Helm's FILL IN THE COMIC compo!

[Helm]

Hello. We used to do this back in the old days, now we are going to do this again. Here's a comic page I drew:



You guys write in the dialogue, anything you want, feel free to add or substract from the number of balloons, or change their sizes or whatever. The entries will be judged either on hilarity (if such an effect is attempted, intentionally or not) or all-around awesomity.

Maybe in the end I'll post my original version too if you guys are interested. There is no reward for the winner besides everybody else thinking they're swell guys. If this goes well, we might do it again in a week, god knows, I have too many comics I could upload.

Let's go!

[biothlebop]

[Helm]

haha this is great! Better than the actual script!

[Corey]

lol what a lame story but really funny 

[Haddas]

[Helm]

man, it's going to be difficult to decide on a winner if the entries keep being hilarious like this

[voh]

Low inspiration...

[MrColossal]

[Ghormak]

[MrColossal]

why did we start our comics the same?! MY BRAIN

But your was better! MY PRIDE!

[Unilin]

[Helm]

jesus christ, how can every single entry so far be good? How the hell will I pick a winner here? Thank you all for submitting entries! You make me feel so happy and frustrated because my original version is worse than probably all of these!

[Nacho]

[Pesty]

[Grundislav]

[Becky]

[Fuzzpilz]

[Corey]

here's a sucky entry so you atleast know wich you don't have to choose as a winner 

[Helm]

I respectfully request that Corey is ejected from the premises. Forcibly if required.

Everybody else, thank you! awesome! I love you!

[Corey]

this isnt a serious entery you fool... gee I onlky made it coz you said all the entry's were too great...
almost no one has sense of humor on this noob forum 

[Sam.]

here is mine. learn from these fools.

[Chrille]

[Ishmael]

[Helm]

chrille's bourgeoise bond is one of my favourites yet.

[Esseb]

[biothlebop]

[Visti]

[Tuomas]

[Helm]

Tuomas, yours would work much better if the last row of panels had no words in it.

[Tuomas]

Well you can erase them if you want, I can't be arsed to, shit I hate the text tool in mspaint, made doing this a real pain in the ass. And basically I nevr read it through after I was done with it, but now that you said it, yes sir it would be better.

[Helm]

dude I'm just sayin' I ain't touching your comic. Just a bit of critique if you want it.

[SSH]

[SpacePirateCaine]

Good to see the caption contest back again.


Sorry, Farlander.

[Helm]

SpacePirateCaine, I loved your entry. It's difficult to let the 'punchine' hang and have it still work, but you did it based on good writing and an eerie sense of pacing. Excellent.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The knife reminded me of a certain film.  You may or may not catch the reference.

[Chicky]

[Helm]

hahahaha the disconnected disparate tak! does it for me, given this NEW SET OF CIRCUMSTANCES

[The Ivy]

I think I've just carved out a special place in hell for myself.

[Haddas]

[Pumaman]

almost no one has sense of humor on this noob forum :-

Helm's reply seemed quite humourous to me...


Anyway:

[biothlebop]

Weirdness follows.

[Haddas]

They are now zombie-protected

[Tiki]

I don't know.

edit - oops.  a few mistakes.  kindly ignore them 

[Scummbuddy]

I thought the facial hair was getting longer in each succesive panel. 

[LimpingFish]

[biothlebop]

[rharpe]

[Las Naranjas]

[skw]

Great strip, Helm! I'm dying to see the original.



Hope you all like it.

[nihilyst]

Metamorphosis



cheers
nihilyst

[Abisso]

My english is not at the top, but I hope the idea is appreciated:

[Ishmael]

I'm just curious... Is there a limit of some kind to how many entries one can submit?

[Ubel]

[Helm]

Ishmael: no

I guess I might as well post my own version,



hah! Okay, now



As it is painfully obvious, the script that went to print was vastly inferior to a lot of these entries, which goes to show I should be putting more effort into into the exposition part of making it, however sparse it may be. I feel like I've been severily Comic Strip Doctored here. To my defense, I do a lot of understated comics, so my Charlie Brownisms fall a bit flat against the punch-in-face brilliance of +10 xp!! or '...like this space mask!'. Besides, it's based on reality.

