Choking HazardChoking Hazard

If you’re not part of the solution

Patrick — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:02:51 +0000

This was another of those "I haven't made a comic in a while" comics. For reasons I'm not clear on, it features a cartoonification of my friend John, expressing opinions he may not actually hold. Hi John! It came about partially due to this segment of a recent Penny-Arcade news posting:

My cognitive apparatus is designed to digest language quickly, and so when I stumble into some mutated corporate phraseology it's like eating a meal which suddenly transforms into to washers, bolts, and strands of oily bike-chain. I have to disassemble my entire prefrontal cortex and put it back together.

It is put using such wonderful words there that I feel no need to embellish them, but I have the exact same reaction many times - especially with computer discussions in movies. I'll be wrapped up in a scene and in the middle of a bit of dialog it's like they will just monkey walrus bending peephole. See what I did there? Anyway, it's always been a pet peeve of mine because it's simply not that hard. Any Sci-Fi nerd would love to spend one day on a set cleaning up all the techno mumbo jumbo just to say they got to see the greenscreen rig. It hurts my brain. And my brain created this in retaliation on the drive home last week. Enjoy.

On Meeting Wil Wheaton

Patrick — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:44:12 +0000

Sweet mother of hell. PAX 08 was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I've chosen to commemorate what was easily the most pivotal of moments in the form of a comic here. Wil Wheaton is fucking awesome. This strip is reconstructed from photos of the event itself, culminating in this shot - yes, that is me with Wil fucking Wheaton. I had fully expected to completely lose the ability to marshal coherent thought, and expressed as much in a comment on Wil's blog. As it turned out, despite a raging onset of Shaking-Hands-With-A-Fuck-Ton-Of-People-Ebola, and severe rib pain, Wil was a totally amazing, stand-up guy, and I managed to convey some very important things to him and not drool or scream uncontrollably even once. It was nawesome, which is the first born son of hawesome and awesome. The top of the h appears to be recessive. I intend to have a properly gushing post over at the main blog about PAX in general, and how great it was basically having the internet coalesce in Seattle for a couple days. Jerry Holkins said better than I could have on the PA site, so this post will also feature many blockquotes from him. Anyway, Wil has popped up more than once on my blog as a source of great impact on my life, so meeting him was an important thing, and I wanted to commemorate it in a way beyond simply posting pics of he and I and going "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Although, "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Thanks, Wil. [dude, fist bump] UPDATE: Holy Crap This was actually seen by Wil. I would like to refer you all to Panel 1. And also my response on twitter.

The Developers have Forsaken Me

Patrick — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:08:18 +0000

I made this comic on the rather quick and dirty end of the scale because I wanted to commemorate the 50th birthday of the Lego. It's a true story. It's a little heavy on the video game references, but I'm okay with that. The backgrounds are utter crap, but as I said, it's a quick and dirty one. Interestingly, the companion cube in the first panel was originally created for a canned comic that mashed up Portal with the news of Google's Android platform. They were 2 things I was obsessed with at the time, but the comic was hard to make and not all that funny. Anyway, it's late now, but happy birthday LEGO! [something about being forsaken]

No Kitchen is Complete Without It

Patrick — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:00:30 +0000

First off, if you don't know who Ron Popeil is, Wiki Thyself. Now that you're up to speed on Ronco, today I'd like to present a comic about vengeful, murderous French chefs/entrepreneurs. Yep. Once again, they said it couldn't be done. It may interest Choking Hazard trivia nuts to note that Chef #2, or "Meek Chef" as we called him on the set, also played "Eclair Chef" in CH#6. He was a lot shinier and more time consuming to render back then. The origin of this strip is an interesting one - I had a sort of daydream/hallucination about a pointed argument taking place in the kitchen, and in giving up on civil discussion, I said to one of the participants, "Bring me the murder scoop." This was such a hilarious phrase to me that I knew it was destined to become a comic punchline. I didn't know what a joy it would be to spend the next day brainstorming on it with Christie - fleshing out the backstory, choosing the exact right real-world utensil to set the joke up - we landed on garlic press, I think partially out of gruesomeness, but melon baller, cheese grater, and my favorite, fish fork, were all contenders. This is the first comic that I have to share the credit on, and I can't say how good that feels. But wait! There's more! ...no there's not. [now how much would you pay?]

