Following Johns departure in May and his final decision not to return in July I attempted to keep the comic going by myself. In some cases this worked well and in some cases not so much and it became clear I lacked the skills required to do it on my own. To those of you who kindly offered to take up the mantle of artist in residence, thank you, but I have decided not to take up any of those offers and instead to end dotGif. The website and comics will remain up for as long as I am able to maintain it (the dotgif-comic.com domain will be up until at least February 2011, I don’t know about the dotgif.co.uk address).

So with that over with onto the thanks.

Firstly the big one, to Mr John Baylis, a man who can configure a extended ACL including wildcard masks with one hand while completing the library, on legendary, with the other. A man with a Hunter so epic it doesn’t just shoot witches, it shoots lions and wardrobes too. One of only 3 people in the world who can decipher something I’ve written without the aid of a spellchecker, and he’s so awesome he’s the other 2 aswell. dotGif has come along way from from it’s origins as a penis joke told in the first floor corridor of the AS building and it would not have been possible without you.

To the readers where ever you are, in the 3 years since it’s beginning the comic has now been viewed just under 2,000,000 (yes 2 million) times and some strips translated into at least (to the best of our knowledge) 4 other languages, and this is all down to you. We never made any money from this site, we did it as a hobby and for our enjoyment and this was enhanced by knowing other people were enjoying it to. So thanks

To Owen Good and the guys over at Kotaku and anyone else that ever posted the strip anywhere for other people to see thanks you helped us achieved almost 2 years of month to month increases in readership.

To all the guest artists and writers that ever submitted a guest strip thanks, in no particual order to Anxiety Decending, Chris Heaton, Tom Jaques, Robin Hayes and the guys at Propellor and Ratchet Games, Richard Moir, Chris Maddison and anyone else who contributed along the way who I may have forgotten.

Thanks to the guys at wordpress and especially comicpress and Phil(Frumph) for his support and help fixing bugs with the site.

I think that’s just about everyone and if I have forgotten anyone that’s simply because your not important, or I have the memory span of a something with a very short memory span, i forget what it is, anway it’s probably the latter as anyone who’s ever met me will attest.

Finally to answer the main questions I have been getting asked recently yes I will at some point give some indication where dotgif storyline would have gone in the future, but if you have any specific questions let me know so I can answer them. And the most common one, there has been no falling out between John and myself, I understand and fully support the reasons he gave for his leaving as he continues the transition to the new stage of his life and upon the release of Cataclysm he can look forward to my return to school him on the finer points of WoW (also hi M!)

I will be making probably one last post on Friday 13th after which the site will enter archive mode.

Until then lets not say goodbye, lets just say.. brb.

Terry / Kreedle.

P.S: This post is probably rife with spelling/grammar errors which I will one day fix, I promise.

So by now you will have seen John’s post about his departure from dotGif, and I just want to quickly say for those that have asked this was not an easy decision for John that he made over night, John’s final strip was infact this one, almost 2 months ago. The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that all strips since then have been made by me.

I will make my announcement at the end of the month about any future plans for dotGif but until then here is the 3rd in the “greatest hits” series, this one featuring my favourite ”b-sides” being punchlines I’ve never used in an actual strip. Tune in next week for the final “dotGif” comic, greatest hits volume 4, the comic chosen as a result of feedback from readers as the “best” of dotgif.

Until then

T/K

Firstly, sorry about my lack of input and content recently.

I have found that I have much less time that I feel this comic needs. I have also lost interest in it – or to be more specific – lost what I once enjoyed about making the comic. We created this comic while we were students, with plenty of free time to work up and devise the panels – sadly now, I have stumbled into the real world and have discovered that my free time is very precious to me, and setting aside an entire evening (sometimes) to making the comic is simply too much, and for that reason mainly, I am stepping down as artist.

Now, its completely up to Terry what happens next. He has put as much time and effort into this comic as I have, and I feel that if he wants to continue on with this, then it is completely up to him.

For those of you who have enjoyed reading this comic, I thank you. I wish Terry and anyone involved the best of luck for the future.

JB

So here is the second of the “revisited” strips, with added George Lucas style updating and additional “art”. If last time was an example of simplicity and reliance on art vs the written word this is the opposite, possibly the longest (text wise) strip we’ve done.

This is the strip that finally revealed our characters names, before then they we’re simply refered to in scripts as 1 and 2, but here they became Will (after Adama from BSG) Freeman (after Gordon from Half-Life) and Jay (not his real name,) Crowley (after the Demon from Good Omens by Niel Gaimen and Terry Pratchett). We had asked people from our facebook group to come up with names, those rejected include

• Nathan
• Vince
• Terrance
• “Xenar the destroyer of worlds”

It’s also one of my favorites as I had a lot of fun writing it, especially the tickers running along the bottom of the screen, we came up with about 20 or so jokes for that and it’s a shame we couldn’t fit them all in. In fact in the end one of the ticker jokes became a strip in it’s own right.

So I give you Noobs at 10, the greatest hits edition, and please ignore the bad joke in the middle of the strip, it’s deliberate, honest.

T/K

P.S:  A little note for fact fans out there, this is the first strip where the characters get “real” eyebrows.

So why not let me know what your favorite dotgif strips are, and possibly even why, by emailing me using the address

terry(that symbol that goes in the middle of email address)dotgif-comic.com

As for the attached strip, as with most of our comics it has a joke title, I had a bet with a friend that I couldnt sneak a steps reference into a strip without John noticing, I know it’s really a kylie song, but let it slide people.

Funny note, originally we we’re going to feature lego rockband in this strip but it proved a little difficult to draw, then shortly afterwards it was revealed to be a real game, so keep checking your gaming news site of choice for CounterStrike: Passive Resistance any day now.

T/K

P.S: As any of you that follow mine or the dotgif twitter feeds will know the new comic will now début on Tuesdays for the time being.

So E3 has come and gone again, bringing with it a whole host of new games, ways of playing games, and ways of not playing games whilst sorta actually playing games.

But yet again the star of the show, as with almost every e3 was the epic queues, and what better way to pay tribute then to immortalise them in game form?

This may well be the last dotgif comic for a while, so enjoy it people!

T/K

So here we are again, back with another strip made from 100% recycled material, and this one has more jagged edges than an 8-bit hacksaw.

This comic references Project Natal, which is you are unfamiliar with is a gesture based control system, think wii-motes but without the motes, or wii’s. How this could possibly go wrong combined with games like Mortal Kombat?

T/K

As for the comic, that will appear tomorrow, and for those that have wondered why we have dropped to 1 comic a week, and when the Jay arc final strip will be published that too will be addressed in the fullness of time.

T/K

Fun and games (mainly Dragon Age Origins: Awakenings for me) behind the scene’s delayed this strip.
Expect news on the future of the comic shortly.
T/K