Posts Tagged ‘DVD’
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Dec27
I know, I know! I promised there would be a new strip ready on Friday and I didn’t deliver. I feel terrible about it! But you know how it goes. Friends and family are all around you during the holidays and you need to make room in your life for them. I had good friends in town from Minneapolis on Friday afternoon, so I made my choice. Can you forgive me?
I wish I had more to talk about at the moment, but my schedule has been seriously thrown for a loop. I keep thinking it’s Sunday. In fact, I’ve been under the impression it’s been Sunday since… well, since Wednesday.
Despite what the comic depicts, I haven’t holed up in the basement watching movies all week. I actually let Cami tag along! Seriously, though. I think we’ve plowed through about half a dozen movies in the last couple of days. We’re really making record time.
Sorry again for the late strip. But here’s hoping the wait was worth it! Take it easy!
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Can you imagine if the whole world had its contrast thrown out of whack Sin City style? I bet people would be walking around with screaming migraine headaches, that’s for sure.
With the thought of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City hitting shelves on Tuesday with its release on DVD, I decided to revisit a little visual trick that seemed to impress some people back in May.
It’s not as effective this time around, I realize that. It’s visual paraphrasing at best. I didn’t have time to sit down and do the prep work like I did for the earlier comics. Actually, I just got back from Kansas City after going South to see Rufus Wainright and Ben Folds in concert. The concert was delayed an hour due to the weather and we ended up getting rained on anyway, but it was totally worth it. I have a bunch of pictures from the show that I’ll have to share sometime later.
Apologies for the short blog. I’m just out of words for the moment.
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For today’s incentive sketch, I tried to draw Tom as Obi-Wan Kenobi and I think it turned out a little more Obi-Wan and a little less like a merge between the two. That’s okay. I think it turned out fabulous.
In case you’re wondering who that strange, red-headed woman is next to Jared in bed, that his wife Patti. Patti has appeared in a few strips before this one, but not since I learned to draw women a little better.
I’ve actually been going through the archives lately attaching keywords to the comics as part of a larger initiative to make the archives more user-friendly (the full purpose of which will be revealed in time!) Going through them, I’m really amazed at how far the art has come.
I don’t mean to sound self-congratulatory. It’s probably better to be humble and not say anything. But the evolution of my style has been just that… an evolution. Looking back, there are very few CONCIOUS decisions I’ve made while refining my character designs. They just kind of happened and I think we’re all the better for it.
I wish I had the time that other artists have to improve their art. Jeph Jacques immediately springs to mind. It seems like every three weeks he pushes his style forward by a large margin. It’s very impressive. Meanwhile, more than three years later I went from this, to what you see today. Imagine where we’ll be three years from now.
Moving along, as today’s comic addresses, Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith came out on DVD yesterday. Not as much hype for this release as I recall for the first two parts of Lucas’ new trillogy. Maybe he’s saving up the advertising dollars for a big holiday push down the line.
I actually talked to Jared about buying it and he confessed that he was waiting for the inevitable, larger box set that collects all 6 films into one package. I alread bought Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Episode II: Attack of the Clones, so I figured I’m just one of the lucky people screwed by their own avarice. Ironically, I never got around to purchasing the original trillogy when it came out on DVD last year. I don’t know what I’m waiting for…
In other news, we have a new sponsor. Everyone be sure to visit Less Than Lonely. It’s a new web comic and they have about 30 strips in the archive. So it’s a good balance of having enough material to give you a sense of things, but not so much that you feel overwhelmed by it. Check it out!
Also be sure to swing by the Boxcar Comics brand new store – The Hobotique! While there are several items for sale that will satiate your every desire, I especially recommend that you scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out the 2006 Boxcar Calendar we have for sale. It features artwork from Beaver and Steve, Bigger Than Cheeses, The Coffee Achievers, Hey Suburbia, HOUSD, Joe and Monkey, The Kenmore, Niego, Nothing Nice To Say, Rob and Elliot, Yirmumah! and yours truly. That’s 12 months of Boxcar awesomeness that you can hang up in your cubicle at work or maybe in your garage while you work on that custom Chevy.
I’m trying to come up with other applications for the calendar, but I’m coming up short…
You should know that all profits from the calendar purchase go toward Boxcar getting a booth at next year’s San Diego Comic Book Convention – the biggest convention of its kind and a huge opportunity for up-and-coming artists such as ourselves. Help alleviate the financial burden by making a purchase today.
That’s about all of my babbling for the moment. Here’s hoping you enjoyed today’s comic. Thanks for your support and May The Force Be With You!
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Dec28
When you’re married, you’ll put up with a lot of crap in the name of love.
Today’s comic is kind of true and kind of false. Yes, I did score an awesome haul in Christmas DVDs and yes I did receive all those mentioned. Cami’s reluctance to watch is where the comic embellishments come in.