Only reality's degenerated since.


don't look at me like that. See how I'm looking at you?
Don't look at me like that. They're for protection.


I'm thrilled this has had such a wonderful turnout thus far, and we're still only on the second day of the compo. I'm going to have a very hard time picking a winner, but I do intend to comment on every piece when this is over. Which brings me to something I need to discuss with you guys. Since this went good, should we do it again? Every week? Every when-we-feel-like-it? That's one thing, I'd hate this to dry up and become just another compo, god knows, we have enough here. So I'd prefer this being an one-off than it being a regular piece of inanity down the road. So I need opinions.

Second issue to discuss: should the winner draw/assemble the next page or should I keep putting my own work for this up? I don't know to what extent the art helped the brilliance and abundance of these entries, but I do know I do comics anyway for work and I have a large backlog which is usually meticulously drawn, which isn't exactly the same as telling someone 'congrats, you win, start a new compo tomorrow or something'. I know eric or jess or a few other people here do comics and they probably have pages for this, but most people, even if they are brilliant in their captioning and clearly win, going through thr trouble of making a comic for a silly internet competition might be too much to ask. Opinions?

If you guys want me to continue putting comics up, I have an extensive archive, and I draw a new one every week anyway. Not all is suited for this type of thing (or is it? I thought originally this comic would be very bad and look at all these brilliant entries!) but at least some is.

[skw]

Heh, heh. For protection? Let's say I keep this sax-like baby for the same reason .

At first I thought it's about an imbued knife which kills by itself or something magical. The last frame suggested that, (at least I got it in that way).

1. Put YOUR works here, I want to see more. Without brown-nosing, they're just great.

2. Hmm... maybe when the compo is over, the winner shall PM you and tell (or better show, at least a messy concept sketch) what he-or-she would want to place at the next page, and then you would draw it for another jam. I don't have any better ideas for the while.

Of course I hope it will be continued.

[Helm]

Dude I can't draw an extra page a week (at least not with the attention a page deserves) for this contest. The only reason I say I am willing to keep this up and I'm pretty confident in can be of satisfactory quality is because I draw these comics anyway for work.

[Nikolas]

Hehe, helm I think that everybody would love you to draw a little bit more... Or anyway to post more.

I think that if I won (who I haven't eben taken part...yet), I wouldn't be able to draw a new page, even if it was to save my life. Unless if you want comics with stickman...

So Helm you're destined to have 30 different captions to choose from every week.

Enjoy.

[MrColossal]

Since this went good, should we do it again? Every week? Every when-we-feel-like-it?

Eric's answer:

Helm, why are the OROWs successful?

[biothlebop]

Too much good is a bad thing.

[Helm]

Eric: because the scope is small and managable, they don't depend on huge teams and coordination nor do they require the intensive effort of anyone for more than one week at a time.

But I don't see how that answers how frequent this can or should be. It's not like captioning a comic takes more than half an hour or effort to think and edit. What I'm scared of is whether people will care to do this again for a third, fifth, fifteenth time without this becoming dead weight. The orows are relatively young yet, and still orow3 was much poorer than 2 and 1 in my opinion.

[biothlebop]

I don't think it will be as successful if it's done frequently. The thing that attracted me to do several was a totally new style (it was based on a original comic I hadn't seen before), which will grow old with time (especially if it's stylized/comical). Your strip has enough subtlety for a wide range of topics.
A week is a good period for filling it in, but I wouldn't place them too close to each other if all are done by you (unless you want to get ideas), it could be more frequent if more comic artists participated.
Don't be scared. Even if the participation sinks, do it now and then, but not weekly.

[skw]

Dude I can't draw an extra page a week (at least not with the attention a page deserves) for this contest. The only reason I say I am willing to keep this up and I'm pretty confident in can be of satisfactory quality is because I draw these comics anyway for work.

Okay, I understand.

Hmm...

So if you decide to put there only your works, do it when-you-feel-like-it.

[Helm]

Yeah, whereas I won't stop anyone else from doing their own variations of this if they desire, as far as 'Helm's Fill In The Comic compo' goes, it'll probably be on a when-we-feel-like-it basis.

[MrColossal]

Because the OROWs are done after long stretches of not doing OROWs.

[Helm]

Check.

[Haddas]

For protection, eh?

