Ragnarok Wisdom - 200'nXmas

(UPDATED AS OF DECEMBER 25, 2006)

Man, dA's title limit can be ... limiting!

So now, Ragnarok Wisdom [link] is at comic number 200--just in time for Christmas, which falls on a Sunday this year, the natural update day for RW. A pretty awesome number of coincidences ...

Unfortunately, this comic is far from what I had in mind.

There were going to be additional scenes and extra stuff in what is currently viewable, but not only was it incredibly time consuming to draw almost everyone on the RW cast running.

There were a lot of unexpected turns, too. I've been working on this for a week, pulling a few allnighters--but I had to wind up redoing the loading scene because Flash was defying logic, it crashed a few times and set me back, having to redo work ... and for the ending scene I had to convert individual running people into animated gifs because their original vector form slowed Flash down to molasses.

Bottom line is, while I did indeed get #200 done for Christmas, this is far from being finally done--so far, at least. I will be adding the rest of the scenes over the week. I hate that I have to do it this way, but ...

So yeah. It's still a Deviation and not a Scrap to me, because it's finished, but it's not finally finished ... if that makes sense.

Some comments--as usual, with this being Ragnarok Online, I tried to emulate the style of Myung Jin Lee. I think that's the cloest I've ever gotten as far as the actual appearance of the default male Acolyte, compared to how I draw Aragan in MS Paint with RW. o_o

The running scene--this was drawn to look a bit like a YTMND I saw: [link]. Hand drawing and animating everyone and trying to capture the style of the animation there was INSANELY FREAKING TIME CONSUMING. Aside from having to convert the individual runners to GIF due to their flash vector forms slowing the computer down to molasses with only three on a screen.

UPDATE (01/06/06):
Finally! I got the intended first scene completed It's now a part of RW #200, coming right after the introductory explosion. Also, be sure to watch the ending scene--an additional cameo is there, and I finally finished animating myself. (FORGOT THE FREAKIN' EYEBROWS BEFOREHAND)

The music you hear in the first scene is from A Charlie Brown Christmas. "Christmas Time Is Here" specifically. And as always, the characters are voiced by their real-life counterparts ... save for Novvy, that is, who's voiced by the venerable Lucien Dodge (as he was in April Fool's. Lucien does such an awesome job at VAing Novvy) ...

Well, enjoy! I'll keep you all updated as the rest of the unfinished scenes are added.

UPDATE (07/30/06):
Awright. I have spent half the month working on this, and I managed to keep my promise, days before the month ended. One of the unfinished scenes for RW #200 is now viewable right here on the dA gallery. The scene in question, however, is relatively short. Probably as short as the introductory scene where I explode for no reason. It took a lot of effort to do though, and using some of the RW cast as guinea pigs, they seemed to think it worth the effort. I just hope you all see it the same way. D:

I designed RW #200, as you'll find out, to be a montage of random Christmas related scenes showing the RW cast goofing off and causing havoc in various ways. A little like the channel-changing prelude to an older flash movie I did, Aloe Vera. There are two other scenes in RW #200 that were left unfinished. I may wind up getting to them sometime in the future--maybe even as part of my 06 Christmas gift to you all?

UPDATE (12/25/06):
When the 25th was coming up I was already planning on adding something to RW #200. What I've chosen is a little bit of cheating since it was inspired by THIS year's RO Christmas event.

Actually, that's not entirely right. It's an extension of the injoke that me, Sniff, and Tristan share from watching the remake of the Kanon series, which I began soon after seeing the first episode and the series logo--the idea of white chocolate commercials involving someone getting smashed on the head and cutting to the Kanon logo.

This year's crystal swarm and their frequent drops of white chocolate just gave me an opportunity to use that joke in an RO context.

But hey ... while it might be an injoke, my mom laughed at this without knowing what Ragnarok Online, botting, lamers, or the Kanon series is. Maybe that's a good sign!