Okay, so pretend I didn’t say last entry that our server issues were resolved. Apparently they weren’t, but now they are supposed to be. Actually, the issues are not at all related to our server, but DNS records and propogation and all of that. It appears that the problem is fixed now, but since that can change at any minute, we’re just gonna act like it’s fixed, okay?

I am super proud of today’s strip (Issue 138). I loved the idea of doing a “noir” strip in pixel art. I think one of my biggest challenges is that I am working in a cartoony style. There is plenty of pixel art which is amazingly rendered and looks like…art. My job is to make things look real, yet keep their “smiley” feel, which can be harder than it would seem. I wrote a little more about this in my pixel-art blog if anyone is interested.

As promised, we are steaming ahead on the whole crime storyline. We’ll be peppering in a few other threads in it, but suffice it to say, some answers to much-asked questions are coming soon!

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!

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!