I have these next to my computer for protection... seriously. One in each nightstand drawer. 3 by the PC and the others at random locations.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v86/Haddas/Myhome/MyKnifes/5knifes2.jpg

That's an old image... I have more now.

You NEVER know when the zombie reign starts.

[Tuomas]

People do that? I never got the point. Ok, I have a nice handy knife, but just because I like to do some woodwork every now and then... And back where I come from, from the woods everyone had a knife, so it wouldn't surprise me to see a guy having a knife... but for protection?!!?

[Helm]

I don't have them for protection. We say a lot of silly things through life (which was kind of the secondary point of the comic) I have no idea why I have them. I DO know they come in handy when I have to break open cd wrapping or envelopes or cut in a new book or whatever. And they keep my hands occupied when I am in front of the computer but not typing.

[skw]

Nice collection, Had! I'm sure this long bladded strapper could tear a head off in one swipe. Is that what you call "protection"?

edited, dunno why.

[Haddas]

Yes I do. And for stress release. Sometimens I go out in the forest and cut dawn a tree or something :/

[iamus]

[biothlebop]

[Ghormak]

[Helm]

hahaha

[Kweepa]

[biothlebop]

[Andail]

Nice compo, Helm, and yeah I believe it might work better to do this rarely and sporadically rather than weekly.

Many of the contributions were excellent, especially Ghormak's two entries made me laugh out loud.

[Visti]

Ghormak's second entry heated my brain up to a point where any normal-sized brain would have complashed in a squishy, gooey mess. Good job, old chum.




By the way, you suck.

[biothlebop]

[Ghormak]

Whoa, thanks for the kind words, Andail and Visti.

This compo is the best ever. So many good entries!

[SmootH]

I don't think anyone has done this yet....



Wow, I'll be about 3-4 people truly get this one.

[Las Naranjas]

Special prize for biothlebop for his (or her or it's) cornucopia of entries.

[Helm]

Especially the last one is genius. The way it depends on meta-knowledge of what's going on. Very impressed. But although this last entry is almost my favourite, it cannot win for depending on the other entries.

[Grapefruitologist]

I hope I'm not too late, but here's my entry. I call this one "Paranoid Tom":

[Haddas]

I demand there be no winners! I see this more as an activity, rather than a competition. Who's with me?

[nihilyst]

I agree. There were so many good entries, that it would be hard to decide a winner, anyway. I demand that all entries are winners.

[Helm]

If nobody complains, that's totally fine with me.

[Ishmael]

Being a competition it would be a bit unfair for those who have only submitted one entry against those who have submitted several, wouldn't it?

[Ubel]

My thoughts exactly, Haddas. Damn, this was fun. Please start another one some day, Helm.

[biothlebop]

I just want to see Helm's 1 1/2 page post where he comments every entry.

[Helm]

I fully intend to. Although as I said, having been comic strip doctored, I'm not sure how much use my critique will be and I might deteriorate to ARGH ARGH THIS IS GREAT I LOVE YOU or whatnot.

[Andail]

I think you're being unfair to yourself by saying that many entries were better than your own version.
Sure, as a one-page piece of comedy, probably all of them were, but as a part of a longer plot the text of one single page can be necessary but still, isolated like this, not very meaningful.

[Helm]

My version isn't one page from a longer ongoing narrative. It's a single story page. It starts, progresses and ends as it does.

[biothlebop]

[Helm]

[biothlebop]

Part 2 of Helm's strip.

[Helm]

No more entries will be accepted.

[Helm]

biothlebop: I liked your first entry very much when I first saw it because I had doubts anyone would do anything interesting with the page, originally. It was nice how this started out with a daring entry. The last panel made me laugh out loud too.

Haddas: This was one of the literal uses of the knife setup, where a twist in attempted at the end, and for what it is, it works pretty well. You did better later on.

voh: the "<3" panel put me off, and the O RLY thing also, I don't mind the nonsensical approach generally but those things kinda ruined this one for me.

eric: besides stealing gore's opening lines, I enjoyed your comic. I think you're the only one besides voh to have the roach talk?

gore: I laugh every time I see the +10 XP!! panel. This is easily one of my favourites. Great use of the expression. Somehow seeing the woman say 'noobs' amuses me a lot.

