Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: The Movie: The Game

"Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me." - Amy Wong

You can't get fooled again. EA only has one movie tie-in game left, and Deathly Hallows Part 1 is not a promising lead-in to say the least.
 The game starts with an awkward over-the-shoulder-on-rails-shooter section that has you knocking Death Eaters out of the sky from Hagrid's sidecar. Once you've arrived at the Burrow, the wedding is on and you can walk around and talk to various guests including Ron and Hermione who like to do a weird kind of backwards run thing if you get too close to them. At this point the game gives you a spell called four-points that is used to show you which way to go. Using this mechanic over something like a map seems very lazy, and the spell never seems to want to co-operate anyway. If you are facing in completely the wrong direction when firing the spell, it can be difficult to spot or even realise that it worked at all, which it sometimes straight up doesn't.
 During the attack on the wedding, the game's main focus gameplay-wise kicks in: third-person cover shooting, which consists mostly of standing around and mashing R2 while locked on to enemies. Cover is next to useless, the only time you'll need it is the few instances when there are too many enemies on screen at once. Otherwise, firing Stupefy at everyone and their Protego charms (they only prolong the inevitable) until they fall down will get you through. There are even points when you can simply run past enemies, the rather sad AI is powerless to stop you.
 After the wedding escape, the trio are hiding behind a building and Ron decides that a random person standing at the other end of the street might be a Death Eater, so Harry is tasked with making his way over there to check them out. Putting on Harry's cloak puts you in a first person perspective, which completely kills your peripheral vision, making it all the more difficult to dodge unsuspecting muggles who like to bump into you and make you start again. After navigating around people, poles and metal fence things, as well as standing still to wait for your stealth bar to recharge, Harry looks at the person for a second and somehow deduces that they are just another muggle. Your reward for reporting this shocking news back to Ron is having to repeat the task twice more, with Ron's suspects being further away each time. Turns out none of them are Death Eaters.
 After a few average (at least in comparison to the rest of the game) levels in Grimmauld Place and the Ministry, the trio find themselves tailing Dean Thomas and Griphook through the countryside. As if this shit wasn't tedious enough already, this portion of the game has you traversing Whomping Willows, Cornish Pixies, Snatchers and all manner of other bothers just to catch another snippet of Dean and Griphook's conversation. I'm reminded of a line from the PS1 Emperor's New Groove game, when they are tied to a log in a river: "This scene was much shorter in the film." And how.
 At several points in these wilderness sequences you come upon a boulder blocking your path. The solution is simply to blast it away with a spell. There's no challenge, it's impossible to fail at, and it serves no purpose other than to make an already tedious game that little bit longer.
 Speaking of making things long and tedious, there are a few times throughout the game when the story progression is interrupted by completely disjointed and unskippable side missions that all consist of some form of "Rescue muggle-borns and kill Snatchers/Death Eaters." One of these is set in the Ministry directly after the trio's daring escape and arrival in the woods. One throws unkillable Inferi at you to contend with while carrying out the mission. Another plops Harry in the middle of a deep cavern and tasks you to "Escape the dragon's lair!" with zero explanation for how or why he is there. There aren't even any muggle-borns to save, you just run past the AI impaired Snatchers and fire four-corners until you reach the exit. Not even the dragon can do enough damage to kill you before you've run right past it (the same goes for Whomping Willows).
 Once Harry and Hermione figure out how to destroy Horcruxes, Ron has a tantrum and fucks off. Anyone who has ever watched the Lion King and then gone and played the Pride Lands world from Kingdom Hearts II will know just how much changing a scene's music and lighting and such in the transition from film to cutscene can completely kill the atmosphere. Ron leaving and pretty much all of the story points in the game have this problem. Honestly, I don't understand why developers don't just use actual clips from films as cutscenes any more.
 So Harry and Hermione go on their merry way, sneaking muggle-borns out of Godric's Hollow and following creepy old ladies into creepy old houses. Eventually Ron comes back and it's time to destroy the locket. This is one of the most ridiculously frustrating boss battles I think I've ever seen. As the fight begins, the game informs you that "Voldemort's soul fragments are vulnerable to spells," subtly dropping the hint that you have to shoot the dozen or so black snakes that are in front of the locket. Only the problem is the locket has started lobbing smoke grenades at you in large numbers, which seem to take about 90% of your health in one go if you get too close. So already, standing still for even a second is out of the question. The second problem I had was that it was only after several failures that I realised you could run 360 degrees around the locket, which made dodging the grenades a little easier.
 Once you manage to off a few of the snakes, you start getting chased down by venom-spitting spiders, which would be manageable if you didn't need to run around dodging bombs and shooting snakes at the same time. The locket also switches to a squiggly laser beam attack that is much harder to evade. To compound the frustration, for some reason, every time I died and the level restarted I had a completely useless spell selected automatically, which became very annoying every time I forgot and tried to get a quick shot off on the snakes right off the bat. In the end the only way I could find to beat this boss was to keep a fair distance behind the locket and snipe at the snakes whenever possible.
 The next stop on the Plot Train is the Lovegood residence, which is both preceded and followed by a lengthy galavant through the countryside while defeating/running past enemies. The attack on Xeno's home is a survival level in which you have to defeat an endless wave of Snatchers and Death Eaters and not get killed until the game decides it's time to move on.
 The last level in the woods sees the trio ambushed by Scabior and a whole shitload of Snatchers. The game's helpful advice this time is "Survive the Snatcher attack." Now, to me, that means "This is another survival level so just sit tight and kill these dudes a bunch," which would make the most sense since the trio don't actually win against the Snatchers. But after several minutes of solid battle with constantly respawning enemies and leveling up about three times I started to wonder why it was taking so long and figured I'd better try casting four-points. Sure enough, there is a path you're supposed to take to reach the end of the level. I don't know if it's actually required to beat even a single Snatcher.
 The final battle in Malfoy Manor really is another survival level that has Bellatrix, Narcissa and Draco standing around shooting spells in your general direction while you run around like a headless chicken until the game has had its fill and kills Dobby.

