WARBOT in Accounting: Brian's next internet project
 

I'm surprised you're doing another webcomic, Brian. I thought you had enough with 8-bit. That said, who's doing the artwork? I actually kind of like it even if it's not sprite-based.

I've always said that I'd probably do another webcomic after 8-bit and that there was no way it would be sprite based, so this should not come as much of a surprise.

The art is by Zack Finfrock of Pixelated Pupils.

Pix Pup! Wow. I can't believe I didn't see it. Though it is a bit of a deviation from Zack's original style.
You did mention that a while ago when asking about how to manage two comics at once in the newspost.

I love the concept alone. Great blend of Deathbot 9000 plus The Office. I can't wait to see the results.

Though I have to ask - is it going to be plot-driven or one-shot? And if it's plot driven, is it going to have a beginning and end like 8bit, or just do it's own thing until whenever?

I have to say, I'm kinda sad in a way..
I freaking LOVE 8-bit theater for the humour AND the sprite-based design. I always hoped that you'd drop the whole brand-new-art thing, and I dunno do like a 16-bit theater or something.
Or even begin your own unique story with characters that you've basically developed independent of squaresofts original avatars. ("Cuz let's face it, your party of four in Final Fantasy 1 weren't really, quote unquote Characters, as such).
I dunno.. maybe that's just me...
I will admit that the Warbot thing has potential, but I just hope it doesn't turn into Robots do PvPOnline...

Is it going to be entirely in black and white, cause that would be a really interesting art style.

Haha, I love the motivational poster back there. Just an opinion, but I think It would be great if you changed the motovational poster everyday. Going from a serious one to one of the occasional joke ones you can find on the wide-web.

And I think It would work as a one shot similer to the Office.

Keep up the attention to the extra little details in the frame! Good luck!

Is it just me, or is Warbot's tie attached to its anthropomorphosized jaw?

Amusing concept though. I'll check it out when you start it.

I like it already.

Mirai: It'll be character driven. Plots? Not exactly. Think of Law & Order if that helps. The characters clearly have story arcs that happen, but they're mostly off screen and only hinted at. We'll mostly get that here. It kind of lets us do both one-shots and stories without trampling on either. In theory anyway. Not sure about a planned ending. The plan right now is that Zack and I laugh a lot when we think of comic ideas for this thing. Maybe it'll go on for years, maybe it'll flop in a month.

Torque: most of what you want is impossible. The online comic market is changing, or at least mine appears to be, and it's simply impossible for me to keep doing comics professionally if I stick to sprites. It cripples the revenue. I'm not talking about getting rich, I'm talking about getting back up to minimum wage. I can pretty much guarantee WIA won't be PvP + A Robot.

Anything that is even remotely similar to the style of L&O is pretty much a win for me.

Also that fact thet you proved yourself to be among the best writers on the internet sure helps. I do have a question though, is this gonne be like, Warbot trying to adapt to the accounting lifestyle?

Kind of yes, kind of no. It's hard to explain, really.

"WARBOT, I need those TPS reports in by Monday - and make sure they have the proper cover sheet."

"I can't do that, Dave."

Are you going to host it here or should I join warbotinaccounting.com forums?

I imagine it'll be at nuklearpower.com

So this is just going to come in after 8bit ends, or will there be some overlap?

Totally do a WARMECH tie-in.

There will only be overlap if I can get a new site design and back end that supports simultaneous comics archives.

You'd just need to utilize a separate SQL table really, but I guess the difficulty would be with front page news if you were to use your current updater.

In other words, this post, along with 7,948 other posts I have made on these forums, is worthless.

Naw, it'd be an all new system from back to front. The problem is getting it done in a timely fashion by a skilled person who is trusted and doesn't mind doing all this for free.

I'm intrested in this, to say the least. The humoruos one shot comics usually are the best, 8-bit exceptions mind you. I like the idea and the art.

Good luck on finding somebody who would do that. I would, but I know very little about Web-Design, mostly basics.

I signed up for a Programming With PHP class today is that what you're looking for

i must say that if, somehow, there were Atomic Robo Cameos or Easter eggs it would be totally awesome and appropriated.

Hell, im just glad we're getting more of your write style with a fresh setting...

One thig that confuses me though is Warbot's look in this seeting. I got a "Dilbert" vibe of it and i dont know if this is good or bad

I fully agree that Brians writing is teh 1337. And if it's not PvP + a robot, that's awesome.
But, and this is probably a dumb question, what IS warbot? is this something we've seen already somewhere? Like "hey, you all know me, and now I'm in accounting!" OR is this just new, and kind of thrown out there?

It's a robot made for fighting things put in an office setting. I'm pretty sure the premise is fairly clear.

Ok, what I meant by that question was whether this was a character that had been established somewhere else... something a little more subtle than just the obvious.
Yes, I think that with Brians writing the giant death-machine in an office setting will be hilarious, but I was simply curious if there was MORE humor to be found in some sort of meaning I'd missed

It might be something like this.

I like how he cant even fit in his cubicle. Also, the clip-on tie.

