The Order of the Stick

[Nappy]

I love the Order!!! They're so adorable!! The Giant is brilliant!! The free swords in Elan cracked me up so much! Can that really be a way to get weapons in to our real game?! ;D

[The Giant]

As penance for our service outage, a bonus OOTS is up right now. Enjoy #7 as Durkon communes with his deity.

[Ashlock]

Another great one. Man, I could easily envision these in Dragon magazine.

[The Giant]

OK, so two things:

1.) I put up strip #8 up just now. Haley gets some screen time.

2.) In an effort to standardize when everyone can come look at new strips, I am going to try to put new strips up Wednesday and Sunday nights, from now on. That way, there will always be one fresh for you Monday morning when you get to work and decide to slack off and check my site instead of doing your job. I aim to make your life easier. ;D

[Bogotter]

Cool 2 per week! Just out of curiousity....how many episodes are done ahead of time? How many do you have ready right now?

[The Giant]

I try to have 3 ready-to-go at all times, so whenever I post one, I sit down and create a new one. That way if I get swamped, I have be at least a week before I get in trouble. So yeah, I've got 3 more ready right now. (But you can't see them yet!) :P

[WampaX]

The Humor . . . the humor . . .

[Bogotter]

I try to have 3 ready-to-go at all times, so whenever I post one, I sit down and create a new one. That way if I get swamped, I have be at least a week before I get in trouble. So yeah, I've got 3 more ready right now. (But you can't see them yet!) :P

Out of curiosity.....how long does one typcially take to make? Are they done in Photoshop or some other similar program?

[The Giant]

They are done in Adobe Illustrator, which is a vector-based art program. The time they take varies wildly, based on how many new characters there are (such as the ogres) and how many of the regular character pics are in positions I've already used. I have a "library" document where I have 10-12 poses for each character, which I use as the starting point for every pic. Time is usually between 1-3 hours, although lately it's been on the 1-1.5 hour side, since I am getting more and more pics in my library each time.

Not counting, of course, the time it takes to come up with the joke and nail down the exact dialogue. That varies too much to even say; I have ideas that I have been sitting on for weeks because I can't get the punchline right.

[Bogotter]

I've recently gotten my hands on the Adobe suite of software and I've been pawing my way through Photoshop. I have Illustrator too but haven't loaded it yet. Is there a steep learning curve on it? Meaning......without knowing what I'm doing what can I expect to accomplish with Illustrator that I can't with Photoshop?

[WampaX]

Man, what I wouldn't give for full working copies of After Effects, Premier and a good Digital Recorder . . . and a compute to handle all that well.

DVFX was the most fun I've had in a college course.
My Group's project. I am the narrator for both the movie and "makng of."

http://swiki.cc.gatech.edu:8080/dvfx2001/45

[The Giant]

I've recently gotten my hands on the Adobe suite of software and I've been pawing my way through Photoshop. I have Illustrator too but haven't loaded it yet. Is there a steep learning curve on it? Meaning......without knowing what I'm doing what can I expect to accomplish with Illustrator that I can't with Photoshop?

Illustrator has, in my opinion, a steeper learning curve than Photoshop. That is because Psp can be learned by screwing around on existing photos; you can learn by trial and error. Illustrator, OTOH, is all about creating from scratch most of the time. The vector pen tools are pretty counterintuitive, and you kind of need to know what you are trying to accomplish before you begin. I know plenty of professionals who use Photoshop daily but bring their Illustrator questions to me.

[RawBearNYC]

I use a different program: Paint Shop Pro by Jasc Software. Largely because it's cheaper (used to be free), than it's commercial cousin. It's very powerful, tho. It can do about 85% of what Photoshop does (stop scoffing Rich), including using Photoshop plug ins. It also has all the vector based graphics tools built in. I think there's an annoying learning curve with all graphics software (I think it's the nature of the tool and an inherent counterintuitiveness of graphic editing).

As a side note (maybe this whole post is a side note), Alex Lindsey of DV Garage has been doing a regular weekly spot on TechTV's show Call for Help on useing Photoshop. Their website, http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp has all of the tutorials he's done. Most of them have, lately, had to do with fixing photos, but I've enjoyed some real gems in there (Unsharpen? it's the win!).

