Working on today’s strip (Issue 249) took far longer than I expected. The very unexpected reason was that it was quite the challenge doing Mr. Smiley’s armchair. When we wrote the script, I kept thinking about where Mr. Smiley would make the call to the cops. I didn’t want to do it in his living. We’ve already seen the foyer, bedroom, living room, and kitchen. I realized there had to be another room in the house. Perhaps a study or office. I just imagine a place where he would sit to read his paper, make his calls, etc., I got this image of this Archie Bunker chair (and, yes, I realize I’m old enough that many of our young readers will have no idea who Archie Bunker is). I managed to find a few models of chairs that were close to work off of, but ended up having to do quite a bit of pixelling to get what I wanted. Anyhow, I know it’s such a small thing, but I really am nutty about details like that.

Everyone is on the mend on the home front. This weekend is the big push to get several projects done. After that, hoping we have some breathing room to get back on schedule with the strip…and get a Booyah done!

Yes, wonders never do cease. A new strip, up ON TIME! See, we told you we had it in us. Now, to see if we can get this winning streak to TWO strips.

I have to admit that when I was considering doing a Monkey Day strip this year, I almost was tempted to do a strip that was tied-in to last year’s strip. However, on the forum, we have been chatting about Monkey Island. I have to totally admit being a fanboy of that series. A very awesome game with great playability and good humor. For all of the great games that have come and gone over the years, I have to say by far my favorite PC games are the Monkey Island series and “Day of the Tentacle”–all by Lucasart. Ah, those were the days when they made games other than Star Wars and shooters… *sigh* Yes, I know that’s an exaggeration, but it feels like that. Anyhow, getting all nostalgic about Guybrush Threepwood and his adventures, I decided I wanted to do something along those lines for Monkey Day, since we obviously parody him in this strip as the Monkey Mustafa’s assistant. After a bit of thought, I came up with this strip. While this comic (Issue 227) is kinda randomly placed in the continuity to tie-in to Monkey Day, it’s not a random strip. It may or may not have huge significance, but rarely is something done arbitrarily in this strip. Jim and I are pretty serious writers, and we do plot a lot of stuff way out. I, for one, love to leave little threads all over the place, and then tie them up at a later day–in some obvious and some not-so-obvious ways.

I will note that much of the background art in this strip is from the first Monkey Island game. I really wanted to pay a little homage to “Threepbrush’s” desire to be a pirate–which of course was a major plot element in the Monkey Island games. I have to admit to thinking the pirate monkeys look pretty cool. As for our little monkey ninja, I would be remiss to merely mention those words without giving a nod to my all-time favorite monkey ninjas, Carl & Phil, who can be found over HERE (the site is going through a revamp, but check back soon–all 6 episodes are hilarious and must-see).

One of the most fun parts of doing Bitmap World is my chance to take real-life things and turn them into smiley/pixel-art. I had a ton of fun doing the Tron poster in today’s strip (Issue 223), and the pseudo-Greyhound bus from the last strip (Issue 223) was a blast too.

I’m starting to write more over at my pixel blog.  I plan to expand on this more in the next day or two, so peek in over there if you feel inclined!

It hasn’t been really official, but I tend to do some more in-depth commentary on the most recent past strips during the Booyah. So, I am now making it a standard Booyah addition. We have gotten some good feedback that our fans like the little additional information, so I hope you enjoy it.

• Issue 208 was literally inspired by a day where I got 10 different email scams from someone in Nigeria (or someone else abroad) asking me to help them claim $4 million dollars. This is such a blatant scam, but oddly enough I just read an article about a woman who was fleeced $400,000. So, we ran with the storyline of Mr. Smiley dressing up as a woman (that is always a funny sight-gag), and Mrs. Smiley dressed as a koala. Of course, the comedy is just as much the Smiley’s plan, as Harry being gullible enough to fall for it. Particularly after just warning Dott about the whole “if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

• Issue 212 - I just laugh every time I think about Mrs. Smiley using ninjutsu on Skippy! I like the touching moment at the end, something we don’t get to see a lot of. Though, I did feel it was important to establish that regardless of the drama, the Pixels have very much settled into their new home…and are here to stay!