All weekend long I kept talking about how awesome Sin City was when I saw it back in April. But I didn’t run out and buy it when it came out on DVD in August because I knew that it wasn’t the full version. There would be another version released before Christmas with tons of behind-the-scenes extras and deleted scenes added back into the movie. I knew I wanted the FULL experience, so I patiently waited.
I get the extended edition for Christmas and I’m chomping at the bit to see it. But here’s the thing – I don’t want to half-ass this. I don’t want it on in the background. I don’t want it to be part of the din in our holiday festivities. When I sit down to watch this thing, I want to totally dedicate my attention to it. I want to study it.
Plus, it’s not like people getting their heads cut off and their intestines ravaged by wild dogs is really the kind of holiday-themed entertainment we want penetrating the bubble of a Rockwellian family gathering. Sorry, we’re just not that kind of clan.
Imagine my surprise yesterday when Cami e-mailed me at work on a couple different occasions asking me "So, do you want to watch Sin City tonight?" What a gal!
Part of today’s comic that’s half-true deals more specifically with Fantastic Four – a movie I didn’t see when it was in the theater, but was curious enough to ask for this Christmas. I guess there was a bit of eye-rolling involved when Cami saw the film on my Wish List. She was with her parents when they bought it for me and she said "I don’t know why Tom says he wants that. He said it was lame when it came out this summer."
It’s strong logic. Why would I want my own personal copy of a movie that I’ve never seen? One that could potentially ruin the good memories I have of a comic book franchise I grew up with? The honest answer? I don’t know. Morbid curiosity, I suppose. I mean, maybe it’s bad – but it can’t be any worse than the Roger Corman version from 1994, right? And I’ve seen that one at least twice. I guess if there was a movie out there that I wanted REALLY badly, but couldn’t justify spending the cash on, Fantastic Four would be that movie. THERE’S a ringing endorsement for you!
Anyway, after I get back from working out at 7:00 o’clock tonight, Cami and I are going to settle in for some stark-contrast and watch Sin City together. It’ll be her first viewing, so I’m very interested in her reaction. I’ll let you guys know what she thinks.
Later!
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Whoops. Looks like I forgot to upload today’s incentive sketch. Oh, well. I’ll do it when I get home tonight. Besides, the Chuck Norris one is still funny, right?
So you know, this is the start of a new story arc featuring talking appliances. I have a certain statement I want to make with Tom’s new talking DVD player, but I’m going to let it unfold on its own for the time being. I don’t want to give away too much of the story right now because I’m pretty excited about where I want to take it.
Not much to report from this weekend. My good buddy Brian and I were going to try and take all of Theater Hopper and sneak it over to a new server. Weekend visitors might have noticed that the THorum was down in advance of that. But otherwise, it was supposed to be supah-smooth.
Of course me, like a dummy, forgot to forward the DNS before midnight on Saturday so that it would give us enough time to move over before todays update. Wouldn’t have mattered. I tried accessing my account at GoDaddy.com and I was getting errors when I tried it anyway.
So the hope is that everything will be moved over next week. Business as usual this week.
I got a bunch of really good work done on the book collecting the first year of Theater Hopper strips. I’m about a third of the way through it. There will be 169 comics with commentary from yours truly on each one. Probably a few extras, too. My hope is to have the book completed before March 25. That’s the first day of the Kansas City Plant Comicon Comic Book convention, which I plan on attending. If I don’t have the book, I won’t have much reason for going because all I will have to sell is overstock on my t-shirt inventory. It’s a pretty tight deadline, but if I concentrate hard, I think I can make it. It’s difficult trying to find time to squeeze in work on this book between my full-time job, updating Theater Hopper and the rest of my life! I HAVE to have the book completed by August 3 because that’s the first date of Wizard World Chicago. If I don’t have my book ready by that date, then 2006 is going to be a complete wash for me.
But like I said, if I put my nose to the grindstone, I’m sure I can do it. Who knows – the process might get streamlined to the point that I might have Year Two in production in time for Wizard World! How cool would that be!
When the book is completed, I’m going to need everyone’s help to get it made. There is a very steep up front cost to producing this book. I’m not using a print-on-demand service like LuLu. I’m going through a traditional small-press operation and they demand a minimum order amount. I’ll be doing pre-orders to help meet the up-front cost. Pre-ordering is a good idea anyway. It secures your order before the book is even published. So you know that if you want one, you won’t run the risk of me running out of books. A good deal!
Anyway, that’s about it for now. If I have something else to share, be sure to check back here!
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It’s been one heck of a week, kids.
As you may have noticed, Theater Hopper was down earlier in the week. This was somewhat related to our recent move to a new server. The story is on that’s pretty complicated and one I’ve been wading in up to my eyeballs, so I don’t know how keen I am on retelling it. But we haven’t talked in a while, so I’ll give it a shot.
