Well, as you may have gathered, no, I didn’t get around to updating a comic. At this point, I honestly wouldn’t hold your breath for one next friday either. I’ll keep working on it (with any luck, I might be able to have my scanner -back- and get it working again in the next couple of days) but there’s always that chance it won’t get solved until too late.
First up, some news, Exterminatus Now now (echo?) has its own domain name. ExterminatusNow.co.uk!. It just takes you to this page, but its nice having our own domain name.
Some new fan art this week. Two Lothar wallpapers, sized 800 and 1024, as well as this sketch sketch of the entire crew by Queen Qeeko. A Lothar picture by Joris. Another Lothar by Lady Katana. And finally (thank Jeebus!) a Rogue pic by Ourik.
As a reminder, we’re still accepting guest comics, get them to me at lotharhex[at]gmail.com by the 26th of March. You have 2 weeks, so HURRY UP! I haven’t received any yet but have gotten plenty of interest.
So this week I have finally decided that I will never understand “art”. Now by art I don’t mean art in the sense of what Virus, Silv, my girlfriend Raquel (love you babe!) and all my other artistically talented friends produce. By this I mean the concept of “art”. Like who decides what is art and what isn’t. To the best of my reckoning , the people who decide what art is are a load of pompous dickheads who are too busy sticking their heads up each other arses to explain to “the great unwashed” what the fuck they’re talking about. And most artist just throw any old shit together, say something about it having hidden meaning and the torment of the human soul and get paid stupid amounts of money for doing bugger all. This is not to say I don’t think art can’t have hidden meanings or what have you, I just fail to see the artistic merit in crap like THIS:
This for you people that are unaware, is Tracy Emin’s “My Bed”. Which is her filthy bed, covered in used condoms, cigarette package, bodily fluids and various other stuff. Can somebody explain to me how THIS is art? I bet there an explanation that it’s “the outer expression of the inner depravity of the human soul” or some shit like that. You know what I think is the hidden meaning in this? TRACY EMIN NEEDS TO HIRE A GOD DAMN MAID!
This week at University I watched a film called “Fishtank” by Richard Billingham. This…PILE OF FUCKING CUM STAINED SHIT entailed him constantly changing the focus on the camera, extreme close-ups on his alcoholic fathers comb over and nose. It also has him filming his obese mother putting on make up. I watched Event Horizon and Saw without batting an eyelid, this…THING putting on make up made me almost throw up. It also has his brother hunting a flies, of which there are many in their tiny, filthy and just plain ugly flat. This went on for about 40 minutes AND HE WON THE 2001TURNER FUCKING PRIZE FOR IT! What the hell is wrong with Humanity? We’ve got so many diseases and environmental problems I’ve lost count, yet we’re wasting money on giving some ageing hippy thousands of pounds for his damn home movies.
And then there is that picture of a dot. Not many dots making up a large picture like Monet, or was it Van Gogh? It’s just ONE BLACK DOT IN THE MIDDLE OF A WHITE CANVAS AND IT’S BEING HAILED AS ART! God you dipshits hurt my brain. Tell you what, I’ve got some dust under my bed, WHERE’S MY FUCKING HUNDRED GRAND? NOT ENOUGH? OK I’VE JUST TAKEN A SHIT! SHALL I FISH IT OUT AND MIX IT WITH THE DUST? THERE YOU GO 100% PURE A-GRADE ART! ITS THE MANIFESTATION OF HUMANITY’S TORTURED EXISTANCE ON EARTH IN BALL FORM, GIMME MONEY!
There’s this sculpture near where I go to University. It’s a 15-20ft tall stainless steel tower with lights all along it. There’s also a phone number, you send a text message to that phone number and the sculpture lights up. It was commissioned by Middlesbrough Council. Cost of tax payers money? £80,000. Eighty, fucking, grand on a giant light up cheese grater. How the hell does the “artist” sleep at night knowing that this £80,000 could have been used to, I don’t know, go towards fighting drugs in the damn town or something? I hope he hangs himself with some fibre optic wire.
Whoa, okay, we’re a bit piss poor for updates lately. Really sorry. Silv still hasn’t managed to slap his computer issues into line. He’s got a couple things left to try, and if all goes well, we might have Friday’s comic with you later on Friday, or sometime Saturday. But that’s “if all goes well”. And the track record for “things going well” so far doesn’t look encouraging. However, read on, for we are going to attempt to make up for the lack of comic lately.
As you may or may not know, I’m doing a (multimedia and) 3D animation degree. And for my animation project the past semester, I modeled and animated a sequence starring EN’s very own Ryoushi ‘Rogue’ Nekkitou. We now bring you this animation for download. It’s in Quicktime .mov format, and zipped it weighs in at 13.6MB. Make sure you’re able to play Quicktime and have an unzip utility. Right click and save as.
