Randall Munroe finishes "Time," the 3,099-panel XKCD serial

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http://xkcd.aubronwood.com/# has 3102 panels, two more frames after ‘The End.’

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There’s a good breakdown of the story here too: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1190:_Time

Amazing.

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There were some earlier discrepancies in frames, so that the Aubronwood 3102 is the same frame as geekwagon 3099. Geekwagon has the same three frames after “The End” was posted. The only differences in the frames are waves and some molpy movements in the trees.

Interestingly, those same three frames are repeating even now, so whenever you go back, the picture will be slightly different.

He’s fantastic. What a great story and I love the sandcastles!

I find myself wondering about the logistics of this, similar to that giant scrolling explorable world XKCD did (Click and Drag).

Did the artist start six months earlier and make 20 panels a day, or ?

I would love to be able to buy the series as a flip book, or graphic novel. Such a great use of the web as a story-telling device. I was riveted.

I’ve been following this since it started… let me tell you it was pretty crushing to get the “The End” panel and then have it actually be over. I WANTED IT TO GO ON FOREVER =( it was such an interesting story. I guess that sort of ending is part of what was so wonderful about the comic - you just get thrown into this world and observe as best you can. Lots of wonderful art here to be missed if you just auto-watch it

At what point does Munroe get a MacArthur grant? If anyone ever deserved one…

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This strip developed an extremely enthusiastic fanbase, who communicated through the xkcd forum thread for the comic: Right here. Over the 4 months, there were over 51,000 postings, several minor religions were spun off, the starfields were analyzed to determine the date of the strip, geological authorities were contacted, and the unknown language analyzed. Worth checking out.

In a blag post, Munroe explains things.

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.

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