• Issue 213 - I commented on this below. However, I will add that I did add the line about the “smile” as an indirect reference to Barack Obama. I heard many people comment on his smile and charisma. So much of it was apart from what his stands were on the issue. Granted, not knocking him at all, but just commenting that while there are a good many people who truly vote on the issues, there’s some who really just make their judgments on looks and superficial things.

• Issue 214 - This was just a throw-away strip, but I think it’s still pretty funny. Honestly, one morning I was particularly hungry and thinking of a bagel. Then I started thinking about Harry and Blip, and this strip just came to me. Thing is, it really does work, and again gives us a little more insight into Blip himself, as well as the continuing warring between the two cubicle-mates.

• Issue 215 - Jim wrote about the grocery store, but I wnated to add a few comments. First of all, I LOVE the pinata. That totally made the strip for me. Plus, I do love his little details. While it took him a long time to do–and admittedly I probably could have done it much quicker–I think his art is great. When we talked about this strip, I didn’t have nearly as detailed a store in mind.

A side note about the pinata. We were at our local grocer the other day, and I saw a pinata on top of the display. I laughed and pointed it out, and Jim admitted that was his inspiration. Funny, I hadn’t noticed it before then. Anyhow, Jim wanted to take a picture of it with his cellphone to post here on the site to comment. Well, as he was taking the picture, security came up to him and threatened to kick him out of the store. They said that he was not allowed to take a picture of the pinata! As we left the store after paying for out groceries, we had to wonder what was up with that? Seriously, it wasn’t like we were taking pictures of the whole store to case the joint, we just wanted a picture of the horse pinata. Very curious. Guess it shows the dangers of webcomicking!

• Issue 216 - I wrote about this in the forum, but for our visitors that don’t get over there…this strip was inspired by our daughter, Violet. She is a singer. She sings all sorts of little songs, and she sings all the time. The three youngest love to watch videos on the computer, and there is not a lack of kids songs playing over and over. It is not uncommon for me to have 1 or 2 running through my head at any given time. However, recently, Violet has been on a “Mary had a Little Lamb” kick, and there was one point where that song literally ran through my head non-stop for 3 days. Thus, this strip.

A sidenote, this strip is very reminiscent of a BYOC strip done by our fan, Tah. However, it was only coincidental that they have the same theme.

• Issue 218 - We have plotted out a lot of the storylines for the strip well into the future. There are things we have in our heads that we know won’t be seen for a couple more years. However, sometimes the day-to-day strips escape us. We feel pacing is important, so after we do a storyline, we like to do a few stand-alone strips, and then start a new arch, or pick up on an old one. Anyhow, we wanted to get back onto the Rasterman storyline. It would seem obvious that Rasterman’s flying would be a hinderance to the police’s effort, so we ran with that. However, in the very next strip, we learn that even despite having that ability, Blip has his problems. Of course, his problems aren’t merely forgetting some of his superpowers, but handling his increasingly lonely wife. Again, I love the Rasterman storyline as I think it gives the strip some much-needed depth.

• Issue 219 - You often watch shows on how they make movies. You’ll hear how the production crew spends weeks building this set, creating the minutest of details, and then after all of that work, blows it up in a few seconds. That is how I felt about this strip. It was an *easy* strip dialogue-wise. I really thought it would take like a half an hour, tops. That is, until I realized I needed to do the street set. And when I realized I wanted to do something more substantial than I have in the past. I wanted to create some sets I could use, and some templates to do other buildings in the future.

