Sometimes the biggest delay in doing something, particularly a webcomic, isn’t so much one large thing, but a dozen little things. Though, yesterday, we had a pretty big deal with one of the kids’ schools, and that put us back. Again, we appreciate our reader’s understanding. Some people have asked us why don’t we make a buffer of strips. We have made small buffers in the past, just 2-3. But usually when we have extra time we concentrate on story development. It’s not unlike us to sit and have a pow-wow about what’s gonna happen next and in the future. That’s also easy to do when we’re cooking dinner or cleaning around the house. Multi-tasking!

There has been one thing we have been doing a lot of work on, and that’s getting together a new system for doing the strip’s lettering. We use a custom font that I created. However, due to limitations in the font program that created it, the font is not rendered perfectly when we do that lettering. It requires hand clean-up and kerning. For a wordy strip, like today’s strip (issue 116), that process can take almost as long as drawing/piecing the comic. We’ve been searching for a program to remaster the font. Hopefully when we do, it will cut down the overall time to do the comic, which will be a good thing.

It’s been in the single digits and teens around these parts for the last couple of weeks. It’s almost been too cold to do anything. Spring is a while off, but we can’t wait. The cold weather stinks.

This issue and the storyline to come are actually inspired by real events. Recently, a couple of our kids have been bitten by the “love bug.” Of course, in grammar school, there’s no real love, just little crushes. Still, it’s incredibly cute. Our son received a gift of little trinkets from a girl for his birthday. One of our daughters recently got a letter from a secret admirer. I still remember my first “kindergarten crush” and I hope that this little arc will bring back fond memories for our readers. Who was your first crush?

The Pixel kids do come off as a little dense at times. I never view them that way, though. They are just kids. They are caught up in their own worlds and don’t know everything–even if they think they do. The Pixel kids are quirky, though. It makes for good comedy, but our own kids tend to be that way too, so we personally find it endearing. Speaking of today’s strip (Issue 115), I think we can all relate to talking at cross-purposes.

The bonus of this new storyline, is that it is going to allow us to work in a few things that we have wanted to for a while. We also wanted to mention, we got a lot of positive feedback from the strips with the robbery and Blip. Don’t worry, there will be more to that arc coming soon. If you’re a regular reader, you know we take pride in pacing things out. All in good time. As promised, there will be some exciting things coming at our year anniversary mark in March!

As much as I like to think I’m a “hip” mom (and the fact that I use the word hip probably proves I’m not), there are sometimes the generation gap hits me. Usually any time I see some piece of pop culture which seems absolutely idiotic to me, but keeps my kids enthralled for hours. Of course, the kids–my kids and the generation of 20-somethings–are the ones that are target audiences nowadays. They have the disposable income, and the naivity to truly believe they need everything that advertisers tell them. While not quite as exaggerated as in Issue 114, there is a trend where news is focusing more and more on entertainment and fluff as a way of keeping viewers. One of our major newspapers has a spin-off paper that is actually performing better than the main paper. It is “tidbit” news, where you get just a paragraph or two synopsis of the story. The rest of the pages are filled with news of the moment. What happened during Britney’s breakdown. Is Angelina Jolie pregnant? That’s what people want to know. In the last major election, there were polls that showed that most people cared more about the outcome of American Idol than the presidential election. It’s sad, but certainly a true statement of the world we live in.

As for Harry running around after all the kids, all I can say is that is Jim’s life–almost verbatim. 90% of the time our kids want daddy. Be it getting a bottle, changing a stinky, or kissing a boo-boo, they want their daddy. Of course, I win in the food category, but only because Jim can’t cook! Oh well, having grown up in a single-mom home, I don’t complain. I’m really happy and lucky I have a great husband who’s such a good dad. Though, I’m sure–particularly at key moments–Jim wishes that for a little while those kids would want their mom instead!

One more note, we are totally proud of our very techno, pop-culture sounding celebrity names! Can’t you totally see a rock star with the name of Xeon Neon?

