Original comic can be found here:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/deus-ex-machina-2/

Here’s part 2 of the guest comic by Allan Brown.  We got special permission to make blank version for our blank site.

Original comic available here:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/deus-ex-machina-1/

This was the guest comic was provided by Allan Brown.  I had to ask his permission before I uploaded a blank version because the art was not mine.  He gave us his blessing and therefore I present to you, Deus Ex Machina Part 1, Blank!

Sorry, can’t remove the speech bubbles from the art I have available, so just use the bubbles or add your own on top.

So it always seems that at one time or another, a gaming comic must actually make some kind of statement about gaming consoles.  Don’t know why.

As we said in the original update for this comic, we really wanted to be console agnostic on our comic.  We <3 Nintendo, because Pokemon exists on Nintendo, but other than that, we weren’t too worried about “loyalty.”  But we decided that Ashley would be a Nintendo Purist, and in this comic he comes face to face to the face of evil’s face:  the XBOX360.

OK, XBOX fans, it’s not really evil.  We all know that it’s the PS3 that’s truly evil.

So, we knew that Ashley was going to react negatively to the console… but how?  It was our colorist who came up with the idea of holding the Wiimote+Nunchuck as a cross, and everything was locked down.

The title might be difficult to localize;  it’s based on the word “exorcism” and “exorcist,” somebody who removes demons or other evil entities from a person or place (Wikipedia, of course!)

This comic also ended up as a setup to a two parter guest comic by the Missing Number Art Teacher Guy.  So tune in on Saturday for the update!

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/vulpix-come-home-9/

This final page of Vulpix Come Home was fun.  We had an argument about the “Fin” at the bottom, with the colorist one the “Hate” side and the artist on the “Must have” side.  We wanted some way of saying “This huge story arc is done!”

We go back to one-and-two issuers after this one.

There’s not much to say about this comic, except that we got to get most of the regular characters all in one comic, and that we’d pretty much locked down a style of Officer Jenny that continued to work.  Still, we didn’t look forward to drawing more for a long time!

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/vulpix-come-home-8/

More Wolensten 3D walls… except that it’s the exact same wall, over and over again.

I’d say that the hardest part of drawing a comic is making it so your characters stay looking the same rom frame to frame to frame… three issues of drawing millions of Officers Jenny help out.

However, I’m not too proud of frame 3 and 4.  We were tinkering around with exaggerated expressions to show emotions… and Jessie’s face… to quote Dr. Who “I’m sorry.  I’m so so sorry.”

The original comic only went down to the third row.  But we weren’t happy with the punchline… it was missing punch.  About halfway through the production week we got an idea for a real punchline:  the iPhone had just come out and everyone was worshipping it, so we tossed in an iPhone joke.  Apple’s empire is so big they’re even in the Gaming Multiverse.

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/vulpix-come-home-7/

Another interesting issue.  We weer still locking down the details of drawing our various characters, and hadn’t exactly locked down “Team Rocket” yet.  No not only did we have to draw Officer Jenny, Nurse Joy, and Team Rocket, we had to draw a curious mix of the two!

We’ve jokingly referred to the walls in this comic as “Wolfenstein 3D” walls because… well, they look like Wolfenstein walls.  We actually had walls that were hand drawn… but they looked like stinky feet smell.  Also, my background notes on the sketch were not clear;  not all the frames that were supposed to have walls had walls, and for ultimate humorous effect, the final frame had the walls incorrectly located!

In the original version of the last frame, the walls were on the right and the gap on the left.  Which caused our artist to wonder “Where did Team Rocket come from?”  They were supposed to be walking straight ahead in the previous frame, and then suddenly they weren’t!

So, to fix all the issues we made a “wall” texture, then through lavish use Gimp’s “perspective transform” tool tweaked it into various angles.  Thank god for layers!

Finally, this comic uses a technique that was started by our artist in the Vulpix Come Home 1 issue: allowing some elements of a character, effect, or prop leave the frame to show location, movement, or other dynamics.  It’s one of the reasons why we stick to boring-square-straight frame borders.  Usually if we want to spice up a frame, we try to find a way to have something pop out, instead of tweaking with frame shapes.

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/vulpix-come-home-6/

NEVER HAVE I DRAWN SO MANY OF ONE CHARACTER IN ONE COMIC.  Almost.

After this issue, our Inker swore that he would never, ever, draw Officer Jenny again.

Then we handed him the art.

As most fans of Pokemon know, in the Anime, all the police officers are “Officer Jenny.”  Brock claims that each are distinct from each other, with distinct personalities, likes, dislikes, and even differences in physical form (except that he is the only one who can figure out those differences.)

In this comic, we do a bit of a whirlwind tour of Officers Jenny who exist in the Ohno region and beyond.  We start with a chase scene of a Team Rocket member in an unnamed-yet Ohno city (who’s emblem is an upside-down Star Trek Delta).  We then move on the police office of Green Hill Zone in Sonic (the golden ring is the only giveaway for this.  We’re postulating that all Multiverse universes who do not have a native police force get Pokemon universe volunteers due to local overstaffing).  The next badge is a Lightning bolt;  this is an unnamed Ohno region badge.  Next up we have the good ol’ cops of Veridian City*, Kanto region.

