
Creator of xkcd Reveals Secret Backstory of His Epic 3,990-Panel Comic - ghosh
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/08/xkcd-time-comic/
======
eykanal
This is what makes Munroe so awesome. It's one thing to be able to make nerd
comics. It's another thing to put in the effort to make accurate time/location
maps of various movies [1], or attempt to explain money with all sorts of
relative comparisons [2], or think up weird google searches and show the
results [3]. It's a completely different league to execute on huge projects
like this in such a novel fashion (as well as the "umwelt" one [4] which
showed one of fifty different comics to the reader, depending on their
location) that make Munroe so unique.

[1]: [http://xkcd.com/657/](http://xkcd.com/657/)

[2]: [http://xkcd.com/980/](http://xkcd.com/980/)

[3]: [http://xkcd.com/887/](http://xkcd.com/887/)

[4]: [http://xkcd.com/1037/](http://xkcd.com/1037/)

~~~
conroy
Also see his fantastic "What if?" series[0] where he answers fantastical
questions using similar research. Examples of recent questions include "If you
call a random phone number and say “God bless you”, what are the chances that
the person who answers just sneezed?" and "What place on Earth would allow you
to freefall the longest by jumping off it?"

[0] [http://what-if.xkcd.com/](http://what-if.xkcd.com/)

~~~
BrandonMarc
Speaking of What-if, it now makes sense that he did the questions about what
it would be like if the oceans of Earth were drained [0], and what it would
look like on Mars if suddenly water were added and oceans (an ocean) formed
[1].

\--------------------

[0] [http://what-if.xkcd.com/53/](http://what-if.xkcd.com/53/)

[1] [http://what-if.xkcd.com/54/](http://what-if.xkcd.com/54/)

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M4v3R
It's really worth to read, at least partially, the One True Thread [1] - a
thread on XKCD forums when people were discussing the comic as it unfolded. It
is really interesting to see how they reacted to first frame (at which point
it wasn't known that it will last 4 months), and then how they began to
dissect every frame after that.

[1]
[http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101043](http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=101043)

~~~
mherdeg
I like the idea of hundreds (?) of people obsessively consuming obscure media
and discussing it in a Web forum, mostly because I thought it was a nice plot
device in William Gibson's 2003 "Pattern Recognition" with "the Footage".

~~~
viraptor
Does it get more obscure than _why's printer spool documents a couple of
months ago?

~~~
LanceH
Obviously it gets more obscure. Just think of all the things you don't know
about.

~~~
foobarbazqux
Not to mention the things that are only ever vague ideas that may or may not
occur to isolated individuals in your lifetime depending on your response to
this thread.

------
xinn
[0]
[http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/](http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/)

------
Aardwolf
Does there exist a watchable version of this comic where it skips through
frames without text FAST, but pauses for long enough time to read it at each
frame with TEXT?

Most attempts at making the comic viewable either went too fast to read the
texts, or were manual click through and thus waaaay too slow.

Thanks!

~~~
sampo
> manual click through and thus waaaay too slow

I used the mouse wheel.

~~~
Aardwolf
So you see no problem with watching a movie and having to use the mousewheel
to go to each next frame?

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sage_joch
_" In my comic, our civilization is long gone. Every civilization with written
records has existed for less than 5,000 years; it seems optimistic to hope
that the current one will last for 10,000 more," Munroe told WIRED._

It's an unfortunate reality that a thoughtful person could come to this
conclusion. But I feel compelled to disagree. We're on the verge of becoming a
spacefaring species. And people like Elon Musk give me hope that we could very
well still make it, despite everything.

~~~
alxhill
It always amazes me to see how much people don't realise that we are unlike
any other society that has existed on this planet before us. Globally
connected and scientifically advanced in the most important ways makes the
past a terrible prediction of the future. Exciting times.

~~~
jnevelson
And yet arrogant enough to think that we're so much smarter and more advanced
than those that came before or all other life forms we share this planet with.

BTW, not saying I disagree with you - just a counterpoint that can be made.

~~~
gizmo686
We might not be much smarter than those that came before us, but the shoulders
we are standing on are much larger.

~~~
npsimons
I think the key is to have the humility to realize that we haven't had another
Euclid or Archimedes in modern times. Possibly Decartes or Tesla compare, but
it's arguable. We've come _so_ far and have _such_ promise, and yet we have
_so_ much to lose. I would argue that far from being being doomed to repeating
history because we forget, we have the possibility of being the first to wipe
out our own race, either through inaction or brazenness.

~~~
awolden
I think we live in an age of such people. It was easy to stand out as a
brilliant polymath when we didn't know ANYTHING. I think we have more geniuses
than ever today, but there are so many of them that it no longer feels
special. We are advancing our knowledge and technology with dizzying speeds,
but we are so accustomed to it that we sit around and go, "Meh, there are no
geniuses anymore".

------
tehwalrus
Just sat and watched the whole thing in the video on this post (nightmare
pausing for text - well done timdorr for posting a link to a better way to
watch).

This is such a cool story! and the explanation makes me want to start working
decoding Linear A! :)

~~~
TDL
"and the explanation makes me want to start working decoding Linear A! :)"

Exactly what went through my mind as well.

~~~
tehwalrus
If you start gathering a corpus to work from on Github, I'll happily
contribute :)

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rsfinn
I'm prepared to nominate this for a Hugo award.

I just double-checked the categories to make sure it goes in "Best Graphic
Story" and not "Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)".

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Jeremy1026
It's pretty amazing how close the people who were deciphering the comic were
in the time frame and that they nailed the location so early.

