Mysteries of the Move. What is really funny is that this actually happened to me. Not quite in the same fashion, and not a cellphone, but when I was a teen, I lost something in my house. I can’t even remember what it was now, but it was important at the time. Me and my mom ended up moving some time later. After settling in the new place, I found the item. But, it wasn’t in a box, it was just lying behind something. The question was, how did the item get packed up, moved to the new house, unpacked, and lost again? I guess that is why it is called a mystery.

When Tess was about seven years old, she was already using the computer. She loved playing around with Paint Shop Pro. One day she loaded all of Michelle’s icons — Michelle is the administrator of a large forum, and has a huge icon collection for it — and began making a picture using them. She started with a field of green, and then placed icons all over it, representing people. She had some of the icons eating a picnic lunch, and some of them playing volleyball, and some just running around. She also had a couple that were walking their dogs. She titled the picture People in the Park. Michelle and I saw that and thought, Wow, that would make a great comic!

We didn’t forget about the idea after that, we just thought that some other webcomic might be better. For four years we tried various comics, before finally returning to the idea of a simplistic-looking comic that takes place inside a computer, with icons for people. So Tess really needs to take the credit for coming up with the original idea.

It’s kind of bizarre. Michelle and I always wondered if Tess would follow in our footsteps, but now we’re following in hers.

Issue 11. The father is too upset with the older kids to bother taking what Max has to say seriously. Of course, any parent can relate to this, particularly when a child keeps calling your name incessantly even though it’s obvious you’re in the middle of something else. Our kids do it all the time. Though, you have to wonder is it because they don’t *get* we are busy, or do they sincerely feel we can’t hear them over the other noise. Anyhow, we did try to stress in the next issue that despite the horsing around, the kids settled down and did help. Our kids are like that–hard to motivate and between the goofing off, do manage to get stuff done.

Hey, I got a question from a reader about the “terminal” in issue 8. Yes, that is an Audrey, the defunct internet appliance made by 3com many years back. And thanks to my brother-in-law, we happen to be Audrey lovers. We have 3 in our house, though only 1 is set up right now. Nice to have one in the kitchen to get recipes and such over the ‘Net. It was before it’s time, yet obsolete at the same time. Then again, isn’t so much of technology? Our reference to it is one of many tech jokes we have planned for the comic. Honestly, in a lot of ways, even though the term most people use to describe the strip is “cute,” we have a lot of satire planned, and much of it at the expense of our computerized world. And while we will aim to keep those jokes timely enough for a general audience to find amusing, we are also aware there will be a few obscure references and site gags that us “old-timers” and computer geeks are going to get that some others might not.

I was surprise how many hits we got this morning, apparently viewers coming back for the next installment! Thanks for your interest! We’re psyched about the comic and hope everyone enjoys it.

Another slight delay in getting the strips up, but this time it was not website related. We’re trying to get our home office network together, particularly since we’re all need access to the graphics, etc. Then some of the technical issues of actually doing the comic, such as the paint program and fonts. Anyhow, despite the delay, we have a bonus with 4 strips up today! We wanted to run through the end of the first day at the Smiley’s house. Our continued plan is to have 2 new comics this coming Tuesday…and hopefully on time!

In a space only 16 pixels tall by 16 wide, you can create hundreds of faces showing a huge range of emotions. Check out issue 5, for example. Here we have no less than eight distinct emotions being expressed by the various characters, and they all result from alteration of a few pixels around the mouth and eyes. On top of that, we have to keep each character recognizeable and distinct from all the other characters. Sure, we made some people yellow, and some grey, and some green. But that will only get you so far. After a while, you begin running out of colors. So, at first glance, it may appear that we’re being lazy by making our comic out of icons. But it’s actually more work, in some ways, than traditional art.

I’m not trying to brag, here. Really, I’m not. I’m just amazed — I know, we’re the ones doing it, but it still amazes me — at what you can accomplish in such a tiny space. Early video games had to do this a lot. The original Mario, from the first Donkey Kong game, was just incredible. 16×16 pixels, yet so detailed you could tell he had a moustache. That’s just amazing. Nowadays, Mario is a fully rendered 3D object built out of hundreds of tiny triangles. He’s not even measured in pixels anymore. If he met Original Mario, the size difference would be so great he’d mistake his younger self for some type of insect.

An insect with a moustache.

New strips are up, but a wee bit late. Everything was done, but I realized we hadn’t done some backend stuff. Error pages and all of that. Wanted to get all of those done before I uploaded the strips and walked away from the computer (though honestly, because of my job, I never can really walk away from the computer).

There’s so many little things that need to be done when you start a new website. You always spend the first month or two doing tech and admin stuff, inevitably forgetting this or that and having to come back to it later. Still, things are slowly coming off our 2-Do list. I am looking forward to things running smoother so we can concentrate on doing the comic, as well as focus attention back to some other projects we are working on.

I am really excited to start doing this comic. I like making graphics and things like that, so this is great for me. Since I have a good imagination, it is sometimes not hard to think up stuff. I hope you all like this comic because me, my mom and dad worked really hard on it.

Well, Michelle wanted me to make an entry since the comic is starting today. Only I can’t really think of anything witty to say. So I’ll let the comic speak for itself. We have a lot of great stuff planned. I hope everyone comes back to check out our next update on Tuesday.