Joined at the Hip

22. Conjoined

This Masterpiece seems rather small and simple compared to the somewhat grander scale of the last two strips. I stumbled upon the inspiration for this idea while constructing a previous Masterpiece (most likely one of those last two), copy/pasting and flipping images like a right lazy bastard, when I placed the flipped character's eye over top of its identical original. The rest, as they say, is bleeding obvious.
 The "hey" is something I thought was pretty funny, as if they've just met up and have not spent every waking second staring at each other.

I'm Feeling Lucky

21. The Internet Adventure #2

Two Guys Walk Into the In'ernet...
Episode 2: I'm Fee

Wherein the situation is assessed, and Yellow shows off his short temper for a moment. This strip was intended essentially to set up the then-planned series of only loosely connected in'ernet shenanigans. Not really having any idea what exactly I would or wouldn't be able to come up with going forward, I used the final line to kind of say, "Okay, maybe "epic journey" is exaggerating a little."
 The title of this episode used to be "Think of it Like an Adventure" or somesuch, which is absolutely atrocious, partly because it's a quote straight from the strip and partly because it's awkward and boring as a title. Then I noticed the Feeling Lucky button in the fifth panel. It's better than the alternative, at least. There have been a few times when I've sat for several minutes on the deviantArt submission page, a title the only thing still evading me.
 Also, did panel three just break the fourth wall? I think it just broke the fourth wall.

Let Me Google That For You

20. The Internet Adventure #1

Two Guys Walk Into the In'ernet...