There was meant to be a second scene to go with this that would’ve made it funnier… The workload proved too much though. Hrmwell, such is life.
If anything if SEGA tried to sue us we’d get a bajillion times more publicity than we got before. Hmm…….
YUJI NAKA HAS SEX WITH BABY GOATS! HE’S A PAEDOPHILE AND TAKES PART IN BEASTIALITY!
Well if we can’t get sued for copyright infringement, liebel will do in a pinch.
Occasionally people make comments, usually in passing, usually innocently enough, relating to copyright issues. Well y’know what, maybe they’re right, maybe we oughta put up some sort of disclaimer over here.
Sonic the Hedgehog is © Se- Waitaminute. Sonic isn’t in this comic. Hm. Oh well.
Miles ‘Tails’ Prower is- No. No. He’s not there either.
Knuck- You know what? The only thing remotely resembling a copyright infringement is the chao before it became Blasphemy.
Contrary to what drama queen online artists would have you believe, you can’t copyright a style. Eastwood is a fox drawn in the style of the Sonic characters. He therefore has an innate similarity to Tails who is also a fox. A lot of anime shows share a similar design style, and many characters of the same species – human. Some of the main differences in the character designs are build, size/shape/arrangement of facial features, hair colour/style, eye colour and clothing. Huh. Well lookit that. Those are exactly the things that differentiate Eastwood from Tails. Why is it that human characters in anime can all look the bloody same and nobody notices, but when I give my character conjoined eyes, people call him a ripoff of Sonic?
I’m not trying to claim our characters are completely original, because they’re clearly derivative. But, and I admit I’m no lawyer here, I’m unconvinced that Sega can sue on the grounds that our characters ‘look a bit like’ theirs. Remember in the 90s when there was a slew of high speed copycat platformers, trying to cash in on the success of the Sonic games? If Sega has a case against Exterminatus Now, then they surely could have sued the proverbial trousers off of those games developers.
Besides, there’s a very good reason Sega wouldn’t sue us. Multinational corporations don’t like to crush 4-man indy organisations beneath the heel of their evil corporate boot. Oddly enough, it’s seen as bad publicity.
So, now that I’ve justified myself… *plots ways to earn a living drawing EN – Anything to avoid real work*
Occassional vague rebuttal.
Meaningless and unconnected additional commentary.
Additional Mauling.
Simmer for 40 minutes and serve.
Create Your Own Rant!
Vaguely topical subject.
Dissection of aforesaid topic in a humourous fashion.
Hilarious pictures of kittens.
I get mauled for lacking a proper update.
Well as some of you may have noticed, Shadow the Hedgehog is getting his own game. And those damn bastards at Sonic Team have gotten me interested.
In a previous rant I said the Sonic series was dead to me, but this has piqued my interest. Because, while it does look like it’s doing some daft things with the series, it also looks like its doing one thing right. Focusing on a speed orientated character. I’ve said over and over that one of the problems with Sonic in the 3D era is the multiple character approach, too many shite gameplay styles taking up too much gameplay time. Now I wish it was Sonic, but Shadow will do in a pinch. This may surprise you guys but I do like Shadow a little. If only because of his design (I’m a sucker for the colours red and black), it’s his fucking generic angsty personality that pisses me off. Plus the fact SEGA can’t seem to decide whether he’s good or evil. In the trailer for the game they play up the whole “Hero or Villain” thing again. Damnit SEGA, he helped save the world, TWICE! I don’t think he can respectfully call himself a villain, and no, giving him an oversized gun won’t change that. Good guys use guns too.
I gotta say, looking at the graphics in the game makes me cringe a little. It looks to be using the same engine as Sonic Heroes, which was the kiddy-est looking Sonic game I’ve. And despite the games “dark” look, it still looks like a Saturday morning cartoon designed for 8 year olds. Mind you that is the Sonic series main market. The gun/guns in the game are ludicrously oversized for Shadow as well. You can see then glitching through the fucking ground. That’s just shoddy coding on SEGA’s part. In one part of the trailer, Shadow uses what looks like MP5A3 sub-machinegun (or a variant of it). The damn thing is longer than his torso and legs combined. How the fuck does he lift these damn things one handed without break his arm or getting a hernia? Mind you that’d be applying real life physics to the Sonic series. If they did that, half the characters non-existent necks would break because of their huge oversized heads.
I will admit, adding a gun to the gameplay does seem like a cynical attempt to get more sales. I think the reasoning behind it went something like this:
Sega Exec #1: GTA HAS GUNS, LETS GIVE SONIC ONE!
