New DoA header image

Posted on May 24, 2011 by David M Willis

Sarah’s out of the top image.  It makes me very sad.  I have big plans for her, but all of these plans stem from her being avoidant and generally anti-people.  And having her interact with everyone all the time right off the bat works against that idea, so there hasn’t been very much of her so far.

Regrettably, since she’s one of my favorites.

Meanwhile, I figgered I should have the actual top three DoA characters ranked by number of appearances up in the header.  That, at the moment, has Joyce waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the lead, with everyone else sort of gathered around the middle battling for second and third place.  Joe and Billie take that honor, respectively.  Look at the tag cloud down in the lower left to see for yourselves.  I think I might start swapping out the people up top as they jostle for position.  (Man, this storyline has a lot of Dorothy.  She has a real shot of getting up there in a month or so.)

In the meantime, a minor goal of mine is to get Sarah earning her place at the top again.  Unfortunately, Sarah won’t like it.

61 thoughts on “New DoA header image”

  1. x o

    i liked sarah being there. seeme like she was keeping an eye on joyce.. and perhaps keeping billie at bay

  2. Gordon

    If you change it up on a semi-regular basis, it’s not racist anymore. You racist.

    1. David

      YOU’RE THE RACIST.

      1. shoeboxjeddy

        And then David was the demons

  3. TheAlucinaut

    Not to be That Guy, but I am made a little uncomfortable by Joe being behind Joyce like that, especially given their respective expressions…

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      Just be glad he isn’t facing the other way.

  4. Clementine

    Your mom’s racist.

    1. das-g

      For a nickel. If that’s your thing.

  5. Matt of Steel

    It’s the Joe sandwich that shall never be.

    1. gangler

      You forgot the addendum. It’s the joe sandwich that will never be on a tuesday. Or the Joe sandwich that will never be between the hours of five and seven within continental america. It doesn’t make sense unless you finish your sentence.

      1. coobee

        But in this case, is not the ‘be’ in question taken in the other useage, as a verb synonymous with ‘exist’? ‘The Joe sandwich that shall never exist’ is hardly something to get worked up about.

        Unless you’re Joe, of course.

  6. Ezra

    The tag cloud is tracking their appearances — you could probably write a script that would show the top three characters automatically!

    1. David

      I mention the tag cloud. :)

    2. George

      In theory this must be true since the cloud is storing the numbers somewhere, but Willis would have to both a) Draw every possible 3-character combination just in case and b) have to go with the cloud’s counting method, which is “every time they’re tagged”. A series of strips with, say, Dina sitting in the row of seats behind Amber and Walky as those two talked would increase her “tag count”, but I doubt it would “count” towards getting her in the banner because she’d be in the background and not speaking.

      1. taekwondogirl

        Yeah, but WIllis said he’s looking at the most tagged, not the largest relevance.

      2. Rowen Morland

        How many characters are there? This is going to end up being a very large number.

  7. Undrave

    I like the idea! Keeps things dynamic. Go for it!

    Plus that means you get to draw all those characters in new poses so they appear in the banner… then you can add them to the Gravatar database so we can have another round of gravatar shuffle (please? its fun!).

    Also Billie is half asian and Joe is jewish so that’s diversity right there!

    1. John

      Billie’s half asian? Really? This makes me asking Willis why she had yellow skin a while back a little awkwarder now.

      1. Undrave

        She is in this universe apparently. It hasn’t actually come up in story, only in comments though.

      2. Plasma Mongoose

        I thought that her yellowish colour was due to the alcoholism damaging her liver resulting in jaundice of the skin.

        1. John

          Willis told me she was just british and pale when I asked, which made as much sense to me as anything.

        2. Plasma Mongoose

          So she’s just your typical pasty-skinned pom then? There goes my theory then.

    2. Jackson

      Undrave, I was just about to point out that Joe is Jewish, but I had forgotten that Billie is half-Asian in this continuity. You have not only beaten me to the punch, you have made my point better than I could have! Now I am obsolete.

      1. TexasNinjaBuzzard

        OBSOLETE!

  8. Hien

    If you’re feeling like sketching a ton of title bars, how about changing them with each story arc to reflect the current arc’s focus characters?

    1. Digidestined of Trust (Tim)

      That’s EXACTLY what I was thinking for him to do!

  9. Daelin

    Damn you Willis! I thought this time would be different and Sarah would get the spotlight she missed out on during Roomies!.

    1. David

      I don’t think you read this at all. Read it again.

  10. Martin S Smith

    I think this is a pretty cool idea and that you should change it up on a regular basis. Daily, perhaps?

  11. Lunchbox

    Joe’s Jewish, right? If anything, the new banner isn’t racist, but the old banner is anti-semitic.