Now, I readily admit that I use outside art. These buildings heavily use pre-existing VG backgrounds. However, I don’t think I have ever just ripped art and used it as-is. I usually end up doing extensive work on it. The reason being is that most videogame art is from a side-top perspective. Meaning you view the action as if you were looking down upon the world. Even the art that has more of a frontward perspective, still has a front-side look for depth. Again, that’s great for a game, but really doesn’t work for our strip which uses more of a “television camera” perspective of the action being mostly forward facing (the obvious exception to this is the Cosmic Dungeon strips–but that is because it is set in a video game and thus utilizes that perspective on purpose). Anyhow, it took me HOURS to work on these buildings and get them to a point where we could use them. Plus, I did create several from scratch. So, in the end, this strip which should have been super-easy, took me upwards of 6 hours to complete. The only good thing is that I have a lot of stock art now that should make certain future strips faster and easier.

• Issue 220 - The relationship between Blip and Audrey is still very new to the reader. It’s new to us too. However it’s one that we really like and look forward to exploring. It’s a bit cliche to have the wife at home who doesn’t know her husband is a superhero. Still, we hope to do a few fresh things with it. I should note that Jim and I have two slightly different ideas of where this particular subplot to the strip should go. It’s kinda neat when you can work so closely on something, yet has some conflicting views of things. Either way, it should be fun…and make for some interesting storytelling.

Well, *that* was an experience.

This is the third comic done entirely by me (Jim) from beginning to end. Wait, that’s a lie. Michelle re-did the last panel. I think my muse expired, or something.

Anyway, it took me about five hours. Eek! Yeah, this is why Michelle usually does most nearly all of the artwork.

The first comic I did myself consisted entirely of Harry watching TV. No challenging artwork there! The current comic, I had to design a store, a samples cart, and a pinata.

Anyway, it’s up now. And I’m tired. Oh, and bonus points for anyone who can figure out what the other two “all-Jim” comics were.

I recently got an email from Jenni over at One Thing. She wanted to tell me that several of her kids are fans of Bitmap World. In particular, her 12 year old daughter was so inspired by it that she started her own webcomic. Right now, Jenni is featuring her daughter’s work every Sunday on her blog. But who knows what the future will hold! Perhaps Jordan will have her own site in the future.

Jordan uses Paint to do her comic, something Jim/Ravenswood would be proud of. I know there is a lot of negativity about Paint, but it really is a great free utility for those starting out. Even though Jim uses Paint Shop Pro, he still does the majority of the work in Paint.

It really does warm our hearts to hear that our comic is loved by kids, and also inspires them to be creative. In fact, we have learned that 2 separate schools (one in the States and one in Europe) offer classes on how to do comics, and Bitmap World is included in their reference curriculum. We are very proud of that, because our goal from day one was to create a strip that would be safe for kids to read, but still enjoyable by adults.

Anyhow, thanks to Jenni for letting us know about the strip. Here’s a link to Jordan’s comic. Kudos to her, and best wishes for a long comic career!

