Penny Arcade

Over the years we’ve been doing the site, my own policy towards Apple products has morphed somewhat.  I worked service at a school district for about five years, which gave me some appreciation for the way they do things - these days, I accept without malice the idea that people own and use their products for a variety of purposes.  Their grip on Gabe has been a very different phenomenon.  As a person who creates visual art, their aesthetics, elegance, and seductive lifestyle that simmers just out of sight has finally worn him smooth.  Before iTunes, I think he had decided that while he would still use a PC, he couldn’t survive without Apple’s graven idol of a monitor.  Now he’s listening to their subversive radio stations and buying AAC encoded music files albums at a time.

When I try to conceive of this Midway Thing I went to, the NBA Ballers event, it’s hard to separate it out.  Most of the time I don’t get past phase one, trying to understand how events transpired over the course of almost five years to deposit me in a scenario that ridiculous.  I do hate to disappoint you, I have no photographs of me blinging.  Apparently the sports jersey budget got cut at the last minute, the sports jersey budget (you will recall) being my entire reason for going.  I decided to make the best of it by making a withdrawal of sorts from the liquor budget. 

The best part of the event was meeting human beings.  For some reason I keep seeing this Operation Sports guy Shawn I met a while back, he’s a cool guy and his perspective is invaluable to me.  We’re both avid gamers, but we play completely different games - when I need to know how a sports game stacks up I know I can rely on his experience.  It was also nice to see Shoe again, who is Shoe, Shoe is only the man Technology Marketing magazine in 2001 called one of the most influential and respected consumer/computer journalists.  I complimented him on how thugged out he appeared, representing the AZN and so forth, and he said that’s how he dresses every day so that was kind of embarrassing.  It was also nice to meet Ryan McCaffrey, an editor at Official Xbox magazine, the one with all the demos I talk about.  I told him that sometimes his Goddamn discs don’t work right, and he told me to boil them - I swear to God.  I thought maybe he was just being an asshole but they talk about it right there on the Team Xbox forums.  I also asked him if he wanted to work on an article sometime, and he said no.  At least he was direct.   

The event itself took place at some kind of mansion, and the entire time I felt like I was in a rap video.  The Ferrari and the Hummer certainly cemented this impression, as did the rapper, MC Supernatural, the Supernat.  I was already familiar with him from a tender documentary I’d seen recently called Beef, and as much as I wanted to I could not approach him.  He was sitting five feet from me but I couldn’t do it.  I don’t know what I thought would happen, it’s not like he was going to emerge from a hideous egg and deposit an alien embryo in my throat.  At least, I don’t think. 

He has a level of charisma on the microphone that is devastating, and coupled with DJ Rocky Rock they produced some extremely compelling music.  Supernatural does things you might see an Improv Group do, like the guys on Whose Line Is It Anyway - he’ll get words from the audience and work them in, or take objects from them and work them in.  His specialty is freestyle - “off the dome” rhymes - and I’m sure you could find a few of his appearances on the peer-to-peer thingy of your choice.  I basically stood with my mouth agape at what I was hearing, the rest of the crowd was fairly interactive but in the presence of that kind of talent I felt dislodged from my body. 

I don’t know shit about basketball, so I don’t know how I ended up there.  I don’t know about rocks or keys or how long you can be in the key or any of that shit.  I trusted the Operation Sports guy when he told me the control isn’t as tight as its contemporaries or that you see virtually every gameplay element in the first five minutes.  It’s simply an indicator of my lack of sophistication, then, that I found it enjoyable.  Making it one on one delivers on a sort of basketball fighting game, the elaborate courts become arenas, all of it underpinned by a reality show backdrop with story progression and a mansion you customize over the course of it.  The game itself was pre-alpha, load times were sort of gross - for some reason, they had a couple different versions there on the floor which was confusing.  I think that’s, um…  everything.   

