Zombie Cliche Lookout: Time Management
When dealing with zombies, or at least the slow version, dealing with the undead can often turn into a situation of time management. That management is pretty important, naturally, because one mistake could easily get someone killed. The problem is that there are potential distractions everywhere. Getting excited about finding a box of bottled water could end up causing your death. That makes for a hard life.
A careful survivor can plot a mental map of where the zombies are and how quickly they could return should the survivors get noticed. Of course, this sort of thinking requires a good deal of focus. Losing that focus, even momentarily, gives the zeds a chance to “sneak up”, so to speak. This happens pretty consistently in zombie stories since it’s a pretty great way to build up tension or kill off a few characters if things have been going too well for too long.
About this Episode:
When working with LEGO, your options for posing minifigs, especially in “action” stances, are relatively limited. The figures, after all, only articulate at the neck, shoulders, wrists, and legs. Even then, the movement is either rotational (neck, shoulders, and wrists) or swinging (legs). If you go too crazy, they become very hard to balance, although you can often rig something up with sticky tack or other rigging.
Bearing this in mind, my go to post is a panicked character running toward the camera (in this case, running at an angle past the camera). I think it strikes a great balance between looking good, playing to the strengths of LEGO minifigs, and selling the action I’m going for.
Discussion Question: Playing Against Zombie Weakness
At this point, the relative strengths and weaknesses of a zombie in Bricks of the Dead are pretty well established. Bearing this in mind, what strategies could you use to take advantage of those known weaknesses, or even turning their strengths into a weakness?
The singular typo I could find for today: “bottle water” bottle–>bottled 😀
Wow, not bad!
With the diversion Clark’s created being so short-lived, I wonder what is going through his mind, as it would be obvious to me that Clark could see part, if not all, of the action going on outside from his POV, and no doubt is panicking or very edgy right now. 😀 So, is Dave going to show us things from Clark’s POV, and possibly from the POV of Vicky and her kids?
We’ll be checking in with Clark, Vicky, and the kids pretty soon, but not to see these episodes from their POV.
Well, perhaps briefly in a flashback later on then. 😀 It’s always interesting to show the action from various angles. Film makers use it all the time! 😀
Also, it doesn’t seem like Barb made enough noise by herself to attract the zombies to her presence, so what did Dave use to set that up? Did they just randomly swing around and spot Barb once the noises they’d gone to investigate were identified as being inedible, or did they pick up some noise Barb made which was louder than I pictured it being?
They aren’t only attracted by noise. They also notice movement, and that other zombies are alerted to potential prey. In this case, a zombie noticed Barb, and the others noticed that zombie
I’d check in with your continuity checker, then. It seems like a zombie in the middle of the pack who might have been obscured by other zombies – hard to tell from the angles though – somehow spotted Barb and the rest somehow spotted him! 😀 And yet, a zombie at the very back of the pack only just found out! 😀
It looks okay, though, seems it’s holding true to the fact that some zombies are slower moving than others. 😀
Last, but no least, who else thinks Barb should try to find a way to reduce the numbers of the zombie horde she’s currently running away from, and do you reckon she should be looking for a spot where she could hit them but they would have either great difficulty hitting her, or not be able to reach her?
There aren’t that many of them right now, and they aren’t coming at her from multiple directions. She could definitely take a few out with some luck.
Hello Dave, do you know if the person that runs Citizen Brick takes suggestions for printed products that they make, if so, how can I contact them?
I’m not sure if they directly ask for suggestions, but the guy who runs CB is really nice. Here’s their contact info: https://citizenbrick.com/pages/contact-us.
They also do custom printing, but I imagine that’s fairly pricey.
Minimum order of 200 pieces- starting at $400 seems to be quite expensive
Citizen Brick are well known for their custom zombie prints, however the other day I was looking at their products page and spotted an ”ACU Camo” printed torso and legs.
I am sure this would be very popular if they made it into a custom zombie design.
Creating the concept of movement with 2D and more specificaly with LEGO might be my favorite challenge in LEGO webcomic… I just love it!
The angle of the torso and the lower part to show a character running, the more angle ,the more speed impression you give, chosing the right camera angle to accentuate the movement for a fight or someone falling… So many examples…
Finding the right camera angle so you can show the legs, which leg is front, which is back… Same with the arms what if my character is upposed to look behind him while running… Gets me excited just to think about it… I think I would have love to be a director!