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 Complete Marvel Chronology Spider-Woman Agent of SWORD (motion comic) [h33t][PeteThePIPster]



Complete Marvel Chronology - Spider-Woman Agent of SWORD [motion comic]





This upload replaces, and upgrades, the previous version from earlier this year which has now been deleted.





This version is a dvd rip and is of the highest quality, in mov format, and also features the bonus features which appear on the disc.























Preview Art by Alex Maleev





In this special upload in the Complete Marvel Chronology here are all five episodes of the very first Marvel motion comic - Spider-Woman - Agent of S.W.O.R.D. released during 2009.





Here are two features which bring some background to the motion comics releases.





[from Marvel.com]


Spider-Woman comes to life this spring.





Introducing the Spider-Woman Motion Comic, an all-new, all-awesome experience in graphic storytelling.





SPIDER-WOMAN writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Alex Maleev conceived the story and art from the onset as a Motion Comic with a traditional paper comic to follow.





For Marvel's Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, Marvel Motion comics represent the culmination of several years' worth of discussions.





"This has been an ongoing conversation I've had with our publisher Dan Buckley I'd say for the last two to three years," Quesada reveals. "It became very, very evident to me that as technology moves forward, there will come a day where we'll be able to not just create animation based upon our comic books and our characters and stories that we've told, but there will come a time when eventually we'll be able to take existing comic art, the flat, static art, and be able to animate it.





"So [now] we can put out a product that is not quite a comic book and not quite animation, [but] a wonderful hybrid that incorporates all of our great talents."





While Maleev previously participated in a similar venture, the animated adaptation of Stephen King's "N." Quesada tells us that the decision to make SPIDER-WOMAN the first series to get this treatment on a regular basis came from his talks with Bendis.





"Brian and I have always sort of wondered about what are the next steps for comics and comics creators and the Marvel characters, [and the discussion around Digital Motion Comics] was a conversation that we started having years ago," Quesada relates. "Then the idea of Spider-Woman sort of came out of that. [We thought] let's try to do something original and brand new that perhaps is constructed for the motion comic, instead of taking something that's been previously done and trying to animate it."





Quesada also sees the Spider-Woman Motion Comic as the perfect opportunity to reach out to some of Marvel's fans who may not already be reading the comics.





"I absolutely do think that people that have never read a comic or were [not] interested in comics would be interested in motion comics," he explains. "When you think about fans out there who are interested in Marvel but primarily interested in [the] movies, animations and games and [who] don't dabble in comics, I think there's an audience out there for the characters and the material that we can absolutely reach through this, including lapsed fans and current fans as well."





While distribution plans are still being ironed out and finalized, Quesada could clarify the rationale those plans would follow.





"They're being built to reach out to our fans as well as our comics readers," the Editor-in-Chief elaborates. "Basically [we want] to have it for them when they want it, where they want it and how they want it. Plans currently include iTunes and other digital distribution outlets, Marvel.com, probably our Marvel YouTube channel and other streaming websites, and we're also exploring distribution via DVD and mobile as well."





Working in such a nascent form has proved greatly rewarding to Quesada, who says that he and everyone else working on the Motion Comics continue to learn more and more about the medium.





"Every day we learn something new about it," Quesada confesses. "It is radically different from constructing animation or constructing a comic, it's somewhere in between. It's kind of the great unknown, and Spider-Woman is the place where we're hopefully going to get the beginning bugs of this stuff out.





"It does take a considerable amount of work—a lot more to put these together than a regular comic—especially [since we're] starting from scratch like this. The wonderful thing from our point of view is that we're getting these bugs out now, so by the time everyone else decides that they really want to go [down] this road, we'll hopefully be way ahead of the curve and have a better understanding of how to do it and how to do it well."





[from bleedingcool.com]


Lance Sells is the Creative Director Of Motherland, the company behind today’s release of the Spider-Woman Motion Comic from Marvel. I asked him to tell me not only what went right with the motion comic – but also what went wrong.





Excuse me while I ramble.





A history of motion comics according to Motherland:





We’ve been working in one way or another on motion comics since late 2005. We first started working with Marvel with trailers and then moved into longer form with them for Stephen King’s N which is the first time we worked with Alex. During that time we did some broadcast pieces for the show Smallville with DC as well as some trailers, some shorter motion comics for The Dark Knight Returns and a music video for Black Tide. All along we’ve been trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t in regards to moving around comic art in a manner that looks good and tells a story.





Problems & Issues.





I think one of the biggest things all motion comics face is there are moments and things that happen in between panels in the gutters of the page that just don’t work once you start putting things in motion. There’s a good deal of the dialogue that works well because it’s written as if they are saying things sequentially but a lot of times the art skips forward in time. That’s the nature of comics but what happens in motion comics is you basically get some weird jump cuts and odd edits. Motion comics are much more animation than comics and you have to really look at ways to edit things the right way. Luckily for us Spider-Woman was drawn and written with this in mind so there might have been places where that happened but we were able to correct it as everyone was working. We would see something that didn’t work edit-wise in the animatic and Alex Maleev would be able to fill in that space with a shot.