[The Giant]

Oh yeah, Unsharpen Mask is the way to go when sharpening phots. Oddly, it's name sounds like it would make a photo less sharp, but it doesn't.

And the Sunday night strip is up.

[Daveric]

Hmmmmmm. Just what exactly is that bard up too now, I wonder? ;D

[Bogotter]

LOL! Good comic. Reminds me of when James Bull, the minotaur, was turned into a woman by one of those!

Question though.....I've been thinking this whole time that Vaarsuvius was a female.....but in this last strip he/she was called V-man. So Vaarsuvius is a guy?

[Ashlock]

Question though.....I've been thinking this whole time that Vaarsuvius was a female.....but in this last strip he/she was called V-man. So Vaarsuvius is a guy?

Yeah? Not sure how you can tell, but I assumed he was male, too. Maybe the name? Nahh...he just seemed it.

[Bogotter]

Yeah? Not sure how you can tell, but I assumed he was male, too. Maybe the name? Nahh...he just seemed it.

I thought it was a girl though. I was thinking of Vaarsuvius as a Velma type from Scooby Doo....the book wormy type girl. In episode 3 Haley was talking to Vaarsuvius about the color of her boots....for some reason I thought Haley was trying to talk with the only other female in the party about style and how they didn't match. That's what made it funny to me.....when Vaarsuvius couldn't relate.

[Daveric]

It's not that hard to figure out which of the characters are male and female (although some are tricky). It's just a matter of looking for Rich's carefully added in features. (usually a bit of cleavage, long hair, or showing of the belly button) ;)

[The Giant]

I have no problem with Vaarsuvius' sex being ambiguous. He/she is an elf, after all.

All you can infer from the last strip is that *Roy* thinks Vaarsuvious is male. ;)

[Bogotter]

I have no problem with Vaarsuvius' sex being ambiguous. He/she is an elf, after all.

All you can infer from the last strip is that *Roy* thinks Vaarsuvious is male. ;)

Cool.....I like that you didn't tell us either way. That way I can keep the same image in my head that she is female.....at least for the time being!

Do you like how I even had to quote her diaglogue from a specific strip number? You know it's doing well when people are quoting the strip and reciting episode numbers!

[Ashlock]

It's just a matter of looking for Rich's carefully added in features. (usually a bit of cleavage, long hair, or showing of the belly button)

Hey! As a long-haired guy, I resent that! >:( ;)

[RawBearNYC]

It's PAT!

[Bogotter]

It's PAT!

So what would happen if Pat (or Vaarsuvius) put on the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity? Hmmmmm?

[WampaX]

Wait . . . Rich, you had me all the way up to the point where the party left a magic item. Parties don't leave magic items, even if they are cursed and will bring great doom upon their heads for even thinking of possessing such an item.

The reality of the strip is broken for me now . . . :P

Good job so far, the real test comes around issue 100, but we should have a new edition to make fun of by then ;D

[The Giant]

It's not that hard to figure out which of the characters are male and female (although some are tricky). It's just a matter of looking for Rich's carefully added in features. (usually a bit of cleavage, long hair, or showing of the belly button) ;)

Daveric, I would point out that your OWN AVATAR has long hair. So :P.

[RawBearNYC]

Sorry, Bogotter, I don't know if Rich was using these when you guys played years ago, but he's been using stick figure minis against us for a while, and i've come to learn that all of his female avatars have apparent breasts.

If you take a gander at http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/yabb...num=1060497491 you'll notice this. Even the Dwarven Female in full plate has them :) Varsuvvius has a rectangular torso, he's a dude :P

[The Giant]

You don't know that. You are only drawing that conclusion based on previous examples. For all you know, I deliberately decided to create a sexually-ambiguous elf; in such a circumstance, I would clearly break my own "rules" on how I drew them. :P

[RawBearNYC]

Ahh, but you see, there is no sexual ambiguity. Women have bumpy torsos, men have rectangular. There'd be no ambiguity if the torso is rectangular, it's a guy :P

[Bogotter]

Ahh, but you see, there is no sexual ambiguity. Women have bumpy torsos, men have rectangular. There'd be no ambiguity if the torso is rectangular, it's a guy :P

V-Man will always be a woman to me. ;D