Episode 1: Enter the Googlix

In this pilot episode, the two protagonists (for the purposes of this blog, let's unimaginatively call them Red and Yellow) first enter the internet, and they appear to be floating. Hereafter I decided it would be better to have the characters walk and climb across webpages. I had them floating here because I imagined their entering the internet like being trapped in a dimension that is devoid of anything. Specifically what I had in mind was the scene at the end of the first Futurama anthology where Fry, Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, Nichelle Nichols, Gary Gygax and Deep Blue are floating against an empty white backdrop.
 The Beat Panel Pals were selected to star in this series simply because I knew it was going to become something special, and so called for characters with a little something extra. And of course these guys had been the only Masterpiece characters so far to show real promise with a recurring role, so the choice was easy.
 I wish I could remember what it was that initially sparked this idea (it's possible the Print Screen button had a hand in it), because I think it's one of the best I've ever had, and it's certainly led to one of the projects I'm most proud of (at least in writing if not in art). Originally, the concept for this series was simply for Red and Yellow to travel from website to website cracking jokes and generally mucking about. Every strip or two would focus on a new website, and I was going to basically just work my way through my Favourites list. Not surprisingly, it got old fast, but I'll talk about that in a few posts' time.
 Something I've always expected due to this comic, but never received, is hate for using Internet Explorer. Maybe I just hang out on the wrong forums, but people usually seem to jump at the chance to dissuade anyone from using it for even another second. Also, my toolbar isn't a cluttered mess like in some people's screenshots I've seen, so it's at least aesthetically pleasing enough for webcomic purposes, regardless of IE's debated practicality.

Deeper and Deeper

19. Deep

so tihs is lyk a foto i took of myself wich i fel is quiet deep and shows how sum ppl r vry dep an filed wtih powerflu emotons dat tehy haf 2 del wif in rl

This is pretty much the only Masterpiece where I feel like the stuff I wrote in the little deviantArt blurb thing is an actual part of the artwork, like it would be incomplete without it. I wanted to make the bathroom here look as perfectly normal as possible to give the feeling that this is the kind of kid who has a perfectly comfortable home life, yet likes to get on MySpace and bitch about his tortured soul. I think that's just an overblown stereotype, though. Even teenagers aren't that stupid.
 I'm not sure if this would be better or not with the camera changed to a mobile phone. I guess it works either way. The glare on the mirror, however, could definitely be a little neater. Also, I don't know where I would be without liquid soap.

Bloggio Commentary

Starting a blog was something I had in the back of my mind for a while, but I could never come up with a topic that would be able to constitute frequent postings. Something else I had been wanting to do for a while was make little audio commentaries for the Masterpieces and put them on YouTube. I never started doing that mainly because I didn't want to bother with the technical aspect involved.
 Then, just a couple of months ago, I had the inspired idea to marry my two problems into one beautiful and matrimonious solution. An additional plus of going in this text commentary direction is that I now have a blog available if I ever want to write about whatever (such as death, it seems), but not feel like I ought to do so regularly.

"This is a Quote from the Episode"

18. The Amazing Race

I love it when a joke can be delivered in an extremely efficient manner. A single panel, minimal dialogue, and a large visual element to the gag. It makes everything feel very slick and witty. Insanity Streak is a good example of a comic strip that does this as much as possible.
 I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I probably came up with this while watching The Amazing Race. Frank (who appears to have both eyes on the same side of his head) was named after the main character of the show Franklin.

Are You There God? It's Me, Atheism

Yesterday I learned that a girl I went to high school with was killed in a car accident. Emma was a triplet. I didn't know her as well as I probably could have, but I know she was the kind of person everybody loved, as are her sisters. The kind of people who are always considerate and understanding, with never a bad word to say about anyone. I remember receiving help from one of the girls on our final school photos day. Nothing life changing, but the kind of consideration you would expect from anyone, yet is so rare in a high school environment. And now I can't even imagine what Emma's sisters are going through.
 Nobody deserves to have this kind of thing strike their family, but does that stop it from happening? Of course not. And yet so many people believe that God loves us. I don't want to get into a whole religious tangent here, so I'll just say that I usually try to keep a firmly agnostic view of religious matters, but then I hear about things like this or that little girl who wanted nothing more than to see Up before she died, and I have to wonder how any kind of supposed omnipotent being could decide that some people don't get to see their lives through to the end. Nine years ago, so many lives were taken away. Why?

Am I Really That Fat?

