237 - Under the weather.
Posted on 2010-02-15 00:00:34

Apologies for such a small update on a Monday with no Thursday update following, I have been quite under the weather. Next week I shall make it up to you!

Also I changed some things on the website and just tightened things up a bit. Nothing overly amazing but I think it looks better.

And now! For some comic blah blah blah:

The Importance of research.
I always hear the term "write what you know" Well, if I wrote what I knew it would just basically consist of different ways you can align type to images and how negative space is totally awesome, and how Billy from math class is SO annoying! Which, to most people, is as boring as whale shit. So I much rather make a comic about zombies instead.

So, I have made up a little saying for others and myself:
"Write what you know, research what you don't"

Doing research on your topic of choice, can save you from a lot of embarrassment in the end, and more importantly, help you develop your story and characters. What you research is generally up to you, but it's always important to go farther than 'watching a ton of zombie movies' or 'playing a assortment of videogames' or even 'reading a bunch of fantasy books.' Which is all well and good, but basically all you are doing there is reading someone ELSES works that someone else had already did the research on. Basically don't get inspiration and research confused with each other. Doing so can taint your own works leaving them as flat and flavorless as water soup, because in reality using bad movies, writing, or games can just give you a bad final project.

For example, do some history research, look into the background of how the genre you chose started, doing this can give you ideas for topics of your own works. Whether it be sci-fi, fantasy, videogames, everything has some sort of history. It also doesn't hurt to research outside your subject and bring in additional ideas from other researching adventures, combining them and creating something new. Like what's the worst that can happen by doing research? OH NO you learned something!

With me, I haven't really watched a lot of zombie flicks, most zombie flicks are unrealistic and FILLED with bad acting, and fake fear. So instead I looked into natural human history instead, reading up about natural human disasters, plagues, war, and other human survival stories. Depicting real life accounts, real reactions retold by real people, about real life horror stories, the most prominent in my research was the Holocaust from World War 2, its even visible in the comic itself. It also helped me research the human being itself, no one is ever truly evil, and there is always a reason for doing what they do and build up to that point.

Research is especially important with my type of audience, who concentrates on those fine details, such as what kind of fuel the helicopters use.

After really getting into TZH I found myself scrambling to learn and research about survival, politics, agriculture, guns, and various weapons that are portrayed in the comic. For example I found that a Desert Eagle is merely a 'flash piece', and not really practical for zombie hunting. Because, for starters, the ammo that the thing takes is scarce, it's a HUGE overkill if you are hunting something like unarmed zombies, and its not very accurate as far as aiming goes, and there is NO possible way you can fire that thing accurately with one hand. The kickback on that thing alone would cause the weapon to either fly out of your hand or hit you in the face, or you'll just land on your ass. Myself, I could barely lift the thing.
I learned how to handle weapons and their basic functions that, unless it's a revolver guns don't go 'click' when they are empty, you definitely can't aim a gun sideways while shooting (you know like in the 'gangsta' movies) because you loose its centre of balance, they also don't go 'clittyclittyclak' when you are waving it around (also, like the movies) because if it did, that means there are screws loose and you really need to tend to that. There are different guns for different 'uses' as well, they are not all the same by any stretch of the imagination. Some guns are better suited for the jungle, desert, the cold, rain, some are higher maintenance than others, kickback, range. So it goes back to the research again. They needed something that was somewhat low maintenance, plentiful ammo that can be distributed between the other firearms used, and just overall simple and straight to the point, because after all, their enemy won't be armoured or shooting back, so in TZH their armour and weapons reflect the enemy they are fighting against.

Yay!