Ya, the tape holding it all together was a nice touch

edit: ok, they're straps, not tape.

I can see the fan emails already:

"Dear Warbot,
How can you type with a giant gatling gun for an arm?
Crapfully yours,
Ed E., Risembool"

If you believe in yourself, you can do anything you want to. You are cool! Yay!

I like this already.

An amusing and topical anecdote
 

Unexpected consequences of having to unexpectedly use your personal laptop for an office presentation: having to spend 10 minutes before you do it explaining who "WARBOT - in Accounting" is, and what he's doing on your desktop.

The fact that he's a comic character for a comic that doesn't actually exist certainly didn't help matters any.

Any potential loss of income can be blamed on, and subsequently collected from, Mr. Clevinger over there.

My attorney is drafting the tort filing as we speak!

I hardly see how this is, in any way, a bad thing.
1) You got ten minutes of doing nothing. Sure, before the board, but still. You could have been productive!

2) It may mean the people who saw this get into the comics as well, meaning they might cut you some slack in the future, if they're in any position of power.

3) Still claim any damages with Mr. Clevinger. We all know what a horrible man he is. IF he's a man. Or human at all!

http://www.ecclescakes.com/images/ChocGanacheTort.jpg

Mmmmm.... Tort.

This begs the question: what the hell do you do all day, Fifth? I assumed it involved some kind of cave (with excellent wi-fi) from which you delivered harsh internet justice and wisdoms. Now there's an office somewhere in the mix? This does not jive.

He calls the cave his office. The 'board' is actually just the goblins and orcs that have lived there for centuries plotting the demise of mankind.

I didn't ask you to explain who "WARBOT - in Accounting" is. I asked if this character had already been previously used in an earlier work of some kind.
Given the very NATURE of 8-bit theater, I don't think that's particularly unreasonable.
Also, I like the talking in circles thing.. keep 'er up.

Man, I don't understand it any more than you do.

He wasn't even talking to you, Torque. Dude you have a really shitty attitude and I think you need to ask yourself "is NPF right for me" because right now hell no it isn't. I mean good lord how do you manage to pop up on one of the senior admin's radar three times in one day?

Chill out and frickin calm down.

I vote we ignore Torque and go back to discussing my mysterious day job and the inexplicable appearance of Brian Clevinger's work in front of a room full of engineers and - it's true! - actual accountants.

I mean it was only the two accountants, but they both lolled pretty hard.

right now i just think that all day long Fifth has to press a certain Code on a certain computer after a certain amount of time has passed... over and over again.

really... it explains a lot.

Then all was good and as it should be, non?

You are clearly a man who has never watched accountants lol. It's the kind of thing you don't forget, no matter how hard you try.

Plus then like I said they wanted to know where it was from and what the hell was I supposed to do there, show them 8-Bit Theater? That's the kind of thing'd follow a man the rest of his working lifetime!

The rest of his incredibly short working lifetime!

You had a unreleased webcomic in your desktop. Whats so bad on saying that you read another one?

oh... wait........ yeah, ok.

But hey! You could tell then that you're actually a moderaton in a webforum ABOUT a webcomic and.....

... yeah, ok.

Correction - about a sprite comic.*

I'd be blacklisted so hard it would leave physical scars.


*Just God help me if anyone noticed the Ragnarok Online server. I'd be lucky if my employment termination notice didn't come by way of them throwing me out of the top-floor window.

One run by shiney no less.

No they would throw you off a rooftop but only to ensure you would land in a vat of bubbling pitch.

That's what they'll add on after they notice your avatar.

"Oh god you can see its nipples! MAKE HIM BURN."

Accounting warbot? Yeah I'm late on reading this (one of the rare adventurings out of the creativity convention and all that) and it strikes my fancy somethin' fierce.
(I see what you did thar!)

I just noticed that none of us can ever run for office or pretty much any political job because of the risk of one of their rivals to use their posts here in NPF on TV ads to break their moral

OK for one, I know for a fact that Fifth has no cave, office, nor even a physical being. Fifth is a computational anomaly created by a combination of spam, Tom from myspace (the first AI) , and the sheer amount of soul that the member of the NFP channel through their computers. My working theory is that somehow every computer in existence is connected by a common factor, this being spam. The joined powers of the world's computers formed a collective conscious. Unfortunately the only skills this entity possessed were those involving taking over websites and the ability assault your retinas with massive amounts of lies. Of course, this is all you really need to be a mod, so there really was no problem there. One day, it found nuklearpower, inserted itself into our culture and has risen through the ranks. All of this made possible by his constant feeding on our emotions and trivial anecdotes. As far as Tom (or the Tangential Omega Motherboard) is concerned he simply provided Fifth a kick-start into existence due to a leak of a portion of his AI programming. Well, this and the fact that Myspace is responsible for 80% of the world's spam.


And for two, his boss should totally be a Dreadnought

no, no, no. Fithfiend is the bastard digital flipper-baby that resulted when Hal, SHODAN, and GLaDOS had one horrific compu-bender one night.

