Yes, lately we’ve been doing the slice-of-life strips.  You know the old saying, “write what you know.”  Today’s strip is actually one that hits home for me. I have to admit, one of my worst pet peeves is when my kids run around the house saying they are starving to death, asking every 2 minutes when dinner will be done, then when it’s time to eat, I have to yell and scream for them to come to the table!  I mean, if you are truly wasting away, I shouldn’t have to call you 3 times to come to the dinner!  So, I instituted a rule that if the kids don’t come in, I’m not chasing them.  Everyone who comes will eat, and the rest will just have to wait.  Granted, I haven’t resorted to PB&Js for the kids yet, but they do have to eat alone after everyone else.  And if it’s so late the leftovers are put up, they have to go and make their own plate.  Since I made that rule, the kids are much better at coming to dinner right away–though on occasion I’ve had the straggler come in after the fact, upset they were left out. Another true-life element is how the kids pass the buck all the way down when telling the other to tell the others it’s dinnertime. Including telling the baby. That is so how it is in our house.

I want to go back and talk a little about the previous strip.  I’ve gotten a lot of nice compliments about the fireworks.  I really wanted to do a 4th of July strip, but realized that holiday may not translate well to the inhabitants of a computer server.  Not that that stopped us from celebrating Halloween, Christmas, and Easter, mind you, but I figured this one might be a bit too America-only.  Anyhow, I liked the challenge of interpreting that holiday within the confines of that universe, and I was pleased when I came up with this.  As for the fireworks…major work!  There are over 20 cells in that animated gif, and it took me well over an hour just to do the fireworks part. But we are happy with how it looks, so it’s worth it.  Another thing to note, another reason I went with this is because I have been doing animated graphics for another non-BMW project.  Since I was already messing around with Animation Shop, I figured another “moving” Bitmapworld strip would be fun to do.