All great heroes have a tragic flaw

Patrick — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:26:59 +0000

Ahhhh, launch week for a new Halo game. I have only played through the first one, and only did that on the PC. But I read a lot, and you can't be sentient and marginally interested in video games in this country without being completely overwhelmed with Halo 3 marketing, opinion, or just plain "Dear God, they made 170 million dollars in a day" news. I'm familiar with the story up to the third game, thanks to an obsessive post linked by Gabe at PA. I generally agree with Gabe, it's a cool story, but the game (at least the first one) does a horrid job of telling it. Nonetheless, having caught up, I know there are more sections of Halo 2 that involve fighting back hordes of Flood. No thank you. The Flood portion of Halo 1 completely ruined an experience I was willing to rate much better than I expected. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not actually aware if Halo 3 has a Flood level, as I don't have a 360. The stench of this kind of time-sink annoyance reaches out from the first game, wraith like, and makes me suspicious of each further entrant in the series. The marketing effort for this game is unprecedented, and it's already had the biggest launch of any entertainment product, well, ever. Kudos, Bungie and Microsoft, without sarcasm. It seems like a nice game, and I'm glad for your success, I simply cannot afford to play it at the moment, so I'm taking a quick potshot at the ads that are coating my entire world this week. Much like a certain parasite did a certain level of Halo 1. Just saying. [stupid flood]

In a world…

Patrick — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:22:16 +0000

This is in anticipation of the summer blockbuster season, which, if anyone says began with Spiderman 3, I will cut them. Not a lot of Lego in this one, but I had an idea I liked and felt like it had been too long since I did a comic. [not affiliated with don lafontaine]

Think different, just like us

Patrick — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:17:58 +0000

With much love to John Hodgeman, who plays the PC in the annoying commercials this comic is based on, and is an avowed Mac fan. I don't have a problem with avowed Mac fans. What I have a problem with is their contention that their system's relative security is somehow based on an innate immunity or ideological difference in design, rather than the fact that their systems are strictly limited in their construction, more expensive, and simply not prevalent enough to warrant the serious attacks other systems face. This is not to say that the popularity of those other systems is deserved or something to brag about, but the fact is it does garner them more attention from the miscreants of the world. When you're already dealing with a set of hardware combinations numbering in the trillions, it's apples and flux capacitors to try and compare the smoothness of function of that operating system with one that is expressly written to run on an incredibly limited set of hardware that is known in explicit detail by those writing the operating system. Add to this the greatly increased number of people looking to exploit this already considerably more difficult to maintain system (due to hardware flux,) and it's a miracle Windows runs at all. To smugly compare this to a packaged, closed, hardware-software system that is routinely junked every couple of years, to fanfare and drooling New-Hotness lust, is intellectual folly, and yet it has become the centerpiece of a national marketing campaign. I don't mean to bring such hate for the Mac - I've said multiple times if they'd add a right mouse button to the Intel Mac notebooks and drop the price by about a grand, I'd be there in a second. But they won't do that, because cache is worth more than market share, and if they had market share, they might encounter some of the same problems that they laugh off. Demands for open systems, demands for parts, attacks on your userbase; this is a scary world that is better left to people who can't get the good industrial designers to cloak iterative, brand-enslaving products in shrouds of ceramic "cool." I'm agnostic towards Microsoft. I think if you really think about the technological difficulties in making an operating system run on as well as it does (which isn't that well) on that many possible hardware combinations, from any manufacturer, you have to admit it's an engineering marvel. I will also happily admit that because of its staggering scope, it's full of really bad holes, and that scope is no excuse. If you say you can handle the scope, handle it, or limit the scope of your product. To be fair, they are plugging those holes little bit by little bit, but they have a huge number of people poring over an ever-increasing body of code looking for little slip ups to exploit, and every fixed hole tends to lead to 2 new ones. I think they could do a much better job at preventing the slipups, but I don't blithely dismiss what they have accomplished, either. However, it is this nigh-unfathomable complexity that Microsoft has claimed they can straddle that makes Windows crappy - not Microsoft not being "alternative" enough, or Apple hogging all the coolness and sound thinking in the universe. So, phrasing the debate in an ideological sense makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but from a technical standpoint I say it's flat-out fraud. Microsoft and Apple exist to make money for stockholders. Trying to say that your product works better because its infused with Coolonium and your engineers wear khakis, and you want to sell it to increase the happy particles in the world, when in reality it works better because you have taken on a ridiculously less difficult technical challenge, and you're selling it for the exact same reason, is pure marketing spin, from a company with an excellent marketing background. Compare the ads: William H Macy tells you windows server runs businesses, in an uninspiring voiceover, while some marginally inspiring but contextually baffling pictures appear, all without mentioning a competitor. Apple trots out a punch and judy show to try and re-frame the debate in terms of who is the stuffy, corporate "Man" and who is the hip, free youngster, ignoring the technological basis for the comparison - a comparison OF TECHNOLOGIES. Yeah, that's excellent marketing, and excellent marketing is excellent manipulation. [how about instead of thinking different, we just think at all?]