Sega Exec #2: No Sonic is too good to use guns!
Sega Exec #1: Shadow then, he’s exactly the same but really angsty!
Sega Exec #2: YES!
Pity they can’t let the game sell on the speed orientated gameplay by itself, which were the only good parts of the previous 3D sonic games. But at least focusing on one character is a step in the right direction
Do I support the game? I don’t know really, but it’s got me interested in it. Do I think it will be good? To be honest, no. SEGA’s track record with 3D Sonic games hasn’t been great. But I do hope that they will prove me wrong sometime. Maybe not with this game, but sometime.
Since Eastwood neglected to mention any sort of timescale – you have several weeks to get them guest comics done. Iiin fact I might not be going anywheres at all now… But do em anyway!
You are not special of unique. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world
Something like that. I haven’t seen Fight Club in about a year, so I may be off a bit. But that basically covers my experiences in the World of Warcraft.
Before I begin, Lothar mentioned something to me about guest comics. ‘pparently Virus is buggering off to sunnier climates for a fortnight, and Silv (Understandably) doesn’t want to work like a devil trying to get two comics up a week. Something to do with human rights, and how I’m not supposed to beat the artist, or starve the artist, or sing off key whilst the artist is trying to sleep. Anyway, we need you, the great unwashed, to give us guest comics. Actual comics. If you send a sprite comic I’ll gut you. Or I won’t. Who knows?
So, if you’ve a glimmer of artistic ability and want to do something vaguely productive, e-mail them to Lothar at lotharhex@gmail.com with a 802 pixel (High) by 604 pixel (Wide) png, jpg, or gif. Also, because Lothar is nagging me to add yet more specifications as I’m trying to update this, needs to be your own work. Or something.
Also, we reserve the right to not upload your comic and mock it behind your back. So try and do your best. If possible, submit the comics to Lothar by the 26th of March, though if it’s a couple of days late it’ll still be considered And now, back to my rant on World of Warcraft.
Edit: More details can be found at this topic on our forums. – Lothar
In essence, the game explains to you that no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, there will be someone better than you. You can seek out almighty weapons, amazing armour or remarkable artefacts of arcane l33tn355, but some smug bastard with a mount will always outdo you. And charge twice as much at the Auction House.
It’s simple. Unless you spend every hour of every day since release playing the game, you will be a nobody. You will not be able to go around in that tricked out armour, mounts, glowy weapons or carrying funky items like the +1 Ring, often found in rivers. It’s precious. Yesss. My preciousss. You can’t have it, feelthy fat hobbitses! Trying to shteal the preciuousss!
Quite. But it’s somewhat aggravating, as you’re running away from a level 20 crocolisk, some smug level 55 arsehole saunters along on his horse, laughes, then trots away. But I guess the upside is that whilst I may be a mere level 20 Rogue, with my unenchanted weapons and mere 2 Gold pieces, I have a social life. Okay, that’s a lie, since the reason why this newspost is so poor is because I spent most of time I allotted for it playing WoW. I don’t. But I tend to go outside and see the sun, as well as having a job and a fulltime education. I don’t have the time, nor the sanity to spend my entire day playing this fictional world, where a ninja midget with an annoying voice gets chased by Fishmen, Bearmen, Hyenamen, SnakeyFishmen, MenMen and… spiders. Really fucking big spiders. Spiders the size of houses. Really.
But beyond this digital world of wonder, merriment and elf chicks who don’t wear nearly enough, you have people out there who seem to think they’re unique. Which I find amusing.
Now, I’m not unique. Or special. There are plenty of lazy, cynical geeks out there. I don’t think I am, I doubt I ever will be. I don’t try and stand out from the crowd and thus make myself look like a pillock. Kinda like wannabe Goths, who amuse me to no end. But hey, that’s life. But it’s like, they somehow think they’re better because they’re unique. But they’re not, they’re just like every other unique person – Dressed like a prat, listening to god-awful music and subscribes to laughable political doctrines simply to be different. And for what? To delude themselves that they will somehow lead a special, amazing life because they’re a rEbEl aGaInSt THE MAN!!! Give it ten years and they’ll be in some dead end office job with a mortgage and sensible haircuts.
Yes, this is a crappy rant. I had a far more amusing one about why I tend to be The Other Guy compared to Lothar, involving a hilarious doodle of my History teacher, the sinister Brian The Taskmaster. But I was playing WoW. It’s like crack. Crack that slaps you n the face and calls you a bitch. And you like it.
- Eastwood, look for Whiplash or Vladson on Terenas EU. Give them your money.
