Well, I felt so bad about the whole forum blow-up that I did 2 comics today. Forgive me??? Please, someone, a pity comment. ;O)

The forums will be up tomorrow, along with the contest winner. Sorry for *that* delay, but Jim is doing some work on the system which I hope can be done by then. I figured you guys would rather we work on the extra comic.

The last few strips have been grueling! Most the carnival stuff had to be done from scratch. There is some stock pixel art in there, but a good majority is my original art. What pre-existing art had to be heavily modified. Each one took much longer than even the Cosmic Dungeon strips. However, I feel it was well worth it. I am happy with the look, and now I have a lot of props for further issues!

I think the thing that got me the most with this last round was all the supporting characters! You know how you watch Spongebob or any other cartoon, and there are a bunch of recurring secondary characters? Well, now I know why. Getting all those faces in the crowd took an enormouns amount of time, since I needed to create a ton of non-descript characters, as well as putting in key characters and members of their families. I just wish I hadn’t been so pressed for time with the site problems, because doing the art was a lot of fun and I would have liked to have had the time to enjoy it more.

I do have a lot of comments on the individual strips from the last 2 updates, so I’m just gonna rattle them off one by one:

Strip 151 - I would love to say my kids behave in the car all the time. They do mostly, but even on the best of trips there is the kicking and the poking. This was certainly a tribute to that.

Strip 152 - This is one of my all-time favorite strips. I laugh just thinking about it. The mayor has definitely developed into a colorful character, and a bit different than what we first envisioned and planned for him. Makes you wonder what that baby looked like, eh?

Strip 153 - I am WAY proud of how those porta-pottys turned out! The joke in there about the family motto was actually something Jim said to Linus once as a gag when Jim made him use the facilities at a public place. I thought it would be funny if it actually *was* someone’s family motto. Now it is!

Strip 154 - The Dott-Com joke never occurred to me until just a few weeks ago. We’ve been doing this strip for over a year, and such an obvious tech joke was under right my nose. Too funny.

Strip 155 - I am sure we embarrass our kids by making them do things with the little ones. Most of the time they truly don’t mind, but there are moments in public, particularly when their friends are around, where they cringe at the thought. Coincidentally, this was Linus’s favorite strip of the Booyah update–because he could relate to it!

Strip 156 - Have you ever played the Wii game, Carnival? That was the inspiration for the dunk tank with Mr. Domain in there. A tidbit, Korn’s son is the one who dunked him. Also, I had more fun drawing the little drama in the background of that strip than I did the dialogue between Max and Blip. Though I do say, I am really proud of how this strip turned out overall.

Strip 157 - Jim asked me, “are we really going to do a vomit joke?” C’mon, how could I pass that up?! Seriously, I don’t normally like potty-humor, but there are times it’s appropriate and pretty darn funny.

Monday…the parade.

You know, when we created the BYOC, we never imagined it would be the greatest “save-face” for us! On days when things just get too caught up, we can create a filler strip in 10 minutes so that YOU, our fans, have something to read until we can get the new strip up. Now, we don’t always put one up, but when we do, we always have so much fun with it. I do have to give credit to Jim, because he is the one that does them the most…and I think they are just hysterical. He truly is a great comedy writer.

Just to appease your curiosity, Jim and I are working on 2 projects: 1 personal and 1 freelance that will bring us in some much-needed money (can’t blame us for that). Bitmap World is still very important to us, so we want to assure everyone we do make every effort to stay on schedule. But, when we can’t, we’ll still try to entertain.

See you tomorrow!

I think some of the people who read today’s strip (Issue 140) might feel that Harry is being exceptionally rude to Blip when he finds out he’s married. Well, considering how rude Blip is to him, I think it’s a bit justified. Also, it’s one of those cases where you find out something about someone that shocks you so much, you forget all etiquette. I know there have been people I have met with less than stellar personalities, who I later found out were married. I would be shocked, wondering who the heck would have married them, and secretly wondering how they put up with such a person. Granted, I understand that most people act differently when it comes to family and then outside acquaintances. Still, it make you wonder. That was what I was trying to convey with Harry in that strip.

The next 2 strips (Issues 141 and 142) were incredibly fun for me to do. I dreaded having to design the mayor’s office, but ended up loving it once I was into it. First of all, as a bit of trivia, the mayor’s office design is based loosely on a mayor’s office in a popular video game. I actually studied pictures of several real mayor’s offices in the U.S. and thought they all looked so pretentious! They looked like mini Oval Offices. I wanted something a little less flashy, and decided to do a parody of a movie or game one. Thankfully I found one I liked and used it as a model. I have to admit to not ever hearing of the game, much less playing it. Though, I did learn after the fact that my kids had played it