Archive for November, 2012
3 items.
I have this weird problem where I’m coming up with strip ideas well in advance, but not being able to knock them out as quickly as I used to. You’ve probably noticed.
I used to be able to pencil, ink, color, shade, letter and do backgrounds a comic in one evening. Now it takes me several night. One night to pencil, one night to ink… so on and so forth.
I really have no idea how I was able to do THREE of these comics a week back in the day. Well, except I was staying up past 2:00 in the morning to do it – sacrificing sanity and effectiveness during the day. Kind of a losing proposition.
You guys continue to be more than patient with me and I appreciate it. I’m trying to find ways to work faster. It just isn’t happening.
At any rate, here’s a new comic about Tom, Truman and Truman’s secret identity. I like to portray Tom as obtuse sometimes. But I don’t think that a dog practicing archery is something that would escape his radar. If anything, that would be something he would actively seek out in his life – and be disappointed when he didn’t find it. The fact that Truman dresses up like Hawkeye and saves lives is basically the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
Truman’s always been a fan-favorite and I like to think it’s because I anthropomorphize him juuusssst enough. Anything more would be like… Well, like Brian on Family Guy, I suspect. Personally, I’m more interested in utilizing a character that doesn’t talk. Kind of hints at a reservoir or deeper understanding.
Anyway, I think I have one more Truman comic in mind before I start moving the plot along to the final conclusion. That’ll include a visit to the charred ruins of the movie theater and a change in the status quo for Charlie and Jimmy that I think you guys are really going to like.
That’s all for now. Thanks, everyone!
[ 4 Comments ]
This was a comic I felt had to happen. Mostly because it mirrored real life so closely.
I don’t know if any of you had pets before you decided to have kids. If you have only one or neither, maybe this isn’t for you. But I know that before we decided to have kids, I felt a little guilty about what it would do to Truman.
I mean, we FAWNED over that dog for 5 years. We got him gifts on his birthday. He was our child until Henry came along.
That’s not to say that we ignored him completely after Henry was born, but your priorities shift when you’re a first-time parent. You learn how to juggle your responsibilities, but the shift takes time.
I remember when we brought Henry home and put him down on the floor, resting in his car seat. Truman sniffed all over the place before giving us an inquisitive look. After that, he got… sad. He didn’t eat much for the next two weeks. He literally started to isolate himself in other rooms in the house. It bums me out to remember.
Eventually he came around. He learned new ways to steal attention where he could get it. By the time Pearl was born, it was all old hat to him. We worried that he’d resent being knocked down another peg. But, honestly, he took it all in stride.
Truman’s a great dog, by the way. He’s fantastic with the kids. Never snarls or bites, even when the kids messed with him while he was eating. He’d just sit back and wait for them to get out of the way.
Truman will be 11 years old in February. In many ways, he’s the spry dog he’s always been. Loves to play-fight. Loves to cuddle. But sometimes I worry that maybe his better years are behind him. He has a lot more white on his face now than he used to. Henry is 5. Pearl will be 3 in less than a month. They love Truman, but sometimes I feel sad that maybe they’re not getting the best of him or that they won’t remember him when they’re older and we’ve lost him.
I guess it emphasizes the point that you’ve got to cherish the time you have – not spend too much time thinking about what was or what will be. Now is all we’ve got.
Funny it takes me writing a blog post about a dog to crystallize that sentiment.
Cheers, all.
[ 4 Comments ]
I didn’t post a new comic last week and I feel bad about that. But I’m also actually kind of glad I didn’t.
Something interesting happened this week and I don’t know if you saw it, but it was certainly relevant to the situation I find myself in, as we head into the home stretch toward Theater Hopper’s conclusion.
I’m not certain how much of our audience overlaps, but this week Tim Buckley decided to reboot his long-running gaming comic Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Tim and I started roughly the same time. We socialized a little at the beginning, but it wasn’t long after that his comic took off.
Tim’s kind of an odd cat in webcomics. He has an enormous following, but he’s a bit of a pariah among creators. I’ve never had a personal problem with the guy, but I’ve heard the stories about him and they’re kind of hard to ignore. So on Tuesday when Scott Kurtz, Dave Kellet, Brad Guigar and Kris Straub reassembled to produce a new episode of Webcomics Weekly to discuss Tim’s decision, the armchair analysis and schadenfreude were in full bloom.
I can’t quite articulate what it was about their recording that hit home for me, but a lot of what they expressed was immediately recognizable to me. There was a lot of talk about being burnt out, about maturing, about moving beyond the gag-a-day format and shedding the pursuit of persistent updates to generate revenue from advertising networks that don’t really pay out anymore.
I was listening and nodding my head the entire time.
I don’t know what’s going on right now, but I’m detecting this weird sea change in regards to web comics. Maybe I’m sensitive to it because I’m in the middle of it, but I’m hearing a lot of talk about ditching the traditional models, about moving into new territories.
I kind of consider myself to have caught the tail end of the “First Wave” of webcomics. Most of the big name web comics established themselves between 1998 and 2000 by people that wanted to be cartoonists but couldn’t get the time of day from the syndicates. Theater Hopper came along in 2002. So basically, I’m one of those people who looked at webcomics and said “I’ve never submitted to a syndicate, but I’ve always enjoyed cartooning and this looks viable.”
I don’t know. Maybe I’m Second Wave. Maybe it doesn’t matter. All I know is that 10 years in the game is a long time and it was comforting to know that other creators have struggled with the same issues, have the same thoughts and are afraid about throwing away the brand they’ve built up over the course of the “career.”
Now Tim didn’t exactly throw his comic away. His stripped it down. He got rid of what he thought wasn’t working and says he’s going to go back to more gag-a-day style comics about gaming. Some people have asked me why I don’t do the same thing with Theater Hopper – dump the stuff that I don’t think is working or is too time-intensive.
I know that I’ve expressed it before, but I never wanted to leave Theater Hopper in a “less than” position. In other words, having elevated the comic to a certain level from a time-investment standpoint and being unable to keep pace with it any longer, stripping things away from it for the sake of efficiency doesn’t feel fair to me. Fair for the audience, I mean.
For me – as much as it hurts to do it – letting Theater Hopper go is the best thing for it. That’s why it was important for me to communicate my goals for the last year of the comic – so that you guys knew what was going on and understood. More than anything else with these last few comics, I want to convey the idea that these characters will “be okay.” It’s as much for you as it is for me. Because I’ll be sorry to leave them behind.
I don’t know how successful I’ve been at communicating what I gleaned from Tim’s reboot or the Webcomics Weekly podcast this week. All I know is that it made me feel a little less haunted about the decision I made to end the comic.
Thanks for your understanding. Cheers.
[ 12 Comments ]
