CEB: Everybody loves Smiley Town! Hehe! Yeah, Martin's motives seem a little odd, I suppose. What's going through that ancient, decrepit brain of his?


Shonta: Ha, I can understand that sentiment! Ada's definitely got a steel will to put up with this kind of torture. Perhaps this is how some of those Wii "accidents" really happened...


Sike: That's some rigorous training, huh? It should serve as a lesson to everyone not to eat pizza right before bed. *munches pepperonis*

Shuppet Master's obviously got talent, or DS wouldn't be trusting him with this task. But I suppose MoP probably has some tight security measures, too.

Remind me never to attempt an excavation of your room.

See? The will's one final joke! You've gotta love it! And I'm glad you appreciate the scanlines. Still not sure how far I'm going to take that, particularly when people aren't using the outdated VHS format. We'll see.

Rage is fun!

I assume you know that every joke has to have a punchline, right?


Mikachu: Um... wow. That's... holy cow. You really took a lot of notes, didn't you? Thanks! I'm proud to have inspired such dedication! ^_^

Pardon me, though, for not commenting on the contents of the list itself. For one thing, I would just be rehashing everything that you've covered in your analysis. And for another... that thing's long!

Really, you don't need to apologize for the analysis here. I like the fact that you're thinking about it! It's kinda cool.


Blade: Aw, c'mon. Mikachu can analyze it if he so chooses! I've done similar things for other fics in the past, even if they weren't quite as extensive and even if I didn't post them. So I can't blame the guy for trying to get a better handle on the situation. WotF is complicated!

Oh, and giving 23 decimal places would have been impressive... if the number had been 99.99999999999999999999999%. Or even a different digit in place of the last one or two 9's. But when it starts with 94%, the thing just doesn't seem all that big mathematically.

(Math-whacked!)


T-Tar Master: Whoa, how's it going, man? Good to have you back here! I'm sure you have your reasons for being away, but don't worry about it. This fic is about reading and having a good time, after all!

I do appreciate the compliment. To be honest, while I've admittedly worked really hard planning this whole project, it still amazes me when people give compliments like that. But thank you very much. Kind words like that make the hours crafting pages a lot easier to bear. ^_^

Interesting questions, actually... if I've been asked them before, it's been long enough that they're worth a second iteration. So let's see...

Honestly, I started this project mostly as a thing on my own, just messing around. The first page, as I mentioned long ago, is completely unedited from the original. I had been toying with the idea for awhile, thinking back to a short-lived skit Andrew (then OzAndrew, I believe) had going in Miscellaneous. And since I had the programs to make it work, I decided to give it a shot. Before I knew it, I'd designed somewhere around a dozen pages in a single day, with the plotline unfolding itself before me beyond anything I'd initially envisioned. All I did was take that plotline and work with it, and take the initiative to post. That's all there is to it, I guess. In any case, it's been really fun, and I'm going to be rather depressed when it finally reaches the end.

(Bit of trivia: When I initially started, I had planned for each character to only have one image that never changed. That's why even on #2, Ada's and Gavin's characters have the same expressions throughout. I deviated from that plan in #3, and I've never looked back.)

I've answered the second question in various forms before, but I'm not sure I've ever given a complete explanation. For starters, I have a program called Paint Shop Pro which came with an accessory program, Animation Shop. I use the latter for most of my WotF work, mostly because I prefer its system of cutting, pasting, cropping, resizing, adding text, and so forth. Also, I took some files from a free download of Comic Book Creator to use for the page with 6 frames as well as the speech and thought bubbles.

One of the hardest parts of the job is searching for images to use. Once I've established a character's "identity," or anime alter-ego, every page containing that character has to use the same identity. With certain characters this is easy; I've never had a problem finding pictures of Ichigo Kurosaki (Blademaster), for instance. Sasshi Imamiya (Mega Horny) is significantly harder. The most frustrating thing is when you find an image that has a perfect expression, setting, etc. but its too small or the image quality is horrendous. Sometimes I can work with images; for instance, while each frame is 404 x 300 pixels, I can usually stretch 400 x 300 pictures to 404 x 303 without getting too much distortion. Working with a 200 x 200 image, though, would be pretty much out of the question except in special circumstances. And if an image is extremely blocky, there's really nothing I can do. The one thing I make sure to do is to save any picture I use; that way, I don't have to scour the net again each time I want to reuse it.

Once I have each image, I have to tweak them so that they fit on the page. I obviously don't find 404 x 300 pictures on a regular basis, so I use a combination of cropping and compressing to get the part of the image I seek in the right size in the panel. This can sometimes be problematic; there have been times where other characters from the anime creep into the borders of the picture, so I have to use very creative means of blocking them or taking the attention away from their presence. But this part really isn't very hard, once you get used to it. And compression doesn't really cause distortion (as long as you do it in one step), unlike expansion. I use a similar technique to get the right size of word bubbles, although that's much more of a trial-and-error process since I don't know beforehand exactly how big the text is. But once I've gotten that worked out, I paste the bubbles over the page image.

Now, I always start a page with a pretty clear idea of what's going to be said and what's going to happen, so scripting isn't hard. Sometimes I plan all the lines before getting a single image; this can be important if the dialogue is complicated or has important information. Other times, I just work from an outline in my head. But I still have to position the bubbles in a way so that the order is clear and they minimize interference with the pictures below, and I have to carefully put each sentence or phrase in the exact spot where it needs to be in the word bubble. If I resort to bolding or italicizing a single word, that takes a lot of extra time, as I have to manually delete the original word after I've already pasted it and then place the edited version in precisely the same spot.

Then I add a title, and voila! I'm done!

...Not. Unfortunately, there's one more step that's my own fault. Because I started WotF with .gif images, I made the decision to continue that standard. Unfortunately, I've yet to have a page that could be saved as a .gif as is. You see, .gif files are limited to a maximum of 256 colors per image. So when I save a page, I have to first optimize it (reduce it to an acceptable number of colors). Different optimization methods give different results, and I've learned which ones to try and which ones simply never work. Aside from saving collected images in their original format, this is the only use I have for Paint Shop Pro in the design process. I copy and paste the page from Animation Shop into Paint Shop Pro. Since PSP only has one optimization method for .gif files (it doesn't give you options), I do that one first and save the file. Then I go back to Animation Shop and try each of the decent optimizations, comparing each result to the saved file. If one is better, I save over the PSP file. If the PSP one is best, I go with that.

There have been a few occasions where the image quality was degraded so badly no matter which optimization I tried that I reworked part of the page. Extreme problems are rare, but they usually happen when one panel uses colors that are wildly different from those in the other panel. In such cases I change the offending panel to try to eliminate that severe contrast.

So... that about covers it, I think. Hope I didn't forget anything, and that my explanation helps you understand the process! I'll try to keep the quality going strong, so please keep reading!


Ada: Hey, I'm cruel! Maybe that really is all there is to it... doesn't it seem like something Martin would do?


Okay, so there's no page here. I have it done, rest assured; it's been done for awhile. But unfortunately, we had a severe ice storm here over the weekend, and I spent most of the time without a usable net connection. (When the power goes out about every 15 minutes, you don't try to use the computer.) It's back on now, but either we're on some temporary system that won't allow us to upload files, or Imageshack's just being cruel to me. So... yeah. I'll get it posted as soon as things start working again!


...The really sad thing is that this post is probably longer than most of my usual fanfic chapters.