Check out this guest art I did for the webcomic Shadowgirls. Amuletts may be drunk but at least her chat up line’s original!
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Category: Blog
The 1980’s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon ended with the children still stuck in the Realm. It seems for all their attempts to get home they never did. 20 years on the live-action fan-film ‘Choices‘ revisits them. They’re not children any more, their innocence and light-hearted optimism is now world-weariness. It is an iteresting, mature, and extremely well done interpretation on the series.
If you own the US version of the complete Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon series on DVD you’ll find ‘Choices’ in the extras. Mack/Dadd Productions did have plans to make a full-length D&D episode and even went as far as making a trailer, but the project was abandoned due to financial reasons. They’re now working on their own original productions and I fully reccommend you check out ‘A Thousand Words.’ I think we can look forward to some great films from them in the future.
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Webcomic Spotlight: Willow’s Grove
A Beagle, a lizard and a Muppet fly into outer space… Sounds like the set-up for a great joke doesn’t it? Well it’s actually the premise for Willow’s Grove, a Science-fiction Webcomic by Karl Kleese.
On the face of it the writing seems simple and funny, but at its heart is surprisingly cleaver. It combines a number of classic sci-fi tropes whilst coming up with something entirely original. The humour sets you up with something familiar then the punch-line surprises you. It’s easy to waste a few hours digging through the archives.
The artwork has a simple yet distinctive style with very clean, professional-looking line-work. It starts in black and white, but later evolves into colour.
The story is easy to get into and guaranteed to leave you on your uppers. It is divided into short, easily-digested story arcs as the characters go to different planets in an attempt to find their way back to Earth. Whilst only a science-fiction fan will appreciate all the references I really can’t think of a reason why anyone couldn’t enjoy this. Willow’s Grove is, in a word, fun.
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Fan Art from Children of The Tiger
purenightshade of Children of the Tiger drew this lovely piece of Fan Art as part of her big Halloween art project. You see Halloween is her favorite holiday, so every day from Oct1st to 31st she’s drawing one of her characters in Cosplay! Today it’s Kishandren as Amuletts. Receiving it really cheered me up!
Check out purenightshade’s Deviantart Gallery to see what other characters her cast has cosplayed and suggest what they might dress up as next!
Her webcomic is one I follow regularly and you will find me a frequent commenter. The story follows five Dragon Warriors in their quest to recover the missing Princess of Shanshiire. Kishandren is my favorite character, so I’m really pleased she honoured Amuletts through cosplay!
Right now the Surfacescapes project is creating a prototype for playing tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) on the Microsoft Surface Table. And they’re starting with D&D. They released a demo (shown above) on Vimeo on Oct 18th 2009. It’s generated quite a buzz. Is there a geek alive that doesn’t want to play with this puppy? This is a real big boy’s toy, a DM’s wet dream. Or is it?
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Fan Art from The Drunken Fools
Antoine of The Drunken Fools drew this really cool Fan Art of Clodin. He seems to be my most popular character – I have more fan art of him than anyone else! Must be that dwarvish charm, but I think he earned a lot of kudos for making out with Tinuville.
Antoine says “Epic Fail is to me the story of a Dungeon & Dragons game, played by people on booze.”
Well, since we used to play above a Bar there is an element of truth in that!
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Webcomic Spotlight: Johnny Saturn
A short while ago Johnny Saturn spotlit Epic Fail, now it’s time for me to return the favour. I sincerely doubt I will do it justice but I’m gonna try!
Johnny Saturn, in my opinion, is THE superhero webcomic. If you’re a fan of the genre it’s something you really can’t afford to miss. You know Watchmen? This is the webcomic equivalent. It’s a professional standard, but without the gimmicky, money-spinning claptrap that turned me off DC.
This is a dark, gritty universe with adult stories. The writing improves the more you read, so it’s worth sticking to. Johnny Saturn’s very character driven and explores the many shades of morality.
Art wise Scott Story really knows a thing or two. The comic is visually stunning. He has all the elements down pat – detail, anatomy, perspective, panelling, lettering… you name it. For me it’s a real draw; I just love things that look pretty! This is art you can sit back and appreciate for a long time.
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LGBT Webcomic Charity Art Auction
Many noble webcomic artists have come together, donating art to an online auction to raise money for the Point Foundation, a group that gives scholarships to LGBT students. It runs up to the 24th of July 2009, so act fast if you don’t want to miss out! There are some beautiful pictures you can bid on, including five by members of the Webcomic Planet Collective. So bid, bid bid! It’s for a good cause.
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Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!
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.
Links
Official Dragonlance Movie Site
Buy the DVD on Amazon (if you must)
Buy the books on Amazon (that’s better)