Yes, this is a weird choice for updating the comic, a brief “Where are they now?” update I slapped together while I pondered where to take the comic (nowhere, ultimately!)
I got the idea to redo the strip because the original panels (as mentioned previously) are absurdly tiny on a typical widescreen monitor, at a mere 375 x 281 pixels.
It was a fun little experiment to modernize the comic, as I had to redo some of it from scratch and probably redid some of the panels significantly faster than originally when I handcrafted them from the chunky pixels and stone tools of 2002.
Angry Carrot vs. Quirky Bastards page to see the new and original versions of the episode.
The higher resolution gallery:
Notes on what I changed:
Globally:
- All panels increased to 1920x1440 resolution
- Main font changed from Verdana to Back Issues BB for a more comic book look
- Revised characters were drawn in Procreate on an iPad Pro
- Revised artwork, text and dialog balloons were added in Affinity Photo
Individually:
1. Completely redone.
2. Used screenshot taken from Diablo II: Resurrected.
3. Resized the dialog balloon to make it smaller. Painted over the old balloon, then copied and pasted parts of the background to better blend everything in. I was helped here by how crude and low resolution a blown-up image from Jedi Knight (1997) looks in 2024.
4. Found new still life for background, made the pepper look less still, more peppery, since that seemed a likely reason for him being fired. A “still” version of the pepper also exists in a hidden layer in the original Procreate sketch.
5. New background, new lighting effect added in Affinity Photo. Celery characters were traced over from the originals. Evil version has a tweaked goatee.
6. Changed GIANT Chinese Egg Attack!! to the less culturally insensitive GIANT Evil Egg Attack!! Redid the eggs to look angry/evil. Open mouths reveal yolk-filled innards.
7. Completely redone with new colour image of Freud (same pose) and new background.
8. Completely redone.
9. Completely redone.
10. Completely redone. Figures were traced from originals and refined a bit.
11. Completely redone.
I am planing to at least take another look at the high-resolution version of Episode 1 I also did recently, to see if I want to tweak that one (and maybe others) as well.
