Samias Dragonlord Parody Special 1: "Saigo no battoru"
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Frequently asked questions. (v1.0 Last updated: 17/Dec/2003)
(replace "frequently" with "never" to get a true statement)
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CONTENTS:

1) References list.
2) Who is Samias?
3) Why did you do this?
4) What do people say about this?
5) What about the technical stuff?


1) REFERENCES LIST:
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Did you miss some jokes? Not to worry!
Here are all the references you can find in SDL Parody Special 1:

Page 1:
-Saigo no battoru: Means something like
 "The last battle" in Japanese.
-Gossip stone, signpost and grass bladess from Zelda 64.
-"All your relic..." famous Engrish senttence from
 ZeroWing (All your base are belong to us).
-"Not so fast!" from Powerpuff Girls.
-"Anyone who opposes..."
 Bison's victory line in Street Fighter 2.

Page 2:
-Matrix.

Page 3:
-"Victoly!..." another famous Engrish seentence.
-Goomba from Super Mario Brothers.
-Dr. Birkin from Resident Evil 2.
-Soke from Adventure 3 (http://ar.geocitties.com/peloso_oviedo/e-av3.htm).
-Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street.
-Navi from Zelda Ocarina of Time.

Page 4:
-A reference to the classic arcade videoogame
 from Sega "Golden Axe"
-"Hasta la vista, baby" Terminator 2.
-"Mamma Mia!" Super Mario 64.
-"Toasty!" Mortal Kombat 2.
-An obvious reference to Bowser stages
 in Super Mario Brothers.
-"Thank you, Samias..." Super Mario Brotthers
 (When rescuing mushroom retainers).

Page 5:
-A big reference to Poochie's low-budgett departure scene
 in that Simpsons episode "Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie"
-"Once again..." Powerpuff Girls ending
 complete with heart background.
-"See you next mission" Super Metroid.

Lucky those who found all these references,
for they deserve a cookie.
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2) WHO IS SAMIAS?
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Samias Dragonlord is a character created by Joanna Nowik.
The hooded bad guy and Levar are hers too.
They all appear in a comic series she maintains at:
http://www.angelfire.com/comics/samiascomics/
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3) WHY DID YOU DO THIS?
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Samias' authoress held a little art contest somewhere
around November of 2003. Contestants had to draw a short
comic featuring her characters. I entered, along with two
other people (namely Vash and DaRky), drew this 5-page
parody comic and ultimately won. Yay!
The prize for winning was basically getting this comic
hosted at Joanna's web page.
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4) WHAT DO PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THIS?
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The following are some comments regarding this comic
I received from some readers:

-CtrlAltDestroy (Chris Strake):
"That parody was hilarious. "You'll never get past
the..." "Oh, I'm sorry! Were you talking
to me?" and "The most dangerous of them all: NAVI!!
Hey! Look! Watch out!" Those were my favorite parts."

-Escaflowne Adept (Joanna Nowik):
"Hehe FireMario that was great! Much better than my
normal comic, and it had a Mortal Kombat reference. Toasty!"

-DaRkY:
"FireMario's Parody comic wins!YAY!
*Throws confetti all over FireMario*
Well...I dunno if it will win or not but that's
pretty damn good!I'm gonna re read it as I'm starting
to look at comics so I can get started on mine...grr..."

-Etregen:
"I always admired FireMario's stuff. Bravo. :D"

-Vash (Michael E. H.):
"Wow, I'll admit, that's pretty dang good!
I'd like to know how you got the colors so solid.
You must have used a program instead of actually
coloring it in, right? I'll have to admit, FireMario,
you are pretty dang good at what you do,
so I'll just say this: May the better artist triumph!"

-Ingram:
"Oh wow!!! That was, perhaps, the funniest thing
I've seen in a long time. And great art, too!
A lot of people try to parody things and it turns out
not so funny. This is fantastic. Wonderful job."

-Dr Fruitcake:
"LOL, FireMario! That was the best comic
I've read in a long time!"
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5) WHAT ABOUT THE TECHNICAL STUFF?
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Original stuff was drawn on a notepad thingy
using your everyday black pencil and ballpen.
After finishing the physical part, it was time
to advance onto the digital part, so I scanned
at 400 dpi, then raised contrast and reduced color
depth to just black and white, thus resulting
in a clean linework I could easily work on using
good old Paintbrush (NOT that evil Paint).

I used a combo of Paintbrush, Paint Shop Pro 2.0
and Photoshop 5.0 to do the coloring and to solve
a couple of tricky parts (embedded video-game
graphics and Levar's "low-budget departure").
Lastly, I used Corel Draw 10 for lettering and to
make the PPGirls-like concentric hearts background
found in the last page. 

Of course, the pages you viewed are not the original
final pieces. Those were very big for a web page,
so I downsampled all images to 100 dpi and saved
as highly compressed JPGs, thus having smaller,
low-quality pictures that any user can easily
download and view in a very short time frame.

[End of FAQ]