Zombie Cliche Lookout: The Same as Murder
In a zombie story, you’ve got a couple of choices when dealing with an enemy. You can kill them outfight, force them out, or forgive them. Let’s say you’re not up for killing or forgiveness, so that person is out. Now you have another decision to make: do they get to take anything with them? It’s not a terribly easy question to answer, especially when you consider all the factors that can influence your decision. How long have they been in the group? Did they bring supplies with them? How will others in the group react to them being forced out? How will they react to someone leaving and taking supplies? I could go on and on.
The trouble is that isn’t just a simple moral choice. Booting someone out on their own with no supplies might just be a death sentence, but giving them items your group might later need could doom you down the road. There’s not really an easy choice here, which is why it shows up so frequently in zombie stories.
About this Episode:
I tried to show Emma’s difficult decision with her facial expression. I would have liked to “soften” it a bit, and add another expression between angry and scared/concerned, but there are only so many female faces available, unfortunately.
Other News:
I’m very happy to report that I’m finally getting out of my boot/soft cast this week. According to my doctor, I can slowly phase it out over the next few days. The first time I walked on it without the boot, it felt very, very strange. My leg feels very rubbery and weak. It’ll likely take some time before I’m back to normal.
Oh, and I almost forgot: I’ll be announcing the winner of the game giveaway in Mondays’ comic, so look out for that.
Discussion Question: Is it Murder?
Sticking with the theme of today’s episode, I wonder if you guys would agree that kicking a person out of group without supplies in the midst of the zombie apocalypse is tantamount to murder.
I go back and forth on this one, and would love to see some other insight.
Typo alert: Discussion question title: Is–>it 😀
I wonder what glasses Dave was wearing to miss a typo in print this large and emboldened? 😉
Fixed. I don’t know how I miss stuff like that sometimes. It’s a special talent I have.
Heh. 😀
I wonder if Emma has someone to turn to, apart from these people who recently died or were zombiefied and had to be killed? I’m hoping Sam will at least ask her where she’ll go. If she’s got nowhere to go, it could mean an even worse fate than becoming a zombie or food for them. Even if it’s only going to be until they can get to somewhere they’re both happy with, I’d prefer Emma stick with Sam until their situation changes.
Excellent questions, BV.
Wow, Emma really sticks to her morals even though Sam just directly and indirectly slaughtered her entire family.
A woman’s got to have a code.
But Sam does have that mighty axe…I think he’s good to go.
Glad to hear your legs getting better! I wouldn’t consider throwing someone out into a crowd of zombies as murder, but I do agree that the person is as good as dead.
I’m glad to hear it as well. This broken leg thing is getting old.
They could be as good as dead, depending on when and where they were exiled, so to speak.
You would have to consider the whole situation and person. Some people are going to do OK with a knife and a piece of rope (John Rambo) while others can’t be sent on a supply run with a ten person escort, body armor and a tank without getting half the team killed.
Excellent point, RT.
I’m launching my own webcomic soon, and I’m struggling with the question of facial expressions. My characters are famous Irish authors from throughout history. Consequently, their faces are very specific and either have one emotion option or none.
What do you (Dave and others) think of the following?:
1) not changing the faces to go with emotions at all…simply using context and dialogue to convey emotion
2) taking pictures of a range of Lego mouths and using photoshop to change the expression and create emotion when necessary
Oh man, that’s a tough call. Doing it in Photoshop is going to be tough because of all the different angles you’re going to be shooting at. Photographing the characters at a flat angle gets boring really fast.
(Sorry, this is my first posting in this format, but it occurred to me that I put this info in the wrong place, and that you wouldn’t see my reply. I can’t figure out how to delete the errant ones)
I’m thinking of either shooting 1/4, full, 3/4 versions of pensive/angry/scared (they’re all already happy) or just shooting it straight on and using skew/distort to add a bit of perspective. I’m thinking that the element may be small enough that a slight distortion would be no big deal.
I don’t have any strips up, but if you click my avatar, it’ll take you to the page where I have the characters’ photos, so you can see what I tried to do in making them and which faces I’m employing.
Give it a try and see how it works out. It definitely looks interesting so far. Oscar Wilde’s got an interesting face; are you going to keep the eyes closed like that?
Yeah, at least that’s what I’ve done in the past. I came up with the idea when I had to do a project for one of my doctoral classes. I made an Oscar comic book:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Ec17hOnmtUWWdIVWZKcER3VXM/edit?usp=sharing
Granted, that was for an assignment, so it’s not exactly full of thrills and chills. The actual strip will mix some xkcd-style literary humor with elements from Irish mythology in order to have both laughs and action. In the booklet above, I made the panels by putting the photos into MS Word and using the speech-bubble feature.
I’m thinking of either shooting 1/4, full, 3/4 versions of pensive/angry/scared (they’re all already happy) or just shooting it straight on and using skew/distort to add a bit of perspective. I’m thinking that the element may be small enough that a slight distortion would be no big deal.
(I don’t have any strips up, but if you click my avatar, it’ll take you to the page where I have the characters’ photos, so you can see what I tried to do in making them and which faces I’m employing)
Antaine, would you consider making a page on that site where you have before and after shots to better demonstrate what you’re trying to do?
If you’re worried about images taking up space you could either do them all in one large composite image or insert two images into the same graphic side by side for each character.
Okay, here’s what I just did in a couple minutes. I found some Lego faces on the web and used an old picture I had of some of my figures. The top image is my original. The bottom two reflect happy and angry. I’m thinking that actually looks pretty good. I could make a png library of a variety of mouths, and I would use this special effect sparingly.
http://oi62.tinypic.com/29gd3z4.jpg
That looks rather excellent! 😀 I think Dave has gotta start taking notes! 😉 And give you credit for the idea as well! 🙂
And just so you know, you could also get a minifig customizer, perhaps even TLG themselves, interested in running up a few lots of printed minifigs if you plan on using them frequently! 😉 Might be a little expensive but if you plan it right everyone could benefit! 🙂
Thanks! I try to keep things as stock as possible, but I’m not above modification when absolutely necessary. After all, some of what I try to do, Lego doesn’t touch with their product line. Check out the link I gave in my reply to Dave above if you want to see what my “strip-ifi-cation” will ultimately look like (I made a comic book for a lit class I took).
Some awesome stuff here; I could indeed learn a lot. You should consider making this a thread in the forum, since topics seem to die after the next comic gets posted.
Tough question. It depends on the environment. If you can see the zombies milling about on a daily basis and you send them out with nothing then, yes, you are likely killing them indirectly. However, if you are in a remote area with some opportunities for food and you haven’t seen a zombie in days then perhaps they will have enough time to get their own supplies and survive on their own. Maybe.
NOOOO make her go with him please!!!!
ooooooo and on the way they find three people, but ones bit so the four of them…… I can’t think of what to say next…. I know you arent going to go with what i’m saying… its just.. it was in my head… 🙂