~~~
xradionut
Consider the readership that xkcd appeals to...

~~~
Jeremy1026
Even still. Quite amazing what they were able to do with just a handful of
clues.

~~~
xradionut
Not really.

Inferring epoch from constellations is an old sci-fi theme and a topic that's
discussed in basic astronomy classes. Considering the knowledge base and
nature of this web comic's readership, I'd expect that this would intrigue and
capture a certain percentage. (Smart people are smart and usually
inquisitive...)

~~~
gknoy
I think it's partly amazing (though it shouldn't be, given past work of his)
that Munroe took the time to render time-accurate futuristic stars, and other
details. His attention to detail is what makes this kind of sleuthing
possible.

------
Oculus
There's not a lot of people in the world that are this dedicated to making
other peoples' days just a little bit better.

Thanks Randall.

~~~
doktrin
Out of curiosity, why do you feel that Randall did this out of pure altruism?
Would his work have less meaning for you if he did it purely because he had an
itch to scratch, or thought it might be fun?

~~~
Oculus
I don't think Randall does xkcd out of pure altruism. I also don't think he
does it just for fun (although I believe that's how he started). I think it's
a mixture between the two.

If the comics were exactly the same, I'd probably still enjoy them just as
much, no matter the reason Randall does them. I feel that we'd be able to tell
by the quality of the work and the dedication that he puts into them if his
reasons for doing it were different.

------
omegant
So its a dam!, i didn't understand how the gibraltar strait managed to close
and open in only 11000 years. It's too wide yet. On the other hand, I don't
think it makes sense to close the strait, there is too much commerce flowing
through there, also all the mediterranean economy would colapse, and the
weather change quite a bit.

~~~
jerf
11,000 years is a long time, especially when we're hypothesizing a future in
which apparently once the fossil fuels disappeared, nothing else was a viable
energy source. (It's possible. They aren't the only energy source, nor even
the only dense energy source, but it's possible that long-term, the other ones
can not be economically maintained. Fission reactors aren't trivial, and we
still don't know how to build fusion reactors.) One could imagine a long-term,
slow-burn conflict between a culture located in what is now Spain and one in
what is now Turkey, and Spain deciding that building the dam would be worth it
to cut them off at a point in which they are on the ascendent and Turkey is on
the decline, so as to make the decline permanent, or who knows what crazy
thing like that. 11,000 years is a _long_ time for human history.

------
Aardwolf
I'm actually also interested in how he made it (drawing so much frames).

~~~
ygra
As far as I know he draws by hand, scans the images and cleans up in Photoshop
(or similar). Since Time is mostly a static background with actors I guess he
uses the same technique as stop-motion animators by drawing the background and
foreground on different cels (or maybe just compositing afterwards). Or lots
of copies of the background to draw the foreground into.

------
pearjuice
So any estimate on how long Randall was busy with this and what it earned him
in then end?

~~~
ygra
About the timeframe of the comic's updates and a good bit longer. He wrote in
his blog post [0.6983]:

> Time was a bigger project than I planned. All told, I drew 3,099 panels. I
> animated a starfield, pored over maps and research papers, talked with
> biologists and botanists, and created a plausible future language for
> readers to try to decode.

> I wrote the whole story before I drew the first frame, and had almost a
> thousand panels already drawn before I posted the first one. But as the
> story progressed, the later panels took longer to draw than I expected, and
> Time began—ironically—eating more and more of my time. Frames that went up
> every hour were sometimes taking more than an hour to make, and I spent the
> final months doing practically nothing but drawing.

[0.6983]
[http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/](http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/)

~~~
kgermino
Ok, I think I'm missing something: Why [0.6983]?

~~~
ygra
Some people start with 0, some with 1. I got bored and just resorted to random
numbers. As long as they are unique there shouldn't be a problem looking them
up.

------
darasen
xkcd truly elevates the web comic genre to an art form. Mr. Munroe really
should be considered for a Hugo or a Reuben.

------
joshaidan
I was sad when they lost the water bottle.

~~~
hadem
Or when she loves his flag so much that she colors it red.

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laserDinosaur
As someone who is just hearing about this now, isn't this just an animation?

~~~
wikiburner
Released one frame a day. That's pretty unique.

~~~
Steuard
One per hour (or per half-hour, at first), not one per day. But yeah.

------
jvanderbot
Why do they know what castles are without knowing if there are rivers?

~~~
siddboots
Oral tradition?

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pbreit
xkcd is incredible by why oh why is the title above the buttons?

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AsymetricCom
I'm not seeing at all how this is related to money.