Basically what happened was that the server move was successful, but we carried over some unwanted guests into our new environment. Dreamhost – Theater Hopper’s new host – caught them and shut us down. What kind of unwanted guests, you might ask? Hackers. They somehow compromised our old server and were using it as a proxy of some sort. Probably for warez sites. We’re not sure. What we *do* know is that some jackass thought it would be fun to leach our bandwidth, slow our server down and cause a whole lot of problems for people who only want to entertain.
At the time Dreamhost shut us down, they fingered us as guilty before even discussing it with us. That left me a little cheesed off. We’re as much a victim as anyone else here. If they had communicated what they had found, we could have partnered with them to resolve the situation faster. But that’s not how things unfolded. Instead, we had to sit on our hands for two days waiting for them to get back to us. It was a bit of a let down for me because I had heard such great things about Dreamhost. This certainly put us off on the wrong foot.
But things are up and running again and we have a new comic for you today.
I should stop to give sincere thanks to Brian for helping to facilitate the switch and talking to Dreamhost in a language they understand. Left to my own devices, I’m pretty sure Dreamhost would have gotten me kicked off the internet altogether. Also thanks to Dave for reconnecting the database that manages the comics and the blogs after the server move. I’d be dead in the water without these guys.
I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking me if I’ve noticed the similarities between my talking DVD player and Penny Arcade’s DIV. My response is "Yes. I’ve noticed them." But I would like to point out the important difference that my character wears shoes and gloves while DIV is essentially walking around naked. Okay. So my talking DVD player isn’t wearing pants, either. But gloves and shoes are better than nothing!
I tried to make my talking appliance look different from the his more well-known counterpart. But there are only so many ways to anthropomorphize small, grey rectangles of technology.
At any rate, keep your eye on this arc as we’ll probably see a cameo from DIV in the upcoming strips. Maybe a couple other pieces of talking technology as well.
As long as we’re on the subject, you should check out the incentive sketch I drew of the talking DVD player. It was the very first drawing I put together of him, plus some notes for personality traits. The whole idea is that he came to life after being disgusted by Tom’s terrible tastes in movies. So it stood to reason that he should be very tweedy and intellectual. That’s why I’m questioning whether or not he should wear spats. Cuz, y’know… spats make you look REALLY smart!
Something else I wanted to draw your attention to are the FREE COMICS you can download through my page at Clickwheel. If you have a video iPod – or heck, even if you don’t! – check out my most recent updates. I’m adding all of my incentive sketches to the site as miniature anthologies separated by month. This is the first time I’ve made these sketches available outside of the site. If you’re interested, they’re out there!
I’m going to try and keep adding sketches until I’m all caught up. After that, I’ll add more comics.
Thanks to everyone for their patience this week. One thing is for sure, I never really knew how cut off I felt until I was forced into that situation. Not having access to the site for this period of time has made me really thankful for what I have. Thanks to you guys for making that possible!
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Real-life Tom would love nothing more than a trip to the former Soviet Union. Comic-strip Tom just doesn’t get it.
I don’t have a lot to say about today’s comic, so I’m just going to blow over that fact and direct your attention to something very important.
If you visit the store, you’ll see that I’ve put all t-shirts, hoodies and baby-doll tees back on the site. But more importantly, EVERYTHING IS ON SALE!
In an attempt to burn through the last of my inventory and raise money to cover the up-front production costs of the Theater Hopper – Year One book, I have cut costs on everything. T-shirts are now $9.99. Hoodies are $24.99 and baby-doll tees are $14.99. The best part of all? FREE SHIPPING!
Now I have to forewarn you: There are a limited number of sizes in the available designs. So if you’re thinking about placing an order, don’t wait. It’s very likely that your shirt could be snapped up by someone else!
This sale will continue for the next two weeks through February 6th. I don’t think prices can go much lower. So if you want a good deal on Theater Hopper shirts, hoodies or baby-doll tees – now is the time!
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The crowd in the background of the fourth panel is supposed to be an homage to the creators/characters from whom I borrowed our cameo robots for today’s strip. Can you guess who is who? Vote for Theater Hopper at Web Comics List for a clear view. But forget about that guy on the far left. He’s just a stand in.
For those of you detecting the subtle commentary in today’s strip, congratulations. We’ve just reached the pinnacle of this arc. The whole reason behind introducing the talking DVD player was to get to this point.
I don’t fault Penny Arcade for introducing DIV into the world. If you were going to pick a talking appliance to add as a bristling sidekick, the antiquated DiVX technology was a nice, obscure reference. What I’ve noticed since then is if you have a comic that it somewhat technology-based, it must have some sort of ambulatory robotic counterpart. Hence why the X-Bot from Ctrl+Alt+Del and Pintsize from Questionable Content get a shout-out.