A Proportional Response

Patrick — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:46:05 +0000

The subject matter here has certainly been done before. I understand upselling, I really do. But it must be done carefully, lovingly - Amazon is even a little ham-fisted with it's recommendations of other stuff to buy, but at least that has the benefit of generally having some kind of logic as to what it is suggesting. If you come in asking for a collector's edition of Japanese Tentacle Hero VII: Southwind's December, an RPG for the GameCube, it doesn't direct you to Halo and go "dood this is AWEEESSSOMMME." The people at most GameStops though, take that to an entirely new level. I'm pre-ordering a title - clearly I have some sense of what is coming out that I might be interested in. You don't need to tell me of every other thing coming within the next 6 weeks - even if it only costs 5 dollars down to put my name on a copy. Chances are, if I wanted to, I would be ASKING FOR THAT TITLE. This rant will be amended later, but for now, let me just say how pleased I am by how the 4th frame in this turned out. The camera angle, the fire effect, the whole comedic silence thing - it just works for me. [do you need any babelfish translations with this webcomic?]

Coming in 2007

Patrick — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:49:18 +0000

The background art is kinda quick and dirty on this one, and I am downright ashamed at the cheesefactor of the logo. On the other hand, I think I am a smidge proud at how accurate the cheese factor is. Yes, the inspiration for this strip is a little show called Street Hawk, which remains one of my favorite guilty pleasures of the 80s. Think Knight Rider on a motorcycle, with Frank Fontana from Murphy Brown giving periodic sass-back instead of a disembodied William Daniels. It only ran for about 13 episodes, and had great music. Cheesy, stereotypical 80s vigilante hero with super high technology, but still pretty good. Anyway, this is my roundabout way of bitching about the current crop of television while simultaneously attacking the most obvious hypothetical fall-back lineup. [this post is new for 2007]

Fourth Estate Sale

Patrick — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:32:05 +0000

This is an experiment with a more comic-like art style, which happens to be much faster to do. I can never make up my mind if I prefer the photorealism of some of the older ones, where I feel like I could reach out and touch the blacktron guys, vs the frequent output I could achieve if I avoided some of those very time-consuming development processes. For now, I think I'm going to go with the fast way and see how I like creating comics more frequently. Oh, and I have a tendency to make creative stuff about things that piss me off, and I have a degree in journalism. You do the math on the origin of this strip. [meteorology is neither fair nor balanced]

Second string no more

Patrick — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:00:02 +0000

Building the big-ass Goomba actually only took about 10 minutes. Figuring out how to get Pov-ray to tile the block texture on the floor properly took about 3 hours. And I'd hoped this was gonna be a quickie, to justify it not being that funny. Ah well.

Your call is important to us

Patrick — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 16:56:55 +0000

An alternative title for this strip was "Times are Tough." This one goes out to all my homies who send resumes all over the internet and have nothing to show for it but an inbox full of Monster.com "How to tie your shoes" spam. This is the first comic I was able to make with the development version of LDView, which has a handy camera-coordinates feature that shaves a good couple hours off the development time for each comic. I can now position the camera for each frame graphically, instead of guessing at geometry, groping around like a euclidian virgin trying to get to 2nd base. Wow, that analogy kinda got away from me there. Anyway, the upshot is these should be coming more quickly now, and (heads of figures aside) should look much better. Don't believe me? Check this out. This is scaled down from the 1600x1200 render, but the Lever Lackey's console looks damn near photorealistic. It's a shame the LDraw head models still look so segmented. Anyway, that's it for now. [please stay on the line for a tutorial on writing your own name]

A singular and premeditated purpose

Patrick — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:55:35 +0000

I cut a lot of corners on this one, but I really wanted to get it finished. On the plus side, it has some nicer rendering techniques that I have taught myself during the very long gap since the last comic. This is the product of a real conversation. It is a real dream. Stop making fun of me. As a behind the scenes note, I created the image in the third panel from scratch in photoshop, and am entirely too proud of myself for it. I may actually ship this off to cafepress or something like that and get a real magnet made. [seriously stop making fun of me]

Though I like Shatner in other things

Patrick — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 06:42:39 +0000

I really like William Shatner. I am not a Kirk fan, which is funny, given that it's what most people know Shatner for. This comic is a distilled, crystallized summary of my issues with the original series. If that doesn't get your toes a tappin', it also features naked lego characters. There is pixelation. You're gonna get some pixelation in there. [leadership > hair]

I don’t even know what movie you’re talking about

Patrick — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 00:24:00 +0000

I certainly don't know of any potential intellectual property infringement upon the rights of Warner Brothers or Village Roadshow Pictures. In keeping with the spanking new name I'd like to share a spanking new logo. I'm still working on a spanking new site to house this endeavor, but rest assured the design will steal liberally and unapologetically from Penny Arcade and VGCats. (ed. 4/05/06 - and lo, it does) They said I couldn't do a strip with a pirate and a pasty chef. They said it was impossible. Well, you can just flat-out suck it, "They." If that is your real name. [i'm not kidding]