    1. Anon

      But both banners are homophobic. No what. I take that back. What am I saying?

      Everyone in the Walkyverse is gay. They just all don’t know it yet.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Even Joyce?

  12. Chrisby

    Joe is one of my favorite characters, so I’m okay with this.

  13. Steven

    He’s eye-Joeing her.

  14. cruncher3019

    But Joe? Really? He hasn’t done much of anything. Danny all the way.

    1. David

      According to the tag cloud, he’s done about 15 more things than Danny!

      1. Undrave

        Hey! Don’t refer to women as ‘things’, that’s demeaning, you racist jerk!

    2. nitpicker

      The Joe-Joyce date storyline.

    3. Loki

      Oh, come on, that smirk is awesome.

  15. John

    Godspeed, Sarah. Godspeed.

  16. TexasNinjaBuzzard

    Dammit, you BETTER bring Sarah back, you teenager-looking little art-man. She’s the best character here.

    1. David

      Sarah’s not going anywhere!

  17. Birch

    So if, say, ‘Conventions’ gets another 41 entries, that’s going on the banner, right?

    If so, I fully support this idea.

    1. David

      Basically, Brian Daniel needs to submit like 60 more pieces of art and then I’ll draw him and put him up on the banner.

      (ha ha no)

  18. Doom Shepherd

    Uh-oh. No more Sarah FAAAAAAAAAAAACE.
    But it’s not about RAAAAAAAAAAAACE. :)

  19. Makkabee

    But no longer sexist!

  20. Joebo

    Not that racist. There’s Joe, he’s Jewish and Billie, she’s half-Asian.

  21. Loki

    Eliminating Sarah is totally babies, you racist.

  22. Zem

    Joe’s in the top three? Since when?

    Or is this meant to reflect that you’ll be putting him in the spotlight from here onwards?

  23. Zepher

    Go Joe!

  24. TexasNinjaBuzzard

    Has anyone else noticed that no matter how many people vote in the poll at right, the percentage totals are always the same?
    “Other–>DoA” has been 71% since there were like 2500 votes!

    1. David

      Those percentage numbers haven’t always been the same. It settled in at about 70/15/15 a while ago, but for a while it was 75/15/10 and 80/10/10.

  25. LBD "Nytetrayn"

    Heck, I’d just move the logo more towards center and put Sarah off to the left by herself, were it me and having her with other people was the issue.

    …unless I’m misunderstanding the problem.

    1. David

      I promised myself when I started this thing I’d never add more than three people to the logo. Adding too many people to a header logo is one of my weaknesses.

      1. LBD "Nytetrayn"

        Nono, you misunderstand, I never meant adding more people:

        Sarah on the left of the logo, whichever other two on the right.

        1. David

          Then, yeah, you’re misunderstanding the problem. I’m putting people in the header based on how many appearances they have. Sarah doesn’t have as many appearances since she avoids people. Therefore, someone else deserves her spot, as they appear more. If Sarah didn’t avoid people and hate people in general, she’d appear more.

          (And she WILL appear more, but not just right now. At this very moment, she’s not earning the spot.)

  26. numaron

    I for one, hope that Amazi-girl eventually makes it in the top three purely because I would find it hilarious to have her on the header.

    1. MeHael

      I think that looking at Amber, Amazi-Girl, and Dorothy all in the header would be mind-warping. I also hope it happens.

  27. Raiser

    1) Draw every character, vectored (so size changes would be viable) with a transparent background, in a ‘header’ style pose for each.
    2) Draw the header sans characters.
    3) Acquire a script that checks the tag cloud and factors up the top three most common people.
    4) Have that script put those three people in size and order of top tag numbers in the header.
    5) In the event of a tie, have it choose by either alphabetical order (Danny before Joe) or most recent tagging.

    For instance, if it was 10 Joyce, 8 Joe, 8 Danny, 6 Amazi-Girl and Danny had just bumped up to 8 by the last update, either have it Joyce-Joe-Danny by alphabetical order for second place tie or Joyce-Danny-Joe for ‘most recent’ order.

    While it seems complicated, it’s largely basic programming (conditional if/then nesting OR a descending numerical sort with special handling properties for ‘ties’).

    Granted, my own programming knowledge is limited to introductory C++ and some shabby HTML and Visual Basic from high school…

    1. Raiser

      Er, wait. Correction on my example, because I just realized the alphabetic failure there.

      Assume Joe was the one recently bumped up to 8, and swap the two orders (Joyce-Danny-Joe by number-then-alphabetical, Joyce-Joe-Danny by number-then-recent).

  28. Mkvenner

    Is Patrick McGoohan still number 6?

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