisingly no pictures of Bush sitting at a desk anywhere online (ironically, there were many pictures of him golfing). So I had to take an image of him speaking before congress and impose it on a picture of the oval office. The scale was a bit off, but I found this funny and kept it. It almost looks like a child playing president.
Episodes 28 and 29 were posted on March 14th, 2003.
If the Autobots of ACT weren't heroes, and the Decepticons were more endearing than evil, then there was no reason for ACT to favor one side over the other. At least, that was the attitude I had in mind as I began telling these parallel stories, one featuring the Autobots and Prime's death/ressurection, and the other featuring the Decepticons and the introduction of Waruderos and sons.
Of course that fizzled soon after this episode, as I began to realize that I simply could not make Waruderos and the princes likable.
A lot of that is the fault of this episode. While it features some fun sight gags, a lot of the original concept does not come through, and (most importantly) it accidentally turns Waruderos into some kind of creepy perv, which was not my intention.
The original idea was to make another gag about alien robots attempting to comprehend our popular culture, correctly assessing that we consider pop icons like Justin Timberlake as important and worthy of our attention as foreign powers like Saddam Hussain and Osama Bin Ladin. How Waruderos and the princes would interact with each was really supposed to be secondary.
The final gag (on top of the very idea that Justin Timberlake would be grouped in with these other individuals) was supposed to be a dispassionate and culturally ignorant Waruderos attempting to blend in with a bunch of concert tramps, completely unaware of how ridiculous he looked. This was the same idea I tried with Poseidon back in episode 8 with the hat and the "brewski" comment. It failed back then, giving us the impression that Poseidon was a bit of a troublemaker, and it failed with Waruderos, instead leading us to believe that he was some sort of alien robot transvestite coming on to Justin Timberlake. After this episode, it was hard to see Waruderos as anything other than creepy. He never really gets any limelight again after episode 31.
The most disappointing part about Waruderos not working out is that the failure prevents the Decepticons from ever taking on the kind of equal presence that I'd envisioned for them in the comic. Barry and Garry hadn't really established their own characterizations in any sort of endearing way, Battle Buffalo was an expository non-entity, and all four of these newly established characters completely fizzled. I still had some hope of keeping Justin Timberlake around for laughs, and I'm not sure why I abandoned that direction in hindsight. It had serious potential.
However, the Autobots were certainly more compelling at this point (well, at least Prime, Poseidon, and Daniel were), and the rest of this story arc even presents a threat from within their ranks instead of from the Decepticons. Fred and the gang really start to get phased out in this arc, just as I was trying to include them more.
This was another early attempt at using photoshop, and it does look a bit raw. The George W. Bush panel was actually quite difficult to do, as there were surprisingly no pictures of Bush sitting at a desk anywhere online (ironically, there were many pictures of him golfing). So I had to take an image of him speaking before congress and impose it on a picture of the oval office. The scale was a bit off, but I found this funny and kept it. It almost looks like a child playing president.
Episodes 28 and 29 were posted on March 14th, 2003.