What I’m doing #1
September 24th, 2011 by GMreillyHey all, Reilly here.
I figure the easiest way to write something on here is to just tell you what I’m doing every so often. Now, don’t be fooled by that #1. I don’t plan on making this a weekly thing, or anything timed for that matter.
What I’ve been watching:
I’m not one to ever watch TV. I have not actually sat down at a TV by myself, and stayed to watch anything specific for nearly 2 years now. I catch the occasional show if I’m out or at a friends place, but otherwise I just watch movies and TV shows on my laptop/phone.
To start off what I’ve been watching, let’s go with something relevant to what I’ve worked on in the last month. The obvious influence behind Quests Yeah: Adventure Time.
Once Chris had started QuestsYeah, I couldn’t understand the humor. So he told to watch Adventure Time, but since when do I listen? Now, about a month later I’ve decided to finally give it a shot. I’ve only reached episode 9 so far, but I’m finally understand this humor. Taking a new approach to reading QuestsYeah, and I’m starting to appreciate it.
Up next is Undercover Boss. I saw my father watching it on Netflix actually, and sat down to watch it with him. While I enjoy watching it, I have one problem. Just like any other “informative” media, I’m not sure how accurate this show is to the real world, and how much of it is sugar coated crap for the TV. I like to believe it is all real though. I’ve watched about 3/4 of the available episodes, and so far my favourite is the GSI Commerce episode. If you ever watch it, give that episode a shot.
What I’m reading:
Only one book here this time. Mockingjay by Susan Collins.
This book is the 3rd in the series, following The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. While it’s been to long for me to remember anything that happened in the first two, I’m still enjoying this one. What I do remember from the first two however is the pacing. They were awkward in concept, but worked in practice. The first 2/3 to 3/4 of them were build up, and the last bits of it were the events you had been waiting for the entire book. This book however, doesn’t seem to focus on any progression of events outside those directly relating to the main character, Katniss. And when I say directly relating to, I mean directly. See, Katniss is the mockingjay of the rebels, fighting against the Capitol(them bad guys). You don’t get many updates about the progress of the war, especially not with any reference to a timeline. The story focuses more on Katniss’ life and how she deals with being the mockingjay.
What I’m working on:
Just school ya know?
Comments (3)Movies
August 19th, 2011 by GMchrisYea yea, shut up…
I DID say I was making a post about advertising one’s site this week, but it’s been a week of important movies coming out, and I think I should go over them and tell you why they’re important from both a viewer’s point of view and from an artist’s perspective. Thing is, it’s the middle of August, we’re not exactly expecting amazing movies to come out, but there’s been some noteworthy stuff coming out lately. Note that not all of this is from the past week.
Rise of the planet of the apes
I certainly hope this isn’t a spoiler, but if it is you deserve it you eleven year old brat, – the monkeys win. Statue of Liberty in the ground, humans being treated like animals, monkeys slapping people around, that all will happen, but not in this movie. If I didn’t know any better I’d say that the scriptwriter was ashamed of making a planet of the apes movie. Here’s what the movie ends up showing – an oppressed group of beings get motivated by one of their own to rise up and fight the restriants that society has put upon them. It’s actually a pretty good african-american movement methaphor, much better than the one found in our next entry…
The Help
I don’t like swearing, it’s just not me, but God f**king damn, human race. I though it’s pretty much impossible to make a movie about World War 2, or fighting racism, or with Robert Downey Jr., but now one of those things has happened and my faith has suffered. The Help is a movie about a non-african-american, teaching non-non-african-americans how to fight back. That might SOUND inspirational, but what I’m really saying is that a white chick who wants to show mommy and daddy that she isn’t still spoiled brat (spoiler alert: she’s a spoiled brat), teaching, TEACHING, black people about how they are not inferior. My mind be blown… They replace Martin Luther King with freakin’ Legally Blonde. This teaches us that the source material does not matter if your script is made by a moron…or by George Lucas…so yea pretty much a moron.
Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows part 2
Let me get this out right now – I hate Harry Potter now. I hate how it decided to “grow with me”, and I hate the fact that only one crazy, menopause-entering idiot is in charge of the story. With that said, the first four parts of Harry Potter were some of the best things I’ve seen and read. It was a magical story of a bullied kid, discovering that he isn’t only just as good as the ones that bully him, but better. It was a big hit with nerds who aren’t artists and don’t get all the ladies as I (an artist) obviously do. I didn’t like this movies, but I think the series as a whole should be honoured. So go pirate the movie and write bad fanfiction for it, as J.K. Rowling has already done.
The Marvel comic movies
I didn’t say “the comic movies in generel”, because no one cares about “The Green Lantern” (not that I blame you, that’s a pretty dumb superhero name). What these movies teach us about story-telling is that, while we should show appreciation for long-time fans, we shouldn’t isolate people new to the series. How does one do that? Keep everything as simple as possible, that way you can put in more elements from the continuity into the story, and you won’t consfuse people from Missouri. The other thing that Marvel is doing right is the fact that they are working on project to unite all the heroes as put them in the same movie. Which is the best kind of cash-in as it’s a great tribute to fans too.
