RIP Bill Poster

This is a poster dedication to the late William "Bill" Overbeck from the video game "Left 4 Dead." After playing the "Left 4 Dead 2" campaign, "The Passing" on my dad's computer and Steam account, I felt a bit sad when I saw Bill's body. Since I play Bill the most during the online multiplayer play for "Left 4 Dead," I got somewhat into the character's mindset (even more so with the brief description of Bill by Valve). And if there is one thing I know about Bill, not only would he have been willing to give his life for the safety of his three companions, he would have gone out fighting to his last breath.

This poster is modeled after one that was a World War II dedication/enlistment poster. I happen to know of this poster because of the story behind it and the person behind it. You see, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was the first U.S. assault on Tokyo as retaliation. One of the pilots of the bombers that attacked was Collin Kelly, Jr. When it came to after the assault, he managed to get his plane over to China and keep the plane in the air long enough for his crew to bail out safely. He went down and was killed in the crash. As a result, he became the one of the first U.S. soldiers to die during a mission in WWII, and his home town of Madison, FL (my hometown) received the Four Freedoms monument. The original poster has a bomber pilot saluting to a cloudy sky with a sun partly hidden, with the caption at the bottom that that said, "Reporting for Duty, Sir."

I originally wanted to have Bill saluting or have him holding his M-16 (the last weapon he had in his last living moments), but I was using Garry's Mod and a Bill ragdoll. And it was a challenge to get him upright, but getting his hand into a convincing salute was not working. Plus, the only downloadable prop that I had access to did not even show up in the menus. So, I tried to get the best "at attention" pose that I could. I found a picture of the sky via Google. The "platform" that Bill is standing, like the combining of all the image, was done in Photoshop. And for the text, I figured it would be the kind of thing that Bill would say.

Rest in Peace, Bill. You went out on your feet, not on your knees.