Who is Major Mercenary?

 

See the guy with the messy white in a suit of futuristic armour by the site's logo? His name is Major Mercenary, and yes that is his full name; it's not a title. To a good many of you, he's just a grinning, happy mascot that has no reason to exist outside of being the face of the Project Side but in actual fact you'd be mistaken. I hadn't really mentioned Major until his very recent makeover, so I thought it was only right and proper to get into who he really is, how he came into being and why he is such a big part of the evolution of this blog.

Journey into Flash Animations

It all began back in the year 2002 during my first year of sixth form (the British equivalent of High School for our American readers) when a young and very bored DJ Driver was studying Drama and Theatre as well as Geography - I know, how can one be bored with subjects like that to study, right? Back then we didn't have as much in the way of entertainment as we do today; the GameCube was competing against the PlayStation 2, the OG XBox was there as well and very little else. This was before the likes of video streaming were even a thought in people's minds you have to understand, back when Netflix was "Love Film" and they sent their shows to their subscribers in the post on a disc. However, one form of entertainment that DJ found very enjoyable was flash animations with the sites such as Video Games Director's Cut run by the late Randy Solem (may he rest in peace) being chief amongst the sites he would visit. After a time, DJ wasn't just content with watching flash animations, he wanted to create them too. It didn't take him long to secure a copy of Adobe flash, and this single acquisition would eventually spawn a series that would gain popularity that would exceed DJ's wildest expectations.

VGDC played a big part in inspiring DJ's animation journey

Now we've all heard the phrase that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and so DJ set to work on his first Flash animation called Mariovayne inspired by the works of Randy Solem, a very basic animation using modified Mario sprites that sang along the Mudvayne single; Dig. It was terrible but DJ was proud of his first creation and eagerly uploaded it to Newgrounds. Shortly after that, DJ released a second animation, this time with actual, if poorly drawn, animation called Pac-Man X. But then, after these uploads, DJ decided to tackle a project that he had in his mind since before he had even downloaded Adobe flash. He wanted to do a Warhammer 40k animation.

The Art of Warhammer

No, I'm not talking about this blog. Back well before sixth form, DJ tried to get a friend into the hobby as they had shown some interested in it but ultimately did not take it up, joking about how it seemed hilarious how "the soldiers would walk, shoot their weapons and just wait around for the enemy to do the same". This single flippant joke would serve as the inspiration for what would come next in DJ's animation journey, and the idea of having animated Space Marines facing other armies but being bound by the turn based nature of the game was used as a basis for that animation. DJ decided to call the upcoming project "The Art of Warhammer", paying homage to the book of war strategies written by military genius Sun Tzu. The name persists to this day, serving as the blogger URL for this very site as well as the blog's original name.

The next stage of the animation was to actually write the first episode, which DJ did with the help of a different friend to the one mentioned previously. Together they decided that, to achieve the dynamic they wanted there should be 3 characters (Ultramarines, obviously) that embodied vastly different kinds of players in the hobby - Orion who was the excitable character who just believed that their superiors knew all the rules already, Luxor who was essentially a rules lawyer and finally, Sargeant Major Mercenary who cheated constantly, most famously insisting he rolled 10s on a six sided dice and somehow getting away with it. Canonically, he made up his own name to make himself sound important, he never wears a helmet (unlike the other two) because it signifies he's the squad leader and he's a terrible tactician in general, often going on suicide missions because "the enemy will never suspect it". Luxor hated Major, Orion just naively went along with anything Major said.

I won't bore you all with any more details about the intricacies of our writing process, but when DJ eventually released the first animated short it became immensely popular on Newgrounds - episode 4 even broke into the top 10 charts and made it onto the site's front page, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The animation seemed to speak to everyone alike; those who hated Warhammer enjoyed it to laugh at the hobby, those who were already hobbyists related to it and those who were in between actually looked into the hobby after seeing it. It seemed to be a winning combination, in fact so popular was the animation that it incurred the intervention of the Games Workshop lawyers...

Plastic Hammer

Luxor and Orion in the first scene of the first Plastic Hammer episode

So you know how Games Workshop just love to shut down anyone who cares to make an animation of their IPs? Well it was no different 20 years ago. I had received, via email, a cease and desist order for my Art of Warhammer animation and I was sad, not to mention a little panicked. I was 16 years old, making an animation for free to entertain people and I had lawyers after me. What choice did I have but to shut the project down?

Feeling defeated and a little bit angry by this sudden change of events, I talked about the situation with several of my friends and acquaintances. That was when someone floated the idea of redoing the animation, but change anything that was copyrighted by Games Workshop; they couldn't sue me if I didn't use their IP, thus Plastic Hammer was born and is the reason why Major wears grey armour instead of the Ultramarine blue of the original animation.

I did have fears that the animation wouldn't do so well once I implemented the changes and moved away from the established IP, but fortunately my fears were unfounded and Plastic Hammer went on to spawn 3 more episodes, a collaboration with Zelig, better known for his work on the animated version of Knights of the Dinner Table as well as several guest comics by Enzo of Cheer Up Emo Kid fame and even a fan club in Denmark.

Alas all good things must come to an end. As I got a job I found I had no time to animate and by the time I got the itch again, flash animations became redundant, and as such Plastic Hammer faded in obscurity. I had started on animating and writing an fifth episode but it never released, though the graphics I had drawn for it did get used for this site's previous logo. Thus, Major Mercenary ensued and remains my mascot to this very day.

Will Plastic Hammer ever return?

Short answer is I don't know, likely not.

The long answer is I would love to revive Plastic Hammer, either as a continuation from episode 4 or, as most episodes have been totally lost to time, as a reboot. The main issue I face is that I absolutely do not want to animate it again, but I would 100% write for a new or revitalized Plastic Hammer series.

So, yeah, if there's any animators willing to take on the job, let me know. I can't pay you until I start making more revenue on the site though, I just don't have the funds.

What about Orlando?

Oh yes! I mentioned on the Facebook group that the perpetually unpainted Royal Warden on my painting table was named after a character of the same name in an animation I previously did. His name was Orlando and he appeared in the post credit scene of Plastic Hammer episode 1 to replace the original scene from the Art of Warhammer as it relied too heavily on Games Workshop IP.

This is not too far from the actual post credit scene Orlando was in

Orlando was a joke character that was inspired by the original scene Games Workshop policy of not allowing people to play games in their stores with unpainted miniatures. Orlando would always be left out and often put down by Major until episode 3 when his legs got painted. He was subsequently then shot by Orion very early on in the episode for being annoying.

And that about covers everything! This article turned out to be significantly longer than I had wanted but as it turns out there was more to cover than I originally thought! 

Do you remember Plastic Hammer? Would you want to see it revived? Let me know in the comments!