Fucking
Idiot,
Frequently
Tries
Helping
Forsaken
Imbeciles
Enter
Nuklearpower's
Domain

Jerk.

Shiney is Offtopic! OMGWTFBBQSAUCE!

But hey, any thread is "Hate Fifth" thread, AMIRITE?

So... warbot...

ok, yeah, i cant do it... now i just want a character in Warbot that based on Fifth and Shiney... as some sort of couple...

LOVELY!

Oh shit they're on to me HEY GUYS I AM MODERATORILY PRONOUNCING THAT THIS THREAD IS OFF TOPIC AND WE SHOULD RETURN TO DISCUSSING BRIAN CLEVINGER'S NEW WEBCOMIC THAT WILL BE TOTALLY AWESOME MAYBE.

Wasn't in Mod Color - Doesn't count!

Okay, but seriously - Are there any other characters you have planned for the cast that are noteworthy?

I am so looking forward to this. I haven't got to see any other work by Brian as Nuklear Age costs more than I'd like to pay for a book and I never saw the Atomic Robo #1 that I tried to preorder from a goddamn hippie and his cats.

Git yer Atomic Robo comics here.

I hate to drive the thread off topic once again, but this thread has been a source of bittersweet amusement for all us disgruntled cubicle dwellers out here.

I'm kind of hoping napping-dude in the preview is a character, cause I dig that dude's style.

The guy on the right has this sort of interesting bleak expression that I also kind of dig, like he's just one more miscalculated invoice away from hanging himself with a noose made out of paperclips.

I think we go to the same comic book store.

The dude right behind the sleeping dude, too. He's either the douchebag boss, or the douchebag office guy who's always hitting on the female employees and acting 'slick'.

Somehow, he looks like both a boss and a straight-man to me, not a douche. But then, given the comedy media on offices I've seen so far, I'm probably wrong.

We've got a handful of human characters planned so far. About half a dozen or so.

I really don't know if WIA will qualify as an office comedy. At least not the kind that you're used to. This isn't The Office or Dilbert or even Fred Savage's Working. There's no wacky personalities or hijinx. Things just kind of are.

So, it's like a webcomic version of Seinfield! Nice!

..ok, i know... i'm gonna go die over there in the corner now......

But still, the idea seems nice, because it's fresh. It's not another "games" webcomic or another animu quasi-hentai webcomic or another emo webcomic... that in and on itself is already some kind of victory

Wait a moment. Not sucking is a victory in these days?

I'm looking forward to this, but I don't suppose we can expect a preview episode any time soon?

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I could take each and every individual post in this thread, and link it to something fun. Or display a pic. But there's just so many! ( ;_____; )

And then the admins would eat you.

SEIL YOU READ WEBCOMICS TOO MUCH GO OUTSIDE

I think we have finally - finally - reached a point where Seil doesn't want to link webcomics. And I thought this day would never come.

I say you model the dude with the coffee after Fifth.

Make him a tired angry middle management guy who is a secret geek and loves Warbot's mechanical wonder, but in secret. Something like when a retired athlete moves to an office job and all the managers want to hear their war stories.

And he talks about Heroes at the water cooler.

But no seriously I'm enjoying where this looks like it's going, and looking forward to the results. It'd be nice since Pixelated Pupils kind of lost my interest, but I love Zack's art.

Are you saying that you plan on making a sit-com that is oblivious to the fact that it's a sit-com? Not that its unprecedented, but I like the idea.

Also, how much of the comic is going to take place within the office? I think it would be really cool to see how a warmech gets through day to day life.

That's pretty much the comic. The office is just one part of his life as it would be for anyone.

Fifth, doing a presentation... for engineers. Why am I suddenly envisioning Chernobyl right now? Is that normal? Unless they're computer engineers or something, then it would be y2k if it really happened the way the hysteria said it would.

Anyway, I am looking forward to this new internet money-making scheme, and I hope that bastard Clevinger doesn't fuck it up, leaving me nothing to read all day in lecture except for the Perry Bible Fellowship archives. Though, if he does screw it up, maybe I can sue him. Say his comic spilled the scalding hot coffee of suck into the lap of my mind.

But really, it's good to see that there will be more of Brian's excellent writing on the net after 8-Bit is finished up and buried in a hole on archive.org. Also, I do hope that if a strip is good/funny enough, that there will be an option to buy a print of said strip, as was previously impossible to do with 8-Bit.

For some reason the thing I'm associating this most with is The Incredibles. Should I see a doctor?

Hey guys, Zack here. Just letting you guys know I'll be posting art here. Character designs and extra stuff. Think of it as a sneek peek of sorts.:whee:

The first one is a full Warbot, minus the greytones.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6.../Warbot1-1.jpg

If the dummy standing next to him in this shot is 5'11", it gives you a good idea of how tall WB is.

Y'know, I could write up a script for you, Brian. You can consider me your last resort :D.

I like how if you squint enough you can kind of see a face in the Warbot. Is he she it going to be as expressive as Robo through his eyes or all his mannerisms and emotions are going to be shown solely through his dialogue?

Eye and body language.