This isn’t meant to be withering criticism. It’s just a device that I’ve noticed in other comics that was lacking in my own. I thought it would be fun to introduce my own talking appliance. But instead of treating it like an official cast member, use it as a mouthpiece to deconstruct some of the cliches inherant in comics. In all storytelling, really.
Almost every comic out there has some kind of fantastic secondary character that comments on how foolish we mortals can be. It’s a way for the author to turn the mirror on the audience without getting in trouble for it. Look at something as generic as Garfield. He’s sarcastic toward his owner that can’t get a date. If you gave a human character those lines, you’d have a hard time relating to him. You’d think he was a real jerk. Give them to the cat and it becomes "Oh, isn’t that cute!"
As revenge on the double standard, I decided to take the concept of the fantastic, impossible comic strip character and turn it back on itself. Take THAT, storytelling device!
But who am I to say what works and what doesn’t? One thing I’ll say, each one of the three comics I took a playful jab at today are certainly getting a lot more traffic than I am. So maybe they’re onto something. Blame Stitch. His comics kind of put me on this anarchist bend. I’ll work it out of my system soon and things will return to normal. The talking DVD arc will end this Friday. So thanks for indulging my quasi-rants in the meantime.
I want to remind everyone that the big sale going on in the store is still happening, but you’re running out of time to make the purchases I know you’re aching to place. Don’t forget that all t-shirts are $9.99, all baby-doll tees are $14.99 and all hoodies are $24.99. Inventory is limited, so we might not have your size in the design you want. Don’t wait for someone else to swoop in and take it! Remember – FREE SHIPPING on all orders!
If I could appeal to you on an emotional level for a minute, even if you’re not interested in buying a shirt…
I could really use your help right now.
I got in a car accident yesterday. Don’t worry. Everyone is fine. No one was injured and I can still drive the car. But winter’s in Iowa aren’t very forgiving and I need to get this fixed as soon as possible. I haven’t gotten an estimate yet (that’s later today). But my insurance deductable is $500. This couldn’t have come at a worse time for us. Not to start playing on the world’s tiniest violin (and I’m not going to go into all the details) but we have a lot of bills flying out the door at the moment. Fixing the car is just one of those unforseen expenses that we’re having to scramble in order to cover.
My logic is this… I have all of these shirts that I need to sell. You like to wear shirts, don’t you? What’s stopping you from getting something really cool that you know you’ll enjoy and – in the process – help a stranger out of a pickle?
I’m not asking for charity. That’s never been the kind of relationship we’ve had. All I’m saying is that I have some great shirts at the lowest prices I’ve ever sold them and you would be doing me a monumental favor by buying one. All the while, you still get something in return. It’s a great deal all around. Everybody wins.
Think about it and thanks again for your support.
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Can I just say something really quick about Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles?
I was watching it last night – Actually listening to it would be more apt. I put on the commentary track with director Brad Bird and Producer so-and-so while I was drawing today’s comic.
Anyway, I was listening to the commentary, and the darn thing is about as funny as the actual movie. What a great commentary track. I live for stuff like this. Most commentary tracks are very flat and boring. They talk about how hot is was that day or how difficult scene "x," "y" or "z" was to shoot. The Pixar guys really go into detail telling you stuff about the production that you actually want to know.
I could watch The Incredible’s over and over. It speaks directly to my comic book sensibility and every time I watch it, I catch some kind of new detail. These was a film made with great love and care. The expressiveness of the animation totally sells. If I ever am at a lose for an expression to give the Theater Hopper characters, I will toss in The Incredibles and pick up a new one every time.
Watching their films makes me want to pack up my bags and move to Emeryville, California so I can camp out at their studios. I’d love to get a job there. But I just remembered I’m not an animator.
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Sorry for the delay getting this posted to the site. I hope I didn’t leave too many of you in breathless anticipation. But at any rate…
Follow this link to learn more about Theater Hopper’s very first contest. A promotional DVD give-away in conjunction with Anchor Bay Entertainment. Five lucky winners will walk away with a copy of 1980’s The Long Good Friday. (available on DVD for the first time Tuesday, April 4) starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren.
This is a bit of a cult film, but it’s really good – I assure you. I watched it over the weekend and it reminds me a lot of other "across the pond" gangland flicks like Snatch. And honestly, when has Bob Hoskins ever been bad in anything? He was even good in The Super Mario Bros. Movie!
Entering the contest couldn’t be easier. All you have to do is send me an e-mail and winners will be chosen at random.
For more details on contest rules and participation, click here. You can also read a synopsis on the film and forthcoming DVD as well as view the trailer and exclusive video clips!
You can expect me to make a little bit more noise about this in the coming days…
GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!
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