No Naming Names, part one

As you can see, I decided to go with a completely different style for the online computer game than any gaming strips I've done in the past. The problem I have is that most gaming strips feel like a cheat, like a dream sequence, particularly if the conceit of the strip is that you're not supposed to know that the characters are in a computer game.

At first I was going to go with screenshots from Vice City, just with the faces superimposed over the top so it was plain who was who -- but since Vice City is actually on a pretty crappy screen res when compared to how I do the comic, I ended up using the screenshots as a guide and drawing over them in PotatoShop. Instead of filling the shapes in block colours, I used gradients, so each of the files with the characters on are made up of a good number of layers of bits of the clothing, skin, etc. If you compare them with Vice City people, they also have larger heads -- keeping in line with my usual bad anatomy, and also so you can see the facial expressions.

The bench they're sitting on is Vice City terrain, drawn over in the same way, but the building in the background is a straight-out screenshot. The only alterations I made to it were cosmetic ones to take off the stats and gunsight on screen, then flipped the image to make it the same angle as the foreground.

In order to keep the gradients looking nice instead of choppy, I had to split the image in two and save each half separately -- which makes me glad I wrote the script the way I did, with such a clear division in the centre. It's also made the filesize huge, and I apologise if that's caused loading time problems for anyone -- the next strip will be similar, but after that there's no plans for a gradient-heavy strip for a while.

Best bits: the online game style; the script (that I rewrote four times before I did this one, and then I rewrote the hell out of it to make it work the way it does.)
Worst bits: the filesize, alas; the lack of backgrounds on the Milton Hoight panels.