Star Wars 3-D #1 - Atop the Fourth Wall

Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. In this episode, Linkara reviews a Star Wars comic... IN 3-D!!!

http://atopthefourthwall.com

Originally uploaded February 11th, 2013.

ORIGINAL INFO: The Double Feature finale to the “Guns and Sorcery” Storyline!

RUMINATIONS: Spoony almost didn’t make it out here to film. He was staying in Minnesota for three days – the flight in, the filming, and then the flight home. He overslept and missed his flight, but fortunately we WERE able to get him a different flight out here, albeit at a later time… that ended up being delayed due to weather. Fortunately, at like 10 at night, we finally got him in and to his hotel. The next day, we spent about seven hours filming all his various sequences (joined later by Amethyst and of course Will), went out to movie night with some friends of mine where we watched most of a James Bond movie, then dinner with Amethyst, Will, and my family. It was a long, exhausting time, but it was damn fun. Amethyst was actually there to deliver two of the alternate Pollo bodies. The Battle Pollo body wasn’t ready yet, but the ground and normal body were and sadly there was no place to fit them in.

Ultimately, since the storylines are made in homage to the various franchises they end on, the entire storyline was meant to be an homage to Star Wars (and you don’t need to mention how Hutts are immune to blaster fire – what a convenient evolution!). The hero’s journey, meeting a mystical being who taught the hero a lot, the character development, the pull of dark and light forces on the hero, fighting a mirror of themselves, etc., etc.

I decided to have Dr. Insano be the final villain for a few reasons. One was that, as I’ve said before, I always felt bad that he never really fulfilled his promise at the end of the original Mechakara arc that he was back. Having a clear-cut villain was helpful to show that Jaeris could be a good ally if given the opportunity. This also gave me a chance to show off what Insano had been doing with all the tech he took at the end of To Boldly Flee (felt that was a thread left hanging). Those are actually the same kind of gloves used for the power-enhancing energy gloves in that film, just with less armored bits put onto them (for cosplaying reference, they’re Nite-Owl gloves from Watchmen). Insano’s use of M. Bison quotes is deliberate. The last time he had a major victory/defeat was back during Kickassia when he fought the Nostalgia Critic in the M. Bison outfit, so his use of them was an attempt to claim his superiority.

Neutro’s hallways are a recolored version of Comicron One’s hallways, but the cockpit is an oooollld CGI set I had made for a mech suit back when I was younger and playing around with 3DS Max, thinking I might be able to make good CG artwork with it. I made okay art with it, but nowhere near what some people like Marobot could. Will is actually the one in the Neutro suit (it was originally designed for Liz to wear and sadly I am a bit too overweight for it) and I would have loved to show off more of it marching around, but the same problem as the last time I used it – too much green bleeding into it due to its shiny surface. Fortunately, I did a better job of covering it up this time and I was able to get this out on time (only about three hours before the release time, if I recall correctly).

Margaret’s minor change in appearance was to explain the fact that her actress, well, ages. And of course I wanted to bring her back to bring the storyline to its finale, tying in all these disparate elements together. There’s actually a lot that happened throughout the Gunslinger arc, being the one with the most amount of story in it, and certainly one of the most exhausting I’ve ever done. To the point that I got sick after completing it (lasted for quite a while, too – was only just starting to recover at the beginning of the next episode). Since I also had a convention that weekend, I ended up skipping the following week and pushing everything back. But hey, I release two episodes (both of which were VERY storyline-heavy) on the same day, so I think it all worked out.