17. Pixar Does Good Work

It's funny to think that both these movies were known to exist nearly two years ago, but I guess that's just the way Pixar does things. Well, Toy Story 3 was predictably amazing, but as of now, Cars 2 is still about eight months away. As the comic implies, I still don't see anything "important and worthwhile" about the film's premise, but that's certainly not to say I don't have faith in John Lasseter. He seems to have a lot of passion for Cars as a franchise, so I'm confident this movie will be entertaining at the least. My problem is that the movie sounds like a feature-length version of the Cars Toon series. Obviously it's not fair to judge a film by a two-sentence summary, so I'll just have to wait and see what Pixar comes up with.
 As to the Masterpiece itself, people seem to have trouble understanding what actually happens in this strip, which I think is due to the copied panels leaving all the acting up to the characters' faces. So, my bad. Here is how it's intended to be taken: Buzz has just mentioned Pixar's rule about having a perfect story for a sequel, when who should show up but Lightning McQueen, the guy with the seemingly frivolous sequel coming out, which creates an awkward moment where Buzz and Woody aren't sure what to say to him.
 Art notes:
- I increased the length of Woody's legs about three times before he looked the right height next to Buzz.
- Lightning's eyes are the same in both panels, but the altered mouth gives them completely different meanings.

Do You See What I See?

16. All You Need is Love

The Beat Panel Pals make their glorious return and establish their positions as pretty much the only recurring characters in the Million Masterpiece Project. The silent beat in this strip is interesting in that it goes out of its way to show that the characters stare into each other's eyes, since that's the part that the joke relies on, rather than the general awkward moment that a beat is usually used to convey.
 This Masterpiece basically came from finding the most cliche, sap-filled, Hollywoodesque line I could think of, and seeing if I could twist it into a joke. I was particularly attracted to this question because I personally think the concept is ridiculous.

Pink Walls Are So In

15. Roomies

I have no idea how or why I came up with this strip, but I did so here it is. And I think it's pretty good, personally. I don't particularly like this song, but since it's Beyoncé, it of course received a huge amount of playtime when it was at its most popular. Which I guess kept it in my head long enough for me to conceive an alternate scenario for the lyrics. Speaking of which, these lyrics seem really silly and oddly specific to me. I think must people would just say, "Your shit's over there."

Muggle Pants

14. Potter Puppet Pals

For this Masterpiece, I knew I wanted to do some kind of Harry Potter spoof, but I didn't really have any good jokes in mind. So, without much direction, I started drawing Harry in the typical Masterpiece style (i.e. a ball stuffed onto a triangle) in the hopes that a brilliant spark of inspiration would come along and give me some ideas. Sure enough, it wasn't long before I noticed that my Harry was looking quite similar to his Potter Puppet Pals incarnation, so I made the floor brown, threw in my favourite line to make the connection and there you have it, one Masterpiece. Now if I could just get Colin to show me how to make the characters move. Oh, wait.

13

13. Halloween

Most Masterpieces have reasonably interesting stories behind them. Others... don't. I guess Halloween was coming up and I was like, "Hey, maybe I'll do a Halloween themed strip," but then I remembered I don't care about Halloween even the slightest bit. The result is a kind of weird anti-joke where you expect the first guy to protest or be surprised or something but he just accepts it. Also, I feel like things would read better if he said "for Halloween" instead of "on Halloween," but hopefully it's clear enough as it is.

The More You Take Out, the Bigger It Gets

12. Holes Don't Exist

The first line of this strip is something a kid from primary school used to say, which I recalled while sitting around one day trying to come up with an idea for a joke. And yet, I'm not really sure there is a joke here. It just seems like some stuff that goes on. The one guy brings up this somewhat interesting piece of logic, which prompts the other guy to ponder the very nature of the universe.
 These two guys (who later became known as the Beat Panel Pals) have since become sort of the de facto protagonists and mascots of the Million Masterpiece Project (see the top of this blog), so I guess it's fitting that this is the first multi-panel comic strip Masterpiece. It's funny how they've ended up coming so far (even going on to star in the Internet Adventure), since it certainly wasn't planned in any way. By a mighty stroke of luck, I think these guys are also the most aesthetically pleasing of all the standard Masterpiece characters, possibly due to their being symmetrical to eachother.

