I’ve made the decision to change how I update the Epic Fail. From now on new updates will be coloured, but not shaded. This is because the shading, pretty though it is, takes me ages! I want to update reliably each week without getting stressed. Late updates aren’t fun for anyone. So, basically, I will concentrate on giving you a fun story and pretty it up later.
This will give me more time which I’ll use to:
1) Rebuild my buffer so I can still update when the unexpected happens.
2) Do those Webcomic Cameos and other things I promised to do but didn’t get around to.
3) Fix spelling mistakes, continuity errors, and pages that just plain suck.
4) Go to Comic Conventions.
No promises, but I may even update more regularly. We’ll see how things go. For the time being I’m shifting my update schedule to Thursdays.
This film is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly bad it is. I mean you might have been appalled by The Crystal Skull but that’s just peanuts to this. Listen…
I read the Dragonlance books as a teenager and am, even as we speak, playing through the AD&D Modules. I was dead excited to hear there was a film and even enjoyed watching it for the first ten minutes. It begins at a quite relaxed pace, introducing the characters with some humorous banter and bloodless action. But this is soon replaced by break-neck pacing. The plot feels as if it is on fast-forward, with a lot being told in exposition and chunks of the story being missed out altogether. With a large cast of characters they get no more than a handful of lines each, and several are left standing around with very little to do. Ultimately 90 minutes just isn’t a sufficient run-time to do the story justice.
The animation is mostly 80s style 2D, with the jarring addition of 3D CGI for the Dragons and Draconians. The two styles just don’t mesh and make the production look amateurish. The bloodless action is replaced by amazingly inconsistent gore. One moment we are looking at Hobgoblins dying in pools of blood, the next the ground is perfectly clean! Continuity errors like this persist throughout the film, almost every time the viewpoint changes, and their lip-synching is about as good as mine!
So I was enormously disappointed and appalled to think that this might be anyone’s introduction to Dragonlance. So do yourself a favour and don’t let this film ruin what could be a wonderful experience. Read the books.
This film is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly bad it is. I mean you might have been appalled by The Crystal Skull but that’s just peanuts to this. Listen…
I read the Dragonlance books as a teenager and am, even as we speak, playing through the AD&D Modules. I was dead excited to hear there was a film and even enjoyed watching it for the first ten minutes. It begins at a quite relaxed pace, introducing the characters with some humorous banter and bloodless action. But this is soon replaced by break-neck pacing. The plot feels as if it is on fast-forward, with a lot being told in exposition and chunks of the story being missed out altogether. With a large cast of characters they get no more than a handful of lines each, and several are left standing around with very little to do. Ultimately 90 minutes just isn’t a sufficient run-time to do the story justice.
The animation is mostly 80s style 2D, with the jarring addition of 3D CGI for the Dragons and Draconians. The two styles just don’t mesh and make the production look amateurish. The bloodless action is replaced by amazingly inconsistent gore. One moment we are looking at Hobgoblins dying in pools of blood, the next the ground is perfectly clean! Continuity errors like this persist throughout the film, almost every time the viewpoint changes, and their lip-synching is about as good as mine!
So I was enormously disappointed and appalled to think that this might be anyone’s introduction to Dragonlance. So do yourself a favour and don’t let this film ruin what could be a wonderful experience. Read the books.
So here we have a painting I’ve been working on of Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. Tinuvielle is at a Guan Yin temples in the storyline right now. As my twitter followers will know I’ve had a touch of writers block this week so that’s why I’m doing something different and having an Art Interlude. If I print Epic Fail up as a big Graphic Novel Book sometime I think I would like to use this Guan Yin Painting as the endpages. Of course you can’t tell from the photo, but a great deal of it is painted in gold. I am a lot better at hands after painting this. She has a thousand you know (most of them off page)!
Who gave these people a spaceship and are they out of their minds? They have guns! GUNS for heavens sake! I wouldn’t trust them with a pair of scissors! But thankfully they’re in a webcomic, so you can enjoy the madness and mayhem in the comforting glow of your own monitor.
Amaya, Chaste, Damsel and Sarah are four feisty, forthright felinoids (cat-people to you and me) who make up the Science Ninja Action Team known as the Cosmic Hellcats. They are a group of notorious trouble-makers and rules-breakers, pursuing their individual agendas rather than working together to get things done. But their chaotic tactics give them the advantage because no one can guess their next move! They’re out to paint the Universe red, stick a finger up at authority and speak to the rebel in all of us.
If you thought Star Trek was dull and skirts weren’t short enough then this is the comic for you! The current storyline is Ninjas vs. Pirates.
I watched JJ Abrams’ Star Trek on my Birthday. I’d read some positive reviews – unprecedented given Treks usual reception – but I was still anxious. Resurrecting this mostly-dead franchise could have been no easy task. Failure would have been the final nail in the coffin – Star Trek rest in peace. But could it be reborn, be popular even, without sacrificing everything that made Star Trek special? The answer is “Yes.”
Now, this film is by no means perfect. Indeed I could nit-pick it to pieces, but if that ruined our enjoyment of Star Trek we’d have been on a bad trip since ‘The Cage.’ Continuity errors and implausible science almost make it feel more genuine!
In respect to all that has come before this Star Trek is not a clean reset; Leonard Nimoy’s Spock appears to pass the torch onto this new cast and crew. The plot incorporates Trek lore accurately and appropriately. I had the impression that the creators had not only watched every episode in existence, but read the books as well. I recognised elements from Diane Carey’s ‘Best Destiny’ – a novel about Kirk’s tearaway youth and his relationship with his father. On further investigation (namely Wikipedia) I discovered this, and others, had indeed been an influence. It’s rewarding to see all that wonderful material put to good use.
‘Yesterdays Enterprise’ stylē the plot involves changes in the timeline creating an alternate reality. (It was cool then; it’s cool now). This neatly explains why the characters are a little different from the originals and injects a sense of danger that would otherwise be lacking. We can’t sit comfortably, safe in the knowledge that Kirk dies on Veridian III and Scotty spends 75 years in a transporter. The future is uncertain. Some, like Tasha Yar, might get the chance to live again whilst others have their lives cut short…
Kirk regrets taunting Spock with “Your Mom!”
The interior design is probably the most jarring thing for Trekkies. Unlike the Enterprise exterior – which seems like a ‘best bits’ version – it borrows very little from its progenitors. It has a sleek, touch-screen, Macintosh feel to it that’s hard to relate to the 1966 design. It looks futuristic, but not distinctive. Personally I’m a bit bored of monochrome sci-fi look. I’d have loved to see some bold primaries in there.
The actors do a great job, especially the leads, and are believable younger versions (though Yelchin’s Chekov is too close to Wesley Crusher for comfort)! The youthful element sets a different tone than we are used too. This film is exciting and entertaining with more humour than there’s been in the last four Trek moves put together. It’s a clear, self-contained story for Trek virgins with plenty of background details and in-jokes that die-hard fans will appreciate. I really enjoyed watching it – it doesn’t suck.