Well, as is pretty typical with us, things just happened this week, throwing us into a tailspin. We had a hack on one of our other sites, and then a very sick baby who kept us up all night…and slowed our work on the computer. We actually had the Booyah ready on time, but then at the last minute forgot one of the items! We had done the WiiMiis nearly a month ago. When we were gathering the pieces for the Booyah, we stumbled upon the images and did one of these: And that meant a lot of running around, trying to get it together for the Booyah. The thing that stymied us the most is that Jim really wanted to get screenshots of the actual Check Mii Out Channel. Problem is, while you can download certain content onto a memory card from the Wii, you can’t save WiiMiis. To do so, you need to patch in a DVD Recorder into your television. Well, we have a DVD recorder we had never set up, so Jim decided to use that. Now, if you have ever read about any “easy” project we embark on, you can totally guess what happened next. This comic pretty much sums it up. Getting the images to pipe into the DVD player was not the problem, it was getting the player to write to the disc properly. Quite seriously, it took 3 hours and a half dozen discs, and it STILL didn’t write right correctly. It saved the data, but not a menu, so we couldn’t access the pictures. So, that meant Jim spending several more hours on the internet, trying to find software that could repair and/or read the disc. After that, there was the matter of ripping the screen, creating graphics, putting together the tutorial, and… Well, you get the idea. Anyhow, the neat thing is if you are a fan of the site and have a Wii, you can use Bitmap World characters in your games! How cool is that?I am also super excited about the Comment graphics. There are over 100 different graphics. Literally, this took me a huge amount of time to do. If you are familiar with doing glitter graphics, you know that to make one, you need to create 3 different images, then merge/animate them. So, literally I had to create over 300 images. It was a challenge. But the good thing is that during the process I learned a TON about Paint Shop Pro, as well as getting some techniques that will help me considerably in doing the comic. In fact, some of the shortcuts I used for the current strips, and they went a lot faster than those I did even a week ago!Oh, and speaking of the Comments, we reported earlier that the Booyah was initially delayed a bit because of some programming. That was actually for the comment graphics. I did not want to hardcode pages with the graphics and the links–it would have taken me days. We did consider going with some fancy gallery program to display them, but that turned out to be overkill. Eventually we found a so-so program that we could drop into the directory and it would list the graphics. Jim modified it so it would automatically generate the link codes. It worked up great! Took time, but hey, it will help us loads in the future.

I’ll let everyone get into all the goodies of the Booyah. At the current rate, it looks like we’ll be tying up the current storyline on Tuesday. I’ll post another blog entry there with my comments on the most recent strips.

I have been using a different paint program to do the last few comics. Not really a new program, but a “new” version. I have to admit to being an old-timer, in the fact that I was very comfortable using Paint Shop Pro 6. When it came out, I bought Version 7, and then got Version 8 free with one of the computers we bought. But, I could never really get into the newer versions. So, I plugged along with 6. Oddly enough, the reason I have finally moved to the newer versions was not Bitmap World, but the fact that I have been doing a lot of animated gifs and glitter graphics. Some of the plug-in and effects I wanted to accomplish, I could not do in Version 6. So…

I actually use 7 the most. I have often read that Version 7 was most people’s favorite version. And I have to agree. I need Version 8 to do some higher level effects, but the navigation and layout of 7 is much easier for me to use. That said, there are still things I can simply do faster in Version 6. So, I now have all 3 installed on my machine and go back and forth. It’s kinda funny.

Oh, and if anyone wants to know why I don’t use Photoshop, I’ll simply say this: Money. Don’t have the money, and since PSP can do 90% of what Photoshop can, I really can’t justify spending 6 times as much for that software. I mean $100 as opposed to $700 is a big thing. Also, I know that many people recommend GIMP as a free alternative to PS, but I have some serious issues with the interfaces and controls. So, I’ll stay with my PSP, thank you.

All of that said, using PSP7 has been great, but there is a re-learning curve. Strips are taking a tad bit longer to do, but overall I’m happy and think that in the long run it will help things speed along a little better.

I do want to note that Jim’s program of preference is still Windows Paint.  Though, he does do a lot more in PSP now. Perhaps he’ll finally cross over once and for all…though I doubt it.

More pop-culture references in this strip (Issue 180).  Had fun with the nods in the the last issue.  This strip I pay a little homage to one of my all-time favorite fantasy movies.  In fact, I got all so nostaglic doing this strip, I’m gonna have to brush off the DVD this weekend and watch it.  Post in the comments or in the forum if you know what movie it is!

Oh goodness. Issue 179. This strip took FOR-EVER! 4 hours!!! That’s like the old days when I first started this strip. Ugh. Of course, doing the interior of the pub was a huge endeavor. Since this is not really traditional art, the technique is a bit different. I talk about building “sets” and that is what it is. I have to admit, so much of my days in theater comes into play with Bitmap World. You build the set, which is essentially a panel with a background. Then you get the props–many of which need to be drawn from scratch. Then you put in the people. I did manage to snatch some of the art, but a lot of it needed to be heavily modified. Granted, not nearly as time consuming as drawing it from scratch, but particularly since the size-ratio was off, I needed to remaster everything anyway.