The Three-Pronged Poiuyt

11. Devil's Pitchfork

I love impossible shape/structure illusions (I'm a huge M.C. Escher fan), so for this Masterpiece I aimed to pay tribute to the whole marvelous idea of a drawing that really just doesn't make sense. This particular object was chosen because it's just so damn awesome. Also, I like the name "Devil's Pitchfork", to which Wikipedia offers several alternatives, including the one coined by Mad.
 Another thing I find interesting about this shape is the conundrum one faces when attempting to colour it. Clearly, I decided to cheat. This is why I stuck the blueprint on there, which led to yet another interesting discovery about this particular shape: if the prongs are too short (so that you are able to focus your eyes on the whole figure at once), much of the illusion is lost, because it becomes too easy to see exactly how it is drawn. That's the effect it had on me, at least.
 A few notes about the guy on the pedestal: he is the last of my Masterpiece characters to have discernible feet, and one of very few to have hair; he has sideburns, but no ears; he possesses a rare multicoloured shirt and he has the most detailed hand I had MS Painted at the time (complete with prop).

The Many Adventures of Mark the Manatee and Associates

Mark the Manatee lived on the bottom of the ocean, which was kind of odd because manatees don't usually live on the bottom of the ocean, but Mark was unique, so he lived down there with the jellyfishes and the carpet sharks and the underwater rhinoceroses.
 One day, Mark found a treasure chest. He tried to open it, but it was locked. So he tried kicking it and it flew open 'cos it wasn't really locked after all. Inside the chest was a dictionary. Mark decided to look up dirty words, 'cos he thought it would be a better use of his time than what he had planned for the day, which was grocery shopping. So, after a full day of looking up words like "vagina" and giggling immaturily, Mark decided to go to bed.
 That night, Mark the Manatee had a dream about bath mats. He dreamt that when people stepped on them, it hurt them and they needed to be saved. When he woke up, he decided to dedicate his life to liberating bath mats. Mark got in his special boat that took him to the surface. When he unsubmerged, he noticed a kite in the sky, which made him forget all about his mat crusade. Mark jumped up and grabbed onto the kite, which had been abandoned by its owner.
 Mark the Manatee rode that kite to Mexico, and when they got there, Mark said "Gracias!", but the kite didn't understand him because it was Cuban, so it just flew back to Cuba, where it waited for its next dictator to die, apparently, according to Farce of the Penguins.
 But anyway, back to the story. After he was unable to find Speedy Gonzales, Mark the Manatee realised that Mexico was not all it was cracked up to be, so he decided to head north, to New Mexico. When he got there, he went to the set of Kid Nation, but then he remembered he was a manatee, so he wasn't allowed on the show. But then, Mark ate the leader of the Red District, and everyone was happy. As a reward, they made Mark the new leader of the Red District, and he became allies with the Blue District. Together, the two districts did all the things that Red & Blue like to do together, like look good on superhero costumes.
 After a while of being awesome, Mark the Manatee decided to leave Kid Nation, and travelled to Nevada. On his way to Las Vegas, Mark accidentally discovered Area 51. But before he could run away, scientists in white coats mistook him for an alien and captured him, 'cos manatees is butt-ugly.
 The scientists locked Mark up in a cell to be studied later. Just when Mark feared that all was lost, Wizard Whitebeard, or Dumbledore, or maybe Gandalf ... anyway, some wizard (but probably Dumbledore) appeared and sprung him out of his cell.
 Once he was free, Mark went to Vegas and won a fortune in a game, his life would never be the same. Soon after, Mark the Manatee bought a mansion in California, and kissed his money every night before bed.

THE END

Also, he got a racecar.  

A few years ago a minor fad hit Aussie networks in the form of late-night quiz shows. The least terrible of these shows was probably the localised version of Quizmania, which aired well after midnight.
 One night I was lying in bed watching Quizmania, and I don't recall exactly what the quiz was, but the answers that had to be guessed were all four-letter words. So people were calling in to make their guess and one guy said "Mark". And now you see where this is going. I made Mark a manatee pretty much solely because of the alliteration, and from there on, everytime someone called in with a word, I incorporated it into the story.
 Before long the narrative arrived at a natural conclusion, so I jumped out of bed and jotted it all down while it was still fresh in my mind. As of now I have no memory of which words the story was shaped around, but "bath" and "kite" are two likely candidates. The content and themes of this story are largely a product of its time, with multiple references to things I'd seen in the previous week or so.
 This was actually written several months before I started making Masterpieces. I just remembered that I had it lying around and figured I'd put some literature on deviantArt.