Unilin: this is probably the best 'straight' setup of the lot, better written than Esseb's cult entry, and uses the last three panel twist the best. Easily in my top three, and besides it and Pete's below the probable winners if we were still doing the winning thing.

Farlander: this is I guess some inside joke referring to you staying at Grunds? As such, I can't really comment.

Pete: this is one of the best, the panel centered on her butt accompanied by 'ASS!' 'BUT!' is brilliant, and the dialogue is very natural generally. The woman is a bitch in this which is very fitting to my original idea about the whole situation, and the end setup where he proves he can kill by killing a little bug is excellent. Probably the best entry in my opinion, and I'm really jealous I didn't think of this to put it in the paper.

Grund: it's pretty clear you changed the approach midway, but I like how you're the first ot capitalize on the -unintentionally freudian, on my part- placement of the knife in the first of the last three panels.

Becky: pawsies! This comic irritates me because she basically blames him for everything and I want to punch her. I understand the guy's frustration on the end, but it kinda falls apart when you think he gave her a knife with which she would kill herself. She's obviously not the suicidal type. Bitch.

Fuzz: this was so 'obvious' that at first I didn't get it. The writing's great, great pace too, I just had a little 'huh, what? so he bought the knife to kill the roach? um' thing going on, probably my own problem. One of the better entries.

Corey:

Zooty: this was quite witty. Some of the text strains to go with the pictures which I guess was the whole challenge of the compo. The running joke is good, but the end is uneventful, not capitalizing on the kill-roach scenario.

Chrille: another great entry. The whole 'too slow' thing was great, the most limp attempt at assassination ever put to comics. The usage of the roach death was great too.

Ishmael: a competent usage of the end twist, the writing suffers a bit, overall pretty good. 'what kind of wildreness is out there' doesn't work at all, though.

Esseb: one of the best of this compo. The writing's pretty sparse, but it's ok. The twist is handled beautifully, him killing the bug both out of frustration and in the whole reincarnation theme. Beautiful, and another I wish I could go back in time and steal. boy, wouldn't you look stupid posting my own entry then, huh!

biothlebop again: This was weaker than the other one, good writing, though. Absurdity is good.

Visti: the end punchline is too much text I think... some of the writing could be refined a lot, as could the pacing.

Tuomas: this was actually pretty competent aside from the problem of the overexposition in the last three panels. We can figure this stuff out on our own without them being outlined to us, that's the fun with comics.

SSH: friendship bracelet

SpacePirateCaine: one of my favourite entries too. You make cycling sound like such an omnious, cutthroat affair. I find the setup both absurd and believable at the same time, which is an awesome thing to pull off. Great writing, the twist at the end hangs, but this is almost good enough for me to not care.

progz: as I don't get the quote at all, your entry doesn't do anything for me. I don't see the point of using a whole comic to make a pop culture reference.

chicky: this was fun. Besides the annoying font, the writing is ellyptical enough to suggest realistic speech which was good. The end alteration is both horrifying and hilarious. great. This marks the point where everybody starts to experiment with the format more than just the text (besides Las' entry which was very hardcore for reasons discussed further below).

Ivy: this was a contender to win as well, great writing, good and original usage of the dude's small speech bubbles, the twist is good, I really like this on the whole. Subtle but funny, nothing dramatic, a lot of stuff implied and left to the reader's imagination.

Haddas again: I loved this. Experiemental silent film style, nothing happens! This is great because when you have so little to go on, small things like the girl closing her eyes find new and 'heavy' significance. I was expecting someone to do a silent comic, but this was worked enough to not be just that. Great.

CJ: I find it awesome you did one of those. But I also realize why you never made an adventure game using AGS now!

biothlebop once more: I laughed at the gimmick when I first saw it. So I guess this entry did it's job.

Tiki: the facial hair was funny, not much else going on.

Limping: if this was one of the first entries it would rate better in my head than it does on page 3. It's a pretty straightforward setup, the twist in the end kinda works. Too understated for it's own good, probably. But then, who am I to talk? my punchline was "ok"...

biothlebop returns: This is brilliant. If only the helmet matched the art style more, this would easily be my favourite of the art-manipulation versions. Still, the last panel makes me laugh every time.

rharpe: oh oh I get it. debug! Only one question remains!

oranges: this is great for three reasons. First it's written very well, second, it's HOTT. Third, because it's page 3 and almost nobody is doing non-art-manipulation entries, most think the jokes have been made. This was smart and funny, works every angle the comic has going for it, and is original without changing the art. Easily one of my late favourites.

