Featured GAME [Interactive Comic] Old Republic Paint Adventures

Let me put this into context for you: the average chapter is about 75 panels long on the low end, and 150 panels long on the high end. The climax of Act I, starting from Snote's Ultimatum and ending on Ilum, is roughly 315 panels long. This encompasses two of the largest comic's chapters to date and is 1,43GBs in size.

By comparison, Chapter 16 has 359 panels and is 2,71GBs in size thus far. We still have one third left of it to cover, so I am projecting around 450 panels by its end. While the updates are on longer intervals these days, the ratio of panels per day has actually never fluctuated all that much. Hypothetically speaking, if a review series were to cover this Chapter - they would most assuredly not cover it in one go - but rather, they would split it into three distinct parts:

Part 1 would cover Doop's final farewells on Onderon, Stan's interrogation and Jun's debate with the Chancellor.
Part 2 would cover the Corellia plot with Saber and Missy.
Part 3 would cover a brief check on Doop's situation, the reveal of Jun's mission and the Nar Shaddaa plot.

Chapter 17, Relics of Old, is slated to be on Jedha and it will mostly be a Missy chapter, seeing as she will finally get to interact with genuine and rather ancient Jedi culture - which is an aspect of hers that we didn't really have a chance to properly explore in Act I inside the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. The chapter will also contain cuts to Jun and Stan as the Coruscant plot properly escalates in parallel.

Chapter 18, Echo the Names, will be the one that Doop has all for himself. After that, all bets are off - even for me. The fun thing here is that these two names form an anagram, but also tie into the story of their respective chapter. The anagram is a sentence that encompasses the entirety of Act II in its phrase and foreshadows the finale.

The very first draft of the very first panel was done in old school MS Paint, actually. Of course, doing the entire comic like this would have been bollocks, so I switched to using Photoshop very early on in a time period of five weeks that I would call this comic's equivalent of pre-production.

As the adventure was properly kicking off, I've started reintroducing what are now dubbed "detail panels" - those up-close shots of characters that are framed like a proper scene. Armed with only a mouse and no foreknowledge of drawing, I couldn't faithfully do fine and proper character lines as well as I could handle the pixel-art itself, so I had to incorporate CorelDraw into the workflow - thereby making all detail panels essentially vector drawings. This meant that I could scale them, rotate them and finely tune the shapes of the lines to just what I needed for the update - all without losing a shred of quality. This opened a world of possibilities for me - things like nuanced facial expressions were suddenly a reality.

I usually begin with a shitty sketch to give me a basic sense of proportions and where the lines go. I then open up CorelDraw, overlay the sketch as a background and trace the lines over the sketch with my mouse. I fix and add details afterwards, and by that point the panel starts to resemble something like this when exported:



I turn off anti-aliasing during the export to get those iconic pixel-hard edges and import it into Photoshop for coloring. This is where I also add a couple of details like fabric textures, patterns or outfit accessories that I may have missed.



In this case, most notably, I have added Jun's ammo belt. Next step is drawing the background of the shot and any objects the scene or the actor interacts with - like a chair, for example.



While the scene is technically done, it's not complete without the storytelling aspect. We're trying to sell a certain mood and tone for this panel here, as well as actually depict what Jun is trying to say. Without this aspect, the panel is just sterile.



Thanks to the scintillating powers of visual storytelling, we're able to elevate a bland panel of a guy sitting on a chair to an idealist politician (not a murderer) coming face to face with the heart of darkness, corruption and oppression of his beloved state. There is also a neat parallel between this line and Palpatine's same exact line to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith - only the interesting thing thematically is that both the role and the context is reversed. You know, so that they rhyme - but also contrast one another.

I may have gone too far in a couple of places.

 

Thanks a lot for the kind words, but "shitty sketch" is pretty apt in this case. There's a reason I never post these whenever I'm doing update previews.

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Well, that escalated quickly.



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More like EXPENSES, AMIRITE?



There'd probably be some RED POINTS heading your way if you considered JEEVES as an ACTUAL PERSON. Even COLUMBO makes this list.



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You have now been banned from the PUBLIC FORUMS of TOYDARIA.



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You find yourself in the HALLWAY CONNECTING the TURKEY'S COCKPIT with its MAIN DECK that the plot literally had NO IDEA even existed up until this point.

Next to you are the RAKATAN STATUES you've PICKED UP from that IMPERIAL VAULT on DANTOOINE, the very place where your HUNT for MYNOCK and KESTREL began. You wanted to sell the STATUES, thinking they were made from gold, but after polishing them QUITE THOROUGHLY with what little remained in the ship's bottle of MR. SABER'S ARMOR CLEANSER, you realized that they were carved out of WORTHLESS SANDSTONE.

Now you have TWO, BIG, SHINY SANDSTONE STATUES on board your ship. This is OBVIOUSLY a GOOD THING.

The CREDIT TRAIL LEADS further away from the HALLWAY.

What do you do?

 

You HUG the STATUE QUITE INTIMATELY. There are no more SECRETS between the two of you as you COMPLETE your RESEARCH of its ROCK-HARD MATERIAL. Yep. This is SANDSTONE, alright. Coarse, rough and all that jazz.

With your IMPERVIOUS DECOY, and with this being a ONE-WAY HALLWAY, no AMBUSH will get the better of you!



An AMBUSH gets the BETTER of you.

THE QUIRK: "Drop the statue and turn round!"



You have GAINED a LEVEL! You are now a LEVEL 9 JEDI SENTINAL.

This is literally the WORST TIME you could have possibly LEVELED-UP EVER. No contest.



DANG IT.



So, uh... did you know that you have LEVELED UP? Just now. At this time. Level 9? JEDI SENTINAL? None of this make any sense to you?



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You have chosen to answer her PROTEST with SILENCE. You always were rather TERRIBLE at sensing the NON-FORCE SENSITIVES.



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You now have TWO REAL OPTIONS on how to DEAL with the INTRUDER on your SHIP that totally wasn't its PREVIOUS OWNER and also totally wasn't hit by you in the NETHERS and LEFT for DEAD to COVER your ESCAPE on NAR SHADDAA.

Do you take your chances and surprise her with a bold move, or do you open up your character screen and invest in something to help you out?