Finally, we tie it all in;  all the police forces across the Multiverse of gaming are in communication with each other;  Officer Copper of Animal Crossing is a bit cross having the radio taken over.

As a subtle design element, the background of the comic is the same V pattern seen on Officer Jenny’s uniform.

(As a side note, our comic artist stated loudly through this and future issues how much he hates drawing pumps.)

Two guest stars appear:  Scott McCloud and Naruto.  Naruto is there mostly for the cheap “ninetails” joke.  Scott McCloud is there as a tribute to one of the most formative people in the Missing Number Adventure.  His books about comics have helped quite a bit in making our comic suck less and be that much better.  We attempted to draw him in his “comic book” form, but miscommunication baused two major breaks:

1. His glasses have eyeballs behind them, which they shouldn’t have, and
2. The gap in his shirt turned into a tie

We left it be because the shape is a bit ambiguous… except it’s not.  So, Mr. McCloud, if you happen to see this comic, please don’t take it the wrong way that we bungled your character!  Thanks in advance.

As a final anectdote, when our sprite artist first built his Officer Jenny sprite, he omitted the purse which is part of the Jenny costume.  Somehow he forgot the purse.  And everyone forgot as well:

<– with purse / without –>

Also, there’s a very small hint of the future in this comic… a hint would would most likely not notice except for the fact that we’re pointing it out now and you don’t have to wait for the big revelation months in the future.  The cameraman in the top right frame is also part of the police force.  That’s as far as we’re going to go in this issue.

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/vulpix-come-home-5/

This issue is a plus, and a minus.

On the plus side, we introduce two new characters to our comic:  the Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy of Irridescent City (a note:  the hat badge for Irridescent City is the backwards-L Tetris block.  In fact, most of the hat badges in the Ohno region are Tetris blocks… we’ve just never shown them all.)

Also on the plus side is that we have lots of complex backgrounds in this issue, being all neat and gradient-y.

The minus side is… subversion ate our text-free version  So we’ve got big nasty speechbubbles all over the art.  Translators will just have to do their best.  Sorry!

For the first time ever, we draw Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy.  Not our worst efforts, but it does cause our sketch artist to cringe a bit looking at them.

Finally, we started trying to define the “female” look for Missing Number.  Eyebrows one pixel lines, angular chins in the stock “Pokemon” facial format, and double height eyes.  It’s all an experiment… I apoligize daily to those brave men and women who developed the Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy characters for our first attempts.

Also, apparently due to a humorous side effect of an experiement in his lab, Ashley is all out of proportion in the fourth frame.  Maybe.  This was our first chance to draw any of the guys standing next to gals in our comic, so we’re still trying to figure out proportions.

We really enjoyed working on this comic, and can’t wait to show how this story ends.

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/vulpix-come-home-4/

Here’s another interesting issue of Missing Number.  In this issue, Vulpix turns up missing*, and Ashley is quite broken up about the whole thing.  Turns out Dave screwed up and let Vulpix escape.  But he’s not worried.  Vulpix is smart, and won’t get into any trouble, right?

Some issues are the first time we do various things.  In this issue, we did our first really dynamic shots, in frames 3 and 5.  Also, we proved that Ashley is a crybaby.  Finally, we’ve further tied up the Missing Number and Pokemon universes;  the original (real) criminal masterminds of the Pokemon world, Team Rocket, also apparently has a Ohno Regional office… an office Jessie and James apparently have been sent to to get out of the Boss’ sight.

When translating this comic, make sure you use the correct translation of Jessie and James’ names.  Because their names are a parody of Jessie James in English, it’s important to research their correctly localized names.  For example, in Japan Jessie is named Musashi after the fameous swordfighter Miyamoto Musashi. James is named after Kojiro, Miyamoto’s Rival who he kills in an epic battle.

Simple research should reveal their names;  it’s not really necessary to know what they mean.  I just wanted to geek out a bit.

One final crumbly bit of knowledge.  One of the art rules of Missing Number is that all background objects and props that are not interacted with by characters are designed in Inkscape, a vector art program.  This produces the nice, pastel, anti-aliased props you can see in frame one;  the door is a “background prop.”  Props that interact with characters are pixely, for example, the spaced out Virtual Boy in frame 4.  Our reasoning is, when you play a video game, especially older video games where the backgrounds were prerendered and sprites were laid atop it, you could always see what the items were by looking to see if the art was smooth or not.

A delimma appears when, for example, a prop which is usually part of the background (for example again, the door) is touched by a player.  In this case, we have a pixel art version of the door appear, for exactly the length of time players are interacting with it, then POP! we’ll go back to vector art as soon as possible.

* BTW:  ”turns up missing” is a phrase I make a point of using.  It’s like “ATM Machine.”  It’s technically wrong; it’s missing, therefore nothing has turned up!  I love it.

Blank version of this comic:  http://missingnumbercomics.com/missing-number/vulpix-come-home-3/

This comic was our bad luck comic.  Everything went wrong.  We published, realized we forgot shanding, published, realized we forgot a label for the burn heal bottle, published, realized that the wall colorings were wrong…  it was crazy.

This is also the last lead up issue before we get to the meat-n-potatos of the story.  David is pissed, slams the door, and it pops open, allowing Vulpix to escape.  Hence, Vulpix Come Home.