"living" Mosaic

[Toa Deserok]

In war, you eliminate 2 things every day:

"The enemy's life,

and The life you seek to live."

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WARNING: Comic is a big file, so you might wait a little bit.

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Uncolored and unedited comic down below with no words

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Ever since the Great Abyss (BZP's downtime), many of us had been waiting patiently for BZP's return and had taken up several hobbies and interests to keep us occupied since them. Some of us decided to make more stop motions, some decided to brush up on their artistic skills, and some decided to stay in contact with other members for talks about normal, everyday life. I happened to do all that and more while on my free time, and this is one of the results.

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With this being a mosaic, I decided to format it in a short story format so that anyone can jump right into the comic and get a general assessment of the character and the plot at the same time. It took me several weeks, buying week's time to get it painted when it only took a few days to physically draw.

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Based on my epic Disgrace Amongst the Skrall, it should be an interesting read. Hopefully, you guys should have your appetite for story telling only part filled, otherwise here is a link. Otherwise, enjoy and comment on it.

-Toa Deserok

Edited October 29, 2011 by Toa Deserok

[toastergrl]

Wow. I mean, just, wow. Great job. You are a comic maker unafraid to rest on the crutch of pixelisation that so many of us here use. Plus you tried to fit it within that horridly misshapen thing called canon. It's always difficult to fill the gaps of those who came before you, so I commend you for that. The only thing I'd say is... seek out better fonts! Default Windows/Mac/whatever fonts are always subpar. Look elsewhere for something that suits each individual character! (although perhaps since there's only one character commenting, I can't blame you for use of a singular font.) All in all... I know I probably shouldn't say this, but kutgw.

Edited October 28, 2011 by Tapika

[Shadonix]

This is amazing ~~~~~~~~ But yeah everything Tap said. The art is epic, story looks good so far, all that. Personally, DaFont is a pretty good font website and you can get a bunch of really specific stuff there too so yeah.

[Toa Deserok]

Wow. I mean, just, wow. Great job. You are a comic maker unafraid to rest on the crutch of pixelisation that so many of us here use. Plus you tried to fit it within that horridly misshapen thing called canon. It's always difficult to fill the gaps of those who came before you, so I commend you for that. The only thing I'd say is... seek out better fonts! Default Windows/Mac/whatever fonts are always subpar. Look elsewhere for something that suits each individual character! (although perhaps since there's only one character commenting, I can't blame you for use of a singular font.) All in all... I know I probably shouldn't say this, but kutgw.

That's the one thing that I find kinda ridiculous about some of the topics. They clearly need to spend hours one pixelations just to get the sprite for one character, but they could just easily draw a comic strip within the same time and scan the picture through. This isn't to hate on their work (they work REALLY hard on them), it's just that they get kinda repetitive when almost 99.9% of comic users on BZP refer to nothing to hand drawn comics and only do pixelations. As for the font, I've mostly just used windows for my fonts. I suppose that I could try looking through web sites for different fonts. Otherwise, I've never had a problem with them. Thank you otherwise for the comment and the criticism. I hope there is more advice for me if I should ever do another mosaic.

-Toa Deserok

[Akuna Toa of Sonics]

Wow, a hand-drawn comic. Pretty rare around here!Aside from that, I like how thoughtful it is, what with a warrior going against tradition.

[Iver]

Wow, this is pretty nice. And as Tapika said, you tried to fit it in canon. But why Kiina? I would think that being a survivor, would be the first to run for the hills. Not to mention that most ordinary Skrall have no free will and were complete #####, and would have no qualms with annihilating an enemy. Oh well, maybe he's an exception, like Baranus. He was pretty cool. ... I'm sorry, is reading hard for you?

[-DJ-]

I am familiar with the Transformers Mosaics, the style of which I think you tried to capture here (unless you didn't and there's some other mosaic I'm unaware of). I have to say, it really works! I like how you've put a more 3-dimensional spin on otherwise 1-dimensional characters like the Skrall, introducing a form of honour and all that. I honestly don't understand how I never thought to make a Bionicle Mosaic...You are quite brilliant.Oh, and I guess I should commemorate you on choosing to draw this by hand rather than using pixels. Puts me and several others to shame, really.Overall, fantastic job! Keep up the awesome work.

[D-Shadow]

Well, I now know what I have to read. I like the pencils more, the colored version. The penciling has much more clear detail, the colored one looks flat due to only one-shaded. Not that it looks bad, it just looks much too simple. I'd love to see more.

[Toa Deserok]

Wow, this is pretty nice. And as Tapika said, you tried to fit it in canon. But why Kiina? I would think that being a survivor, would be the first to run for the hills. Not to mention that most ordinary Skrall have no free will and were complete #####, and would have no qualms with annihilating an enemy. Oh well, maybe he's an exception, like Baranus. He was pretty cool. ... I'm sorry, is reading hard for you?

I decided to have Kiina in there originally since there were only a few glatorian that could have the canon freedom of exploration (since they weren't discussed in winter 09 storyline). I originally set her to be a love interest in story, but it later fit for her just to be a close friend figure of Malduki's (the Skrall). As for Malduki's character, it is supposed to be a sort of black sheep toned story, since I don't think even the Mongolians could be without sympathetic soldiers. You should at least expect sympathy within any small proportion of an army, since they still are human in a way.

Well, I now know what I have to read. I like the pencils more, the colored version. The penciling has much more clear detail, the colored one looks flat due to only one-shaded. Not that it looks bad, it just looks much too simple. I'd love to see more.

Good thing to. Enjoy the epic while you're at it. As for the coloring, I don't know how to make it more complex when I have only Gimp to color with. I'm actually wondering if somebody has advice over that sort of thing. I could have gone with the uncolored, but I figured text was better with more color to stand out. Either way, thank you for all the comments and criticisms. I'm definitely hoping to make more of these, but could afford more advice like this so I can do better the next time around.

-Toa Deserok