Big Willy is People!

9. Look at My Big Willy

This strip is based on, inspired by, and ripped from Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed. All the dialogue except the last sentence is from the game's opening cutscene, as can be seen in this charming walkthrough.
 The artwork was also made with the help of that video. I took a screenshot at around 2:40 into the video (just after the aforementioned dialogue) and traced the line work over it in Paint. The result is a really great looking and accurately proportioned Crypto and Pox.

For Nunu

People often post about their pets on the internet. None was greater than Nunu.

From New York, the Greatest City in the World!

8. David Letterman

I used to watch a lot of Letterman a couple years ago before GO! and the other new digital channels were launched. Now there's usually something better on. I chose the Presidential Speeches line mostly because it was the first thing that came to mind. Possibly ironically, I always found the preceding clips a lot more interesting than the Bush related ones.
 I like the way the gold lettering here just trails off aimlessly as it becomes increasingly obvious that it's not going to fit. Also, I think if I'd made this one today I would've given Dave that Jennifer Aniston tie instead of this shocking purple thing.

Destiny is a Fickle Bitch

6. Smokey the Turtle

Just a stupid doodle. You see, there's a turtle, and he's smoking a cigarette. Underwater. Hilarious. It's possible SpongeBob already did it. Also Futurama. Also, he looks kind of like Kif Kroker.

7. Lost Season 5

"Have you ever stopped to think that these delusions that you're special aren't real? That maybe there's nothing important about you at all? Maybe you are just a lonely old man that crashed on an Island. That's it. Goodbye, John."

My prediction of how this scene was going to play out. Can't really say it was all that accurate. The sky, for example, was sadly not purple, and I don't think Locke had I knife (at least not anywhere visible).
 This Masterpiece marks the first appearance of the basic character design that I've used in pretty much every strip since. As a result, it's very rough. A lot of things are crooked and uneven, lines don't always meet up neatly, and their hands are very angular. They also have feet, which were soon deemed unnecessary.
 One last point of criticism: that "OK" is meant to come after Jack's dialogue. That might be a little unclear since I don't think I placed it low enough.

Once I Caught a Fish Alive

3. I'm Spider-Man

My first attempt at a Masterpiece. The idea behind this one was little more than the original joke: taking dodgy looking MS Paint doodles and calling them works of pure genius. To that end, this was drawn very quickly and roughly with a mouse (I look forward to one day buying a drawing tablet). Spider-Man was chosen as the subject matter for little reason other than that I love Spider-Man.

4. Boxes

This is something I used to make for no reason when I was bored. Ironically (or not, I really have no idea), this is probably the least appealing version I ever produced. There's a lot of white on top of white, for example. I probably would have fixed that if I were making this today.

5. Ethan MacManus vs Purple Alien Thing

This one is the only result of one of my early ideas for increasing the number of Masterpieces in a hurry. Basically, I was going to draw all kinds of different characters in this scene with Ethan (of Ctrl+Alt+Del). Fortunately, better ideas came along before this really went anywhere.

Two and a Half Masterpieces

1. Springtime for Moody

The Million Masterpiece Project was started by a friend of mine who made a deviantArt account as a means for us to keep in touch. One day he uploaded the above image with the title Masterpiece 1 of 1,000,000. And so, a legend was born. Two more marvels of modern art saw the light of day at his hands before we moved past the need for deviantArt for communication.
 For one long year the account sat dormant, awaiting the day when new life would be breathed into its weary soul. Here my quest began. What started as a series of exceptional yet simple doodles has grown and expanded to become a full-blown webcomic.
 Only seventy-nine Masterpieces have been unleashed on the world as of the starting of this blog, leaving a long and twisted road ahead. And the only way to find out what lies down this road, as logic would dictate, is to walk it. Possibly with a scarecrow friend.

Further reading:
SomeGuy19, the star deviantArt account (keep in mind I didn't start using this account until October 13, 2008).
Faxwell23, my original deviantArt account.