Another slice of life strip (Issue 106). Tess is an avid reader. Actually, avid is not quite descriptive enough. She devours books. As her teacher last year told us, you never want to tell a kid, “stop reading” but with Tess, you had to. Her nose is always in a book. She easily reads several hundred books a year. Linus, on the other hand, doesn’t like to read. We are hard-pressed to get him to read anything at all. That is, unless it is video game based. Give him a 300 page book on Pokemon and he’ll tear through it. I always thought it was dorky that they made books based on cartoon episodes, but considering that’s the only thing my boys will read (Monty is right behind Linus), I can understand and appreciate them now.

Just taking a moment to wish all of our readers a Merry Christmas (and wonderful *insert holiday of choice*, if you don’t celebrate Christmas). The best gift we have gotten this year is seeing Bitmap World grow. We thank you for your support and your help in spreading the word about this quirky little comic!

Hope you get everything on your list!!!!

For those of you who are wondering…no, we didn’t get our Christmas cards out. It’s a long story, but we had a huge technical problem on a project we were working on. We had to burn 100+ dvds and had a major snafu with not only the burning software, but the burners themselves. It was a collosal mess we have been working on for a couple of weeks, and it put us behind on everything. Thankfully, the project is done, and we’re getting a little caught-up with other stuff, but as you can appreciate, the comic did come as a secondary priority these past few days. We appreciate your patience.

Any parent who has had to sit through the barrage of holiday specials can appreciate today’s comic (issue #104). Seems everyone has a Christmas tale to tell, and if you mashed them all together, they would make quite a piece of work. Originally I was going to have Dott go to talk to Harry in the kitchen, but decided I wanted to show off another part of the house–Harry’s home office. Even though these are pixel graphics, I spend a lot of time thinking about how a room should look and creating it. As in a set for a show, any creation I make is gonna be used a lot, so I feel it’s important to get it done right–even if it is ultimately minimalistic.

As for the blinking tree, I debated if I wanted to do it or not. Honestly, we had eventually planned on doing something like this in some later strips for effect, and since it seemed appropriate, went ahead and did it now. I think was the key was to keep the blinking rather slow so it didn’t distract from the strip. Weigh in what you thought about it in the forum.

I have it linked on the front page, but if you haven’t seen it yet, on my Pixel blog, I have linked up a bunch of movies and shorts from around the Web that my family likes. You may find quite a few on the list that you’ve seen before, but there are also a few you may not have watched. So, check it out HERE.

We ARE planning on having a strip up on Tuesday. See you then.

One of my favorite elements in today’s comic (issue 103) is the first panel. It is never said, but there is the inference that the Pixel kids started looking for Nyanko, and basically went and got all their friends involved in the hunt. This is so typical of kids. I remember recently when my own kids were looking for our lost cat, instead of just starting the hunt, they went and got all their friends involved. I think it was more for the thrill of the chase rather than getting more bodies involved (though, admittedly, having more people to look does help). This strip also flashed me back to a similar incident in my past, which you can read about on my pixel blog, if you are interested.

When I see the group in panel 1, I keep thinking of them as a “gaggle of kids.” This is thanks to my recent reading of School Spirit, a super-family-friendly comic, which you should check out if you haven’t already. It’s an Australian phrase, but I think it fits perfectly here.

Since tying up of the “monkey in the closet” storyline, we weren’t planning on doing another monkey strip for quite some time. That was before we learned about Monkey Day and the Monkey Day Webcomic Blog. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so we decided to jump on the bandwagon. It took a bit of improvisation, since we didn’t want another out-of-continuity strip. We wanted something that could fit into the actual history, but wouldn’t throw off what we have planned for the near future. Thus, this strip. Since we’re in the middle of the Mr. Smiley/Nyanko storyline, we’re initially listing it as a bonus, and it’s permanent strip number will be determined after we wrap that mini-arch up. Don’t worry though, we’re not going to cheat and insert this comic in place of a regular update. Instead, it will be in addition to any planned strip.

Hooray for Monkey Day!

Today is our 100th strip! We were debating if we wanted to do anything special for the strip. After a lot of thought, we decided that while it is a milestone, just plugging forward would probably be the best. Since Mr. Smiley is one of our fan’s favorites, and since the strip started with him, we thought starting a small storyline with him would be an appropriate way to celebrate strip 100.

I know that 100 strips is not necessarily a lot, particularly when you have comics that have been running for years, and have 1000s of strips. Still, for a little upstart like us, wanting to do something different and make a smiley strip, we’re pretty happy and proud. And considering that a good number of webcomics don’t make it past issue 50, much less 6 months, I think we’re doing okay. We don’t have the biggest of following yet. We get a little over 2000 unique visitors a month. But, it’s growing steady, and as our fan spread the word, we’re hopeful that more readers will discover our quirky little strip.

Thanks for 100. Here’s to the next 100!

Strip #97 finally gives our readers some information about the paperboy. And, to our astute readers, it may even give them the hint to what movie we are parodying with this whole storyline.

Oh, and I should note that this is the first strip that has even the remotest hint of a political commentary. It was not intentional. Frankly, I am not into Bush-bashing, or any political bashing for that matter. Certainly I have my opinions of these issues, but a fun family-friendly comic is not the forum in which to get on my soapbox. So, fear not, this isn’t the start of a precendence. However, Verde’s line originally was written to use the word bush. By capitalizing it, the phrase has double-meaning, and still is very much in-character for Verde, considering he works for the mayor and therefore has political preferences.

Strip #98 is just a simple slice-of-life comic. No, it’s not over the top funny, but it’s amusing…and true. The story about the hot dog/pigs-in-a-blanket actually happened at Tess’s school a couple years back. I should note, the pigs-in-the-blanket were supposed to be pancakes wrapped around a sausage link, but instead the lunch ladies used hot dogs. Dott’s reaction was pretty much the reaction of the whole school. Tess said that the kids were so grossed out, they gave them all free ice cream to make up for it.

As for the flooding of the bathroom, I think any parent who has a 2 or 3 year old can relate to this. That whole “too quiet” moment, when you realize your little one is getting into mischief. Our kids love of water, and flooding the bathroom happens every few months. Why, you ask? Well, kids need to use the bathroom, and they need to wash their hands. Believe me, it can take just a couple of minutes to overflow the sink and start a waterfall. If someone isn’t constantly playing potty police (which is sometimes not possible), these things happen. Of course, having older kids who are *supposed* to be watching little siblings but aren’t is just as plausible in these parts. Makes us consider getting those automatic sensor faucets they have in public washrooms. Hmm….

Okay, the Booyah was late. First it was Michelle’s fault. We were running behind due to yet another doctor’s appointment. She ended up putting the last finishing touches on the strips at work–and then forgot to send them to herself. I had come to pick her up from work, and I offered to turn around, but we were already halfway home so she decided to wait. The decision was fortunate because…

Our second delay was purely technical. Who knew that emails could give a programmer so many fits. Well, not email, per se, but collecting emails for our new contest. I had to modify our BYOC maker so that contestants can give us their contact information, and a form that should have been easy and quick ended up being complicated and time-consuming. I’m sure many a programmer can attest to projects like that.

So, a day late…again. Though, we are proud to say we have never missed an update. Sure, they are late, but we eventually get them up.

Of course, I’ve probably just jinxed us saying that…