Comments (4)How to make a webcomic (for Dummies)
August 13th, 2011 by GMchrisNow that I know how to properly make blog posts I figured I should grace it with my majestic, bulgarian ignorance. I don’t know much about life, heck some might argue that I don’t know anything at all, but I have picked up a few things about webcomics that I figured I could share. This post (which may get a continuation) will try to shed some light on the webcomic situation.
Step one – don’t make a webcomic
How’s that for a beginning? I’m being 100% serious here – a webcomic ten years ago would have been sure win, five years ago – a solid career, three years ago – better than working at McDonalds. In this day and age webcomics are so many, covering such a broad array of topics that the “bussiness” has become comparable to ABC’s programming.In fact, if you start a webcomic you’d be direct competition to me! Bug off!
Step one – the team
Ok, we both said some things we didn’t mean last paragraph, me with words, you with reading, but let’s put that behind us. To make a webcomic you’d usually want to see what the big boys of the industry are doing, and in this industry there aren’t bigger boys than the Penny Arcade guys ( especially that Jerry Holkins guy, what the hell does he eat?). They’re a creative group, a writer and an artist, and that could apply well to so many comics like “VG cats” which has very nice art but has incredibly bad writing ( bad update schedule too). The reason “What do you do” can function without a proper writer (or artists for that matter…) is that the fact that the community does a big part of the writing, and it’s been noted to me that Quests Yeah!’s writing isn’t exactly good, but I’m not really a writer so that’s sort of understandable. And Reilly is my goto guy for whenever I brake the site. So before you start your comic makes sure you can draw, write or make bad puns, or find someone who can.
Step three – make the comic, but don’t make the webcomic!
My steps are only gonna get weirder from here, pal. What I mean by that thing is that you should make several sample comics and try to pass them around and see if people like them. I wouldn’t have started What do you do if I hadn’t made a similar project in a gaming forum and it hadn’t been pretty successful. I wouldn’t have started Quests Yeah! if I hadn’t gotten a thumbs up by a lot of people beforehand. The good thing about making a webcomic today is that there are plenty of ways to share something without actually having a site. Let’s face it, if we were posting out comic on MySpace, people would hate them even if they were delivering the best time of their lives. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Google + and if you’re feeling bold maybe even 4chan. Plenty of places to show people what you’re doing and get some (hopefully) unbiased opinions.
Step four – Setting up
There. A normal title. Happy? Setting up involves buying hosting, buying a domain name, making a website, getting all the people involved working on the project. As you could imagine, this stuff costs money, and don’t even think of getting that money back fast. Unless you become an instant hit, or just make porn comics you’ll probably need to build up a good community but we’ll talk about that later. After buying the domain and host and linking them together (some hosting providers give you a free domain name too). Making a site from scratch can be hard though so you’ll either need an expensive programmer, or skills to do the programming yourself. What we did was using WordPress – a blog system which we repurposed for comic posting (PS. Don’t download the special “comic” WordPress, it’s really bad). If you already have your site setup you should start advertising it, or else people won’t even know it exists. Whenever someone asks me what I want to acheive with my websites I say “I want everyone on the planet who WOULD enjoy reading them to read them.”, and you should keep in mind that some people WON’T enjoy your comic so don’t push it.
Wow…as of now there are about 700 words in this post, so it’s a nice start, next week I’ll explain advertising and how I don’t really understand it.
Comments (3)Hello World
November 18th, 2010 by GMreillyHello all, this is GMreilly. Truthfully, there is no real point behind this post. However, blogs tends to require posts so I need to write one. I hope to have at least 2 posts on the blog weekly; 1 by Chris, and 1 by myself. Hopefully this will help everyone keep up with whats happening since we don’t have any area for news. I suppose I will take the rest of this post to fill you in on what has happened recently around the site.
The Livestream
So, Chris and I(specifically me) haven’t had too much new to do recently(okay, completely me). I decided to set up a livestream channel, and since it takes nearly no effort to stream what I am doing, I do it as frequently as possible. Chris also streams his panel drawings very frequently(typically every other day).
Since my streams are most often co-op video games(possibly competitive every so often) I’m always looking for people to play with. If you have a game in common with me, or have a free game to play, send me a message on the forums or leave a comment here(make sure you enter you email so I can get back at you). Remember though, I prefer to be able to voice chat with you if possible.
Have something else you’d like us to stream? Leave a comment!
Small Updates
What have I done the last month? Not much. But here goes my attempt at looking useful.
First off: OMG LINKS ABOVE THE BANNER
So creative right? I spent 5000 hours writing that in binary. 0010101000101110001010
Second: Alert Box
She’s a beauty right? Yeah, you might think it was useless, but how else would I let you know this blog existed?
Are these two visible updates ugly? Sexy? Let me know if you’d like to see them change. I want to be strict on keeping a clean interface, and the worst judge is the creator. I don’t know what YOU think of these. Is the ad placement bad? Is everything good? Let us know.
The Forums
So here’s the deal. These need a shout out desperately. Most people agree that small community forums are the best, but we may have a situation in which the community is too small. Please, don’t be afraid to stop by(actually, be afraid).
In closing, I didn’t have much to write about this time. I know I’ve asked over 9000 questions in this post, but this is probably one of the most important. At least top 50. What do you want to see posted here? The more suggestions you give, the more we can post.
Comments (12)