Bricks of the Dead AMA

Okay everyone, with the comic ending, I thought I’d give you all an opportunity to ask whatever you want about the comic, plot changes, abandoned arcs, etc. Just ask your questions in the comments below, and I’ll start adding them up here with an answer.

Fire when ready!

Questions:

From Mick: “What’s next? Will you make another comic? If you did, what would it be about?”

Answer: I’ve got another project I started a week or so ago. I’ll likely announce it next week. I may make another comic at some point, but I’m definitely ready for a break from making comics. If I do another comic, I’m going to spend a lot more time thinking about it before I just dive in. I may even try to make digital art rather than photographic art. As far as the subject goes, I’m honestly not sure. I’ve flirted with a few ideas over the years, but one I keep coming back to is the Viking invasion of England.

From TheWraithPlayer: “Would you consider re-posting the comic uninterrupted? Going through the comic, one runs into a lot of guest comics and extras, some of which are really neat stuff, but for someone who just wants to have a BotD marathon, it is frustrating having to skip through a dozen or more non-comic related content. My solution for this is to re-post the comic and the extras separately, maybe even condensing the comics into eight or twelve panel episodes instead of four.
Thanks for reading.”

Answer: That’s a good question, and something I’ve been struggling with on and off for a while now. I’m in the process of going through and re-categorizing the guest and other non-canon strips. Once that’s done, I think I have a solution to make a canon-comic only list.

From Pepper Valentino: “What are some of your favorite scenes from the comic? Why?”

Answer: Oh, good question. My absolute favorite scene was when Sam put on the hockey pads and ran outside with the boombox to draw the zombies away. It was one of the few times in the comic where I felt like I really captured the essence of what I was shooting for.

Beyond that, I also very much enjoyed the arc where Ted is re-united with his family, and the tragedy that book-ended that event (i.e. Gene and Ted ending up getting killed. I thought they were both relatively shocking moments, and I really wanted to have a character get killed due to the neglegence of another character.

From Pepper Valentino: Since you mentioned it. What are some “plot changes, abandoned arcs” that you had?

Answer: I answered these in the write-up of the final episode of the comic.

From Pepper Valentino: If all the BotD characters were running for President, who would you vote for? Murphy seems like the obvious choice, to me. But cases could be made for Cheryl, Sam, and some others as well. Oh yeah, you actually killed off the president, in the comic.

Answer: I had to think about this one a bit, and I’m honestly still not sure. I think it’s a toss up between Cheryl and Gene. Cheryl because she’s interested in bringing people together, but isn’t afraid to stand up and take action when the need arises. Gene because he’s decisive and a natural leader. He pushes people along when the need to be, even when they don’t think they’re able.

From BrickVoid: How many continuity errors are in the comic? How many outtakes – discarded photos – did you wind up with that could have worked but for one reason or another just weren’t what you wanted?

Answer: I can’t even begin to imagine how many continuity errors there are. Probably hundreds of minor ones. It’s so easy to accidentally move something on the set between shots. Beyond that, I’d guess there are probably a couple of dozen major continuity errors as well. People being in the wrong area, responding to the wrong thing, knowing things they shouldn’t, etc.

As far as outtakes go, a lot. I typically shoot between four and twelve shots for each one that makes it into the comic. Occasionally I find that the setup I was going for just didn’t work, so I’ll have to re-shoot that frame, or possibly the entire comic after editing it together.

Just for grins, I checked the properties on my backup to see how many individual files are in my “comics” folder, which holds all the shots, edits, and final comics for Bricks of the Dead. I ended up with 28,253 files in 997 folders. That includes all the canon comics, plus special episodes and guest strips I did for others. It does not include the files I made prior to moving the comic to Bricks of the Dead. All told, it’s 125 GB worth of stuff.

Hold crap.

From BrickVoid: “How many times did you walk by a LEGO set in a shop, or browse online, and notice a set, minifig, or piece, and think “Hey, that could be useful to my shoots for BotD?””

Answer: Too often to count. My wife got pretty annoyed by this after a while and shut it down. Eventually, we agreed that I’d only spend money I got from advertising, donations, and freelance work on the comic. Pretty reasonable, really.

LEGO was one thing, but the camera equipment was a whole different animal. I definitely upgraded things over the course of the comic, including four or five different lighting setups, background, lenses, and even a new camera at some point. I never got everything on my wishlist, but my wishlist was insane.

From BrickVoid: “This question’s a more practical one: How long do you reckon it’ll take you to go through the character bios and finalize everybody’s bio, of the remaining survivors that aren’t dead or zombiefied?If Stewart did get wounded by a bleedingly obvious gunshot, why didn’t he get a wound effect that was actually visible? This bit bothers me to no end. Maybe you can fix it, I dunno now that the comic has ended. It’s kind of one of those tidying up things you’d have to do.”

Answer: Okay, two questions in one here. Let’s address Stewart first. I didn’t show a big spurt of blood because I didn’t want to give away that Stewart had been hit too soon. I tried to position the setup where it wouldn’t be ridiculous to not show the blood. It sounds like I didn’t quite hit the mark there.

In terms of the bios, honestly that’s probably only a couple of hours of work. I’ll pick away at that.