Issue 112 is a milestone in the sense that it is the first time we follow a character that is neither one of the Pixels nor the Smileys. Not only that, it follows characters who are not regulars. When we created the strip, we wanted to be very careful with pacing, to establish the characters and let our audience really get to know and care about them before branching off. At nearly the year mark we feel confident enough to do that now. That said, Bitmap World will always have the Pixels at the center, but the word “World” is not in the title for nothing. There is a lot more to see, and many more characters waiting in the wings.

In this strip, the security guards are shown holding pistols. I really lamented about this, and almost didn’t do it. The same went for the cigarette smoking joke in Issue 111. This is a family-friendly comic, and we want to make it readable for everyone. I guess the difference with these two jokes is while they show smoking (which is considered bad) and guns (which are dangerous), neither is depicted in a manner which is complimentary. The security guards are obviously in the wrong and breaking the rules, and they get yelled out when they are smoking. With the guns, it’s clear they are acting like policemen, so there is a reason they have weapons. I think even small children understand that, since they see it on t.v. Individuals that are stealing large amounts of computers are usually not petty thieves, and very well could be dangerous. Of course, the guns are never used, which is an overall positive.

Oh, I just want to say that I am in no way poking fun at all security guards with these strips. One of my friends happens to be a security guard and loves it–and she’s very good at her job. That said, I have known a few very inept security guards in my time, and since it makes for good comedy, these guards are quite bumbling and idiotic. It’s always fun writing characters like that!

On a last note, I am proud that we managed to get the strip up today! Albeit with 10 minutes to spare, but it was on-time (just about 12 hours off center).

What a whirlwind! Okay, I’ll admit, we probably shouldn’t have had the cut-off for the contest on Friday and plans to announce the winner on Tuesday. Since many of our judges work and have families, it was difficult to get all the votes together (not to mention that Jim wanted to create a utility to help make voting super-easy). Still, we’re really happy with the way everything turned out. For an upstart comic, we got quite a few strip submissions. It always amazes me how creative people can be when using comic-makers.
 
We didn’t really plan on inserting the monkey strip exactly here, but it actually works as a good segway to issue 109–where Harry is next seen walking into work drinking a coffee. I love the idea of the Macrohard guys making a coffee run. That’s something I can totally relate to working in downtown Chicago where there is a Starbucks on every corner.
 
Now, I don’t know if it needs a lot of explaining, but I should give some backstory as to the whole “Allied Pay” thing in issue 110 and issue 111. When Jim was at his last job (a Fortune 500 company), there was a yearly push for employees to donate to the United Way. Now, I’m not knocking the United Way or any other similar organization. I think it is a good thing to donate to those types of agencies. What we didn’t like was the yearly extortion by management. There was this huge push for “100% participation.” They always stressed it was voluntary, and that your job wasn’t dependent on it, but the insinuation was otherwise. Literally, as the cut-off date rolled around, Jim would get 1-2 emails a day, plus calls, kindly reminding him that he hadn’t made his donation yet. Though not in the official rulebook, it was well-known that management was expected to sign up for the “weekly give” where a certain percentage was withdrawn from each paycheck. So, why the racket? Even though employees gave the money, the company got to take the tax deduction. Certainly a good reason for them to rough up the staff. Anyhow, I had a lot of fun with poking fun of this, including creating a good mock-up of that type of logo. Also, I am enormously proud of the artwork in these strips. While some pre-existing elements were used in the school gym, a good deal is my original art. It really took me a long time, but I think it looks great. If you want to know more, I plan to talk about that a little more in my pixel art blog soon.
 
I always try to end Booyah strips with a little bit of a cliffhanger. Thankfully, the current storyline allowed me to do this. I will note that we are starting some things in motion now that we hope will come to fruition just in time for our year anniversary in March. Stay tuned!

We have had a lot of people tell us they would like the ability to comment on our strips and our blog entries, as well as the ability to search the older blog entries. So, we have move to a new blogging system to provide these options, and hopefully make reading our blog easier. If you encounter any problems, drop in the forum and let us know.