Skurwy: the thing I like the most about your entry is the font and text placement

nihilyst: I found this good overall, kinda strained to make the setup work. Somehow everybody that made the girl philosophise kinda lose me because I find the woman in the comic very annoying and quite unlike the person to have deep insightful things to say. Pete and oranges captured her best in that sense. Unilin gets away with the drama queen I'm going to kill myself thing exactly because she's still annoying about it and we can't sympathize.

Abisso: I don't have much to say. This one was pretty far-fetched for a straight scenario. The nice thing is that the end twist is ignored, and a new one is introduced basically at the panel where he hands him the knife back.

Pablo: oh you made the roach talk too! I saw this one coming, but still I found it funny, and generally well-written. Nice.

Helm: there's such a thing as doing too little in a comic, helm. Don't hide behind the claims of understatement. The characterization works, but the whole premise is kinda marred by just being too... little of anything, I guess. Your entry matches the expressions and the art generally the best, however. I wonder why.

iamus: some of your text is obscured by the head of the dude on one panel, is this intentional? I don't know if the text there changes the comic much significantly. I found the writing a bit tiresome on this one, and besides her being clearly insane I don't see what else your entry is supposed to be doing.

biothlebop and robin: my spoon is too big

gore unlimited: this was excellent again. One of the more inventive art-manip entries, still depends on good writing. I liked this a lot. If you're gonna force someone to read downwards though, mark the connectors better than you did.

steve: double whammy! For a straight-text entry, this is suprizingly good this late in the compo. I liked this a lot.

biothlebop begins: this was probably my least favourite of yours. The end gag is ok, but it isn't foreshadowed in any way. Absurd shifts are cool, but I'm sure you could have done more with this.

biothlebop and the masters of the universe: wonderfully metacontextual. The beginning of the end for this compo. I adore how he just steps up and leaves. This couldn't win on it's own, but if say, the entries were collected and published in a fanzine or something, this entry would be the cherry on top, really. We took it a bit further on the end, but it ends here, really.

SmootH: I am not one of the 3-4 people.

Grape: this is a variation of a lot of themes in this compo, as such, it would only rise above if it was written very well. It's not, but it's not bad. You suffer from telling too much with the 'the hitman!' thing at the end too. It's not needed, we can infer as much on our own.

biothlebop: this surprised me for how well it worked and how subtle the art manip was. If only the eye panel matched the art style of the rest of this. Funny and smartass-y, very good.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

progz: as I don't get the quote at all, your entry doesn't do anything for me. I don't see the point of using a whole comic to make a pop culture reference.

I didn't put it in there as a pop culture reference, those lines from Full Metal Jacket just seemed to fit that sequence of the comic.  Watch the movie, you oaf! 

[Sam.]

you shoulf win,

EDIT: Never mind.

[Nacho]

Farlander: this is I guess some inside joke referring to you staying at Grunds? As such, I can't really comment.

Yup. But the funny thing, for us (for Grund, Lore, and me), is that the room is exactly the same as Grundy's. Just identifying she and me with our stay in Miami has been an in-joke for three agsers... Sorry to hijack the thread,though. 

[SmootH]

Helm,

If you get the chance, lay your hands on a copy of Transformers: The Movie (the 1984 version). The dialogue that I borrowed to fill in the blanks occurs about 30 minutes in (right after the big fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron.) That was the emotional moment in the movie, afterwards, it's all action.  When I was a kid I watched that movie over and over, back then I had it memorized, it's starting to slip away though.

Well, I'm done nerding out for tonight. Thanks for reading!

[Dambuilder]

I know you said no more of these would be accept, so forgive me. But I didn't see this thread till today (haven't been online for a while) and simply couldn't resist.Ã, 

[Huw Dawson]

Yes... I know the comp's closed, but I feel this HAD to be done.



Hehehe. Pie. 

- Huw
Now with added sugar.

[Grapefruitologist]

That's hilarious, Huw xD