'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Annie finds her gloves.

Annie Intro – 07

She lives after all!

Main NAV storyline is on break. Refresher course for Annie:

The first part of Annie's story

How Annie became a character

19 Comments

Wow, this webcomic is amazing! I just discovered it, and in fact, I reached the last page minutes before you updated! I had just clicked on the banner so I could bookmark the latest page, and Bam! Instant Gratification.
I love your drawing skills. You mentioned you were self-taught – were the books in the first pages based on ones you used?
I should probably only comment about this page, but your story is so thrilling I couldn’t pause to comment! I absolutely loved when we first saw real life. Kelya is beautiful in a dark, broken sort of way. I adore the idea of having an AI dragon as a (basically all-powerful) companion. You mentioned he didn’t have sentience though… 🙁
How do the avatars get in all the fine little motions if they’re just tapping fingers together? The Kido users probably have it easier, but there must be so many complex hand gestures to remember!
This is a beautiful story, and I will be tuning in next Tuesday!

Aw, thanks!

As for your questions, the books used in the first pages were all non-art related. I simply slapped a cover title on them that sounded artsy 🙂 I didn’t use any art books. Manga, the net, and copious amount of try/fail/re-try were my main teachers.

There are a bunch of hand gestures to memorize, but a lot of the little motions is artistic license. It would be a rather boring/awkward story if everyone’s expressions and movements were realistically wooden. Though the Kido users could pull off a lesser wooden expression.

I thought the facial expressions were just smilies. You know, some pre-drawn along with the avatar expressions that are alternated whole with user input. “Smile”, “Frown”, “Curious” and so on, depending on the quality of the avatar.
I’m more bewildered there are no pre-generated “public use” free avatars – would make for an awesome identical background crowd, by the way, – and no computer avatar makers, at least paperdoll style. The whole conflict of Kleya having no avatar with realistic proportions is rather weird.
But hey, artistic license.

I don’t think pre-generated avatars would work. I mean, avatars are already free in LiFe, with Kleya’s clothing and different hairstyles, eye colors and hair colors. What costs is modifying them (with different clothes, and probably more hairstyles and colors). As for the Game (and the DeathMatch), they could exist, but player’s scores are based on popularity, so using a free avatar would be dooming yourself to fail. I guess they could exist anyway, but didn’t appear because Kleya was so obsessed with having an avatar exactly how she wanted it.

“…And the author/artist figures out perspective!” ~approximate quote from the creator of the SCHLOCK MERCENARY webcomic… It’s that angle where she’s reaching down her hand, 3rd panel, that reminded me of that sidebar comment on his webpage.

Looking good!

If you tap your right forefinger and thumb to stand up, what do you do to tap your right forefinger and thumb..? O_o

Maybe precede it with an escape gesture?

I have no idea, but if I were suggesting a user interface for it, I’d make an escape sequence, two specific gestures in a row, that meant, “interpret the following commands as literal hand gestures until the end escape sequence.” The end escape sequence would be the same as the starting escape sequence, except in the reverse order.

If you think of each of the hand gestures as a character in an alphabet, it’s easier to imagine how to give user commands. That way the instruction manual could use for example “b” as the gesture shown above, and only have to illustrate the gesture once.

The interface would probably have a couple dozen common actions with single gestures (walk, stand up, smile, sit on the ground, lie down, nod…) and then many more that are double gestures – starting with an enhancement gesture that acts like a shift or alt key on a keyboard, then followed by one of the regular gestures. So “lie down” gesture preceded by the shift gesture would mean lie on your back; the “wave” gesture might be shift gesture plus the raise arm gesture; and so on.

It might not actually work that way in L.i.f.E. but I will go on imagining it does till the comic explains the actual UI 🙂

considering the range of motions you can do with the gameing glove i’m sure there’s tons you can do. just a matter of having learned/setting up your hotkeys.

for those that dont know the rl glove http://theperegrine.com/

Whoa, there’s sky! I’ve always kinda assumed everything had a ceiling 🙂

I got the impression that everything had an invisible ceiling with a simple skybox.

I’ve been a bit suspicious of Carol since she seemed so pleased to have found a newbie for herself, but I have to admit, whatever game she’s playing, she’s paying for it. 😉

Inb4sproing

And what does tapping your fingers like that do??? And will whatever she’s doing be affecting her too since that same gesture was made???

See above comments – I guess if she just made the gesture the regular way with her fingers, it wouldn’t show on her avatar. She did it in some other way for demonstration.

Hey, just found your comic today. Quite pleased with how the story is going and the progression thus far. I hope to see more wonderful art and story telling from you.
The real life scenes really made my jaw drop. I can’t even draw the “bad” art you used for Kat’s beginning avatars; to see you could pump out that kind of art though? Extravagant, I especially loved the scenery in the “tutorial” stage so far, was gorgeous and quite enjoyable. Can’t wait for more; Keep up the amazing work!

~Best regards, Avan

Actually, I think I’ve figured it out… You do that gesture, and then the gloves *track* with the headset to follow the body’s moves, sort of like a Wii configuration, except the sensors are all positional based on the gloves…and you need both functional, or you need special commands to activate them one-handed. The facial expressions are being recorded and transposed by the helmets which is how you can get fine eyerolling expressions with jerky body movements. The gestures just get things started; after that, the gloves/helmet combo track everything until it’s time to stop tracking, when another gesture does that–sort of an “autorun” feature.

Huh i was right wow that’s rare

errm now she’s going to have to get hit on the arm for looking at that gesture,.. theme are da rules! :D,.. am i the only one who recognised that hand signal? 😛 probably.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

Annie Intro – 07