Here are some pictures you can look at if you want.
This month’s episode of The Journalism Show was based on Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and is the first one presented in the show’s intended format. As I said in the post, I wanted to use the first couple of episodes to introduce the characters and build a foundation for what they’re all about. Now that you have an idea of who they are, this episode more or less represents what the series is largely going to be like from now on. I hope you like it, because this is it.
This one took quite a bit longer to do, because with the exception of Beedog’s head and the newsroom set, the art for this episode is all new. (Something tells me I’m going to end up doing that for each one). If you enjoyed the show and want to know a little more about it, hit the jump for a closer look at the art from TJS Episode 03.
The Lovely Adam Dork of Podtoid joins the cast this month as our latest guest star.
The metro Beedog takes to meet up with the guys is pretty much just the F line of the New York City subway as I remember it from a couple years of riding the thing. One of my favorite things to do is to put little shout-outs and easter eggs into the show wherever I can, hence the ads on the wall.
It didn’t last long. If you remember the opening of King Tutan-Ramen, you know Beedog’s Patton impression tends to have some unexpected side-effects.
Mrs. Beedog’s outfit this time around is some Alyx Vance cosplay. I had fun with that, and you can expect to see her dressed as other game characters again in the future when the episode calls for it.
I ended up drawing more backgrounds for this episode than either of the previous ones, just due to wanting to fit in so many different scenes from the game. Of all of them, this room turned out to be my favorite for some reason. I was happy with how it turned out and I learned a few things in the processs of making it.
The Combine Hunter was fun to animate, and once again, taught me a few things.
He didn’t last long, either.
Ramirez was also a lot of fun to animate. This is actually the second version of him, because after a week of drawing pretty much non-stop, the art mysteriously started getting better. When I went back and looked at him, he was kind of crappy compared to everything else and I wasn’t happy with how it looked.
This actually happened with several of the pieces I did early on, and I ended up completely redoing not just the Vortigaunt, but also the car, a couple of the backgrounds, and the entire restaurant scene at the end of the episode.
And then we have Beedog flying for the first time on the show, unzipping his raincoat and putting his bee suit to good use. I wanted to use a Formula 1 car for the sound of his wings, but I couldn’t find a clean sound clip that fit. So I used a weed whacker motor.
The Journalism Show: Now with 100% more Vortigaunt Nyoron~ than the leading web cartoon brand.
That goddamned gnome. I don’t know how many of you got that achievement in HL2: Episode 2, but I sure did, and it was horrible. If you have shared in my misery, this scene was for you. I salute you. This was also a shout-out to our forum administrator, Technophile. If you frequent our forums, you know he adores gnomes. For some reason.
Striders were one of my favorite enemies in Half-Life, (I think the gunships are my #1), so I wanted to parody the iconic scene from HL2: Episode 2 where Dog attacks one outside the White Forest base.
This one meets it demise at the mighty appetite of one Adam Dork, which I imagine is probably a much worse fate than was suffered by the one in the game.
And hey, Mrs. Beedog has feet. Who knew.
I think the Citadel was the first drawing I did for this episode. 700 stories of delicious buffalo drummies. In the scene before this one, Beedog asks Takayuki if he wants to come hang out with the rest of the guys. I used this and a few other scenes in the episode to drive home a few points that haven’t been made yet — one being that the children are of different genders, with Akiko being the girl.
Another one was at the beginning when Beedog takes off his antenna hat, and when he says to Ramirez after being called The Bee Man, “Dude, I am a dog.” I needed a way to make sure everyone knows he’s a dog in a bee outfit, and not some kind of weird animal hybrid thing. Having him take the hat off also made a better fit for this episode, which he spends most of in his HEV Suit raincoat. I didn’t want to take it so far as to give him a goatee or glasses, but I thought he’d be at least a little more Gordon Freeman-like without the antenna.
Finally, the wings restaurant inside. Each character has their own little cup that they drink out of, as you might have noticed with Beedog and Kimiko at the end of the first episode. Taka has a Servbot sippy.
I hope you enjoyed this episode, and thanks for watching. And thanks to all the people who had such nice things to say about it. If you really like it, TJS has its own section in the forums now, where you can talk about stuff. Episode 4 will be out sometime in April.