That said, the set is built, and I did work ahead on the next few strips. I’m proud of how it looks. Am also pretty proud of the jokes in there…a good number which were Jim’s! See you on Tuesday.

First of all, thank you to everyone who sent well-wishes this past week. I had a couple of scary days there–almost considered going to the E.R. But I’m fine now and that’s all that matters. Thanks for being understanding and such loyal fans. You guys rock!

I have wanted to write a bit more detailed comment about some of the strips, but life has been kinda crazy. I figured the Booyah would be a good time, so I’m going to backtrack a bit.

Issue 158 - The orange joke was totally inspired by the art. Those oranges are some Japanese pixel art which I used for the strip. When I saw it, the gag immediately jumped into my mind. It is SOOOO appropriate for the Mayor.

Issue 159 - I am a little bummed the second float was blurred. I had done some great “celebrity” smilies for it and they are obscure. 5 points in the forums if anyone can guess who it is! I do hope to feature them in another strip down the line. Also in 159, I love the line “Hey, Mac.” Double play on words there.

Issue 160 - I am really proud how this strip turned out. Not a word spoken, but everything is said loud and clear. I really wanted to do the last panel justice, and I went over a lot of ideas on how to depict it. The long-shot shadow definitely worked best, and I love how it turned out.

Issue 161 - I already commented on this one in an earlier blog, but I did want to note Jim’s favorite line is the cop chiding his partner about wanting to shoot the volcano.

Issue 162 - I think it is so funny, and convenient, how there is always a reporter in the crowd anytime something exciting happens in a movie or on t.v. I thought it would be great to have something happen and there NOT be a journalist around.

Issue 163 - Rasterman was not our first choice for the superhero name, but it was in the top 3. I totally wanted to do the spotlight shot for the second panel, and made sure to use a snazzy comic font for the wording. I just crack up when I see the paperboy ready to bean the superhero to keep him from flying away.

Issue 165 - We debated how we were going to have Blip get a newspaper in this strip. We thought of having the paperboy deliver it, but that would have distracted from the story. We toyed with him just having the paper on his front step. Eventually, I went with the idea of him going out at the crack of dawn to get one. I wanted to do a news-stand, and went searching for pictures for inspiration. The stand I did was replicated from this picture. The Times New Roman is a great name for a newspaper and I’m psyched to have come up with it!

Issue 166 - Designing a new set is always stressful for me. I really try to get something that will reflect the characters. Since this is the first time we see Blip’s wife, I wanted it to be extra special. Originally I was going to go with a different look, but once I got the retro-modern blue theme going, it fit the best and I ran with it.

Issue 167 - The mayor is such a hopeless dope. He was supposed to be a small supporting character, but he has totally developed beyond that and we have a special place in our heart for him.

Issue 168 - I wanted to have a nice strip just showing Pixel life. It was kinda inspired to have Smiley in there cogging it up. While I was doing this strip, all that kept running through my mind is the Simpsons episode where they have all the major league baseball players, and Bart is heckling Daryl Strawberry (I think that was who it was). ROFL!

Issue 169 - Yes, the first three panels are identical to Issue 39. That was totally deliberate, and not simply to be a cheat. I just felt it best illustrated Harry’s transformation from psycho newspaper boy hound to indifferent and rational smiley.

Issue 170 - Are we really only 30 away for Issue 200? I know we poke so much fun of corporate American in this strip, but we can’t help it. Have you ever seen the movie Mystery Men? Captain Amazing is covered in endorsement badges and does commercial. I just think the idea of that is wild. Seriously, would any good, upstanding superhero stoop so low?