Shortly after I made my post on Friday regarding Max Payne, I completed the game.  I’m a staunch proponent of Quality over Quantity, and I have routinely defended games that err on the side of content density.  Start to finish, you can beat Max Payne in seven minutes.  Well, a little more than that.  The length of the game is not satisfactory, and it’s not just because I liked it and I wanted more - there’s simply not enough there.  The fact that you revisit areas as many as three times in fits of Halo-esque area regurgitation doesn’t help it. 

(CW)TB out.

this isn’t intended for me, i don’t think

Today’s comic strip hits very close to home. I’ve become increasingly interested in Apple products over the last few months and the recent release of itunes has only fueled the fire. As an artist I feel like I am letting the other artists down by not working on a Mac. I look at their products and I begin to salivate, as if I’d been hungry all my life but until that moment I never understood what food was. I tell myself that I would be more creative if I used a Mac. That it’s graceful lines would somehow awake in me a level of artistry that had been sitting dormant all these long years.

I had recently decided that while I could not justify the astronomical expense associated with purchasing a new Apple G5 I could justify getting one of their Monitors. My plan is to purchase one of their cinema displays along with the adaptor they make that allows it to work with my pedestrian PC. The hope being of course that this would be enough to satisfy the artist in me that so desperately craves the Apple experience.

I tend to do a fairly decent job of keeping the artist side of myself in check. I do this for the benefit of the people I hang out with more than anything. I know that I usually dislike creative people. For the most part they tend to be assholes. I know that the same potential for narcissism and haughtiness lies within me. I have on occasion been invited to gatherings where these “creative types” congregate. It’s the sort of place where you are likely to bump into the bass player for your favorite promising local band or a girl wearing a Playboy T-shirt even though her antipathy for the publication is well known (isn’t the irony delicious?). When I see these people it’s like I’m looking into some kind of fun house mirror. I can see how easily my own personality could be slightly pinched or stretched to produce the same characteristics. I tend to find these events terrifying unless there are video games handy.

After High school I was accepted into Cornish school of the arts. My portfolio review with them was a real eye opener. Seated in front of a panel of six or seven professors I was grilled about my artwork. My portfolio at the time consisted almost entirely of comic book super heroes and cartoon characters. One professor told me that he could see the same caliber of work by examining the margins of any 9th graders algebra notes. They all agreed that I had “potential” though and decided to allow me into their school under the assumption that I would of course focus on doing “real art” as opposed to the crap I had been producing up to that point. I toured the campus and saw the sorts of people that go there and the sort of work they produce. I realized that I was not like them. I decided not to attend the most prestigious art school in Washington and instead went to community college for a few years. I made no attempt to acquire any sort of degree. I simply spent my days in the art building taking the sorts of classes I was interested in. Figure drawing, color and design, pottery and a few others. The teachers there encouraged my cartooning. My figure drawing teacher did not try and tell me that comic book characters were a waste of time. Instead she told me that before I could exaggerate the human form I needed to learn how to represent it accurately. Obviously now looking back I’m glad I decided to stick to my guns and focus on cartooning. It seems to have worked out pretty well for me.

So it’s not often that I allow the artist side of myself to really come out. This whole Apple thing is one of the few occasions. The artist inside me absolutely craves one. The other part of me though happens to be the part that controls the check book, and it says no fucking way.

-Gabe out

If you have a store (like a comic book shop or game store or whatever) and you would like to sell Penny Arcade merchandise in it, please fire off a mail to Brad. All our shirts are baked fresh daily and we don’t use any pesticides on our posters.

-Gabe out

Comixpedia has posted their interview with us in which we answer questions posed by the community. Thankfully we don’t come off as the huge assholes that we really are.

-Gabe out

****UPDATE***

Looks like we wanged comixpedia.

Ubisoft has posted page 2 of our Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon comic. It’s sort of funny that I spent all morning thinking about how close I came to giving up drawing comics and focusing on traditional art.Now drawing comics is what I do for a living and I’m lucky enough to work with characters like the ones in Crouching Tiger. I’m really proud of the work we did on this comic so go check it out and let me know what you think.

-Gabe out