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The Bad Boys of Computer Science
A sporadically updated web comic from your friends at HotZP.
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Sporadic Rant:
Today's comic will require a bit of explanation, especially for those of you who don't run in the gaming circles. Today is the day of the Diablo II Beta Test Sign-Up. If you haven't been hiding under a rock for the past two years, you'll know that Diablo II is one of the most eagerly anticipated games of all time. Out of a likely hundreds of thousands of applicants, only one thousand lucky bastards will walk away with the privilege of being beta testers. If you don't know what a beta test is, then I suggest you check out this site here. This strip is also a slight parody of how some of the game companies advertise their products like they're going to be bigger and more important than the cure for cancer.
As fans of web comics will notice, today's comic is also a Crazy Crossover/Cameo Appearance Virtual Orgy (this is the actual technical term we use in the online comics industry). I contacted Pete Abrams and Shirt-Guy Tom from Sluggy Freelance for Riff and Torg, Scott Kurtz from PvP for Francis, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins from Penny Arcade for Gabe and Tycho, Zach Stroum from Etherlife for El Bastardo, and Greg Dean from Real Life for Greg. So yeah, it's a Crazy Crossover/Cameo Appearance Virtual Orgy. I'd really like to take this moment to thank all these wonderful guys (who are basically my online cartooning idols) for letting me use the fearsome and awe-inspiring visages of their characters and for their words of encouragement. Rock on, fellas.
Obviously, this strip will be a lot funnier if you follow the chronicles of the aforementioned strips as there are a few "in-jokes," but I don't think that it's necessary for the general humor of the piece. Just imagine they are all very enthusiastic gamers and one evil cactus (not to be confused with HotZP's own heroic Saguaro Man) and you should be all set.
And if you didn't enjoy today's strip, rest assured that I will not attempt another Crazy Crossover/Cameo Appearance Virtual Orgy for a long period of time, if ever, because other people's characters are hard as heck to draw, damn it. Instead of trying to reproduce the characters exactly, I tried to put my own tiny spin on them. The Sluggy characters wound up looking pretty close to what they actually do because I draw in an angular style somewhat similar to Mr. Abrams. I had the most trouble with the Bezier curves of Francis and Greg in general, so they ended up looking a little sharper featured than they are traditionally drawn. The most problematic object of all, though, was Gabriel's hair. I must have redrawn that four or five times before "Eh, that's good enough" won out over artistic integrity; and Gabriel still ultimately wound up looking like a reject from a Sonic the Hedgehog game. I took a lot of artistic license with Etherlife's El Bastardo, probably because sentient cacti are fun to draw.
Tune in tomorrow when I let Alison write the dialogue (yeah, I know it's a mistake).