Speaking of Alex he needs to be praised for this whole thing. He’s doing the artwork for each book in 3 weeks which includes giving us the artwork all cleaned up in layers and the right aspect ratio but ALSO filling in the gaps when needed. He’s a machine and the artwork is truly amazing. People are going to be blown away by how this looks.





One other difference I see with motion comics compared to comics is that in a comic or a book it’s all done at the reader’s pace. You can have a gorgeous splash page with big blocks of text and it all feels right because the reader is reading and then checking the art out or vice versa and it’s all at whatever speed they choose. That same splash page in a motion comic is more or less one shot that’s maybe more powerful or iconic than some others but it’s just one shot in hundreds of shots. All that text on a splash page could take you a minute to read but in a motion comic you can’t have a minute of voice-over relating to one image. Timing is everything in animation so it just doesn’t work. Like I said before the Spider-Woman motion comic was built for the comic and the motion comic at the same time so there were fewer instances where that happened and we could catch them and adjust whatever we needed before we put these things on the street. One of the greatest strengths of this project is it was tailor-made for motion comics and it shows.





The whole process for Spider-Woman ran pretty much like an animation production with the only major difference being that the storyboards were drawn after we had recorded the voiceover. It went script, rough VO timing(these had to be a certain length), VO recording, storyboards, animatic, animation. One of the great things about working on some previous motion comics is we’ve learned how to make things a little more cinematic and alive even if we were limited on the animation. We try and treat the artwork to give it more of a filmic look. Things that I think work horribly in most comics work really well in motion comics. Things like depth of field, motion blur, lights and light leakage. Those work great in a motion comic but not in a comic.





We’ve done a lot of learning on this one. You always learn something new and we’re doing almost an hour’s worth of animation here so there are things that come up that you wouldn’t expect and you hopefully remember them next time you’re working on one.





I would call motion comics in general a form of animation. What the difference is between motion comics and another form of animation is the artwork. You’re dealing with beautifully rendered illustrations that are usually above and beyond anything you’re going to see in any other animation. There are obvious drawbacks in that it’s tougher to pull off convincing animation the more detailed and realistic you get but I think what needs to be done is to exploit that artwork in ways that other animation can’t or doesn’t. With Spider-Woman we really tried some new elements that added to the whole experience of watching. One of the ways was we figured out a way to incorporate 3D objects into the artwork without looking “too” 3D and we even shot some live-action stuff for a couple scenes that we mixed into the artwork in a really cool way. The whole motion comics thing is so new I think there’s going to be leaps and bounds over the next couple of years as to what people do with it. Like I said, the artwork is where the strength and difference is compared to other animation and you’re going to see people really take advantage of that.





Episode 001 [2009-08-19]


The team of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev return to a monthly Marvel comic for the first time since their Eisner award-winning run on DAREDEVIL. Ripped from the pages of SECRET INVASION and NEW AVENGERS, this explosive first episode follows the new adventures of Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman as she rediscovers her life in a world she did not make. The Secret Invasion is over. Now comes the reckoning. Marvel Motion comics: watch and hear your favorite comics, authors and artists come alive. You've never seen Marvel move like this.





Episode 002 [2009-09-02]


The second episode of "Agent of S.W.O.R.D." finds Spider-Woman locked in a Madripoor prison and the hordes of Hydra beating down the doors with an offer for our heroine! But in the aftermath of an alien "Secret Invasion," Madame Hydra is the LAST person Jessica Drew wants to see right now, so the bio blasts can't be far behind!





Episode 003 [2009-09-16]


In the clutches of Hydra and harbouring an insatiable rage, Jessica Drew stands face to face with a Skrull. This remnant of Earth's "Secret Invasion" may or may not be the particular Skrull she's hunting, but he still thinks Jessica's his queen. As with many of his shape-shifting brethren, however, there's a lot more to this Skrull than meets the eye. Hydra's playing a sinister game that Jessica doesn't quite understand, but she knows she needs her Spider-Woman costume and gear to continue her quest—and nothing will stop her. Unless, of course, Hydra—or someone else—gets the drop on her!





Episode 004 [2009-09-30]


With Spider-Woman on the run from Hydra and the blood of one Skrull already on her hands (but not the one she’s looking for!), vengeance and vindication remain powerful forces within Jessica Drew.





Enter The Thunderbolts!





Norman Osborn’s black ops team arrives in Madripoor on a mega mission to arrest Spider-Woman and bring her back alive. Now, that's not exactly what Jessica had in mind when she escaped Hydra, so let the battle begin!





Episode 005 [2009-10-14]


In the fifth and final episode of "SPIDER-WOMAN, Agent of S.W.O.R.D.", Jessica Drew's hunt for the alien being named Koru Kaviti comes to a close. However, this particular Skrull she's been contracted to locate and arrest harbors some massive secrets—not the least of which involves why she became the Skrulls' chosen one!





For someone already struggling with the meaning of her existence after the horrors the Skrulls perpetrated in her image, the truth hurts.


Now there's only one thing left to do—fight like only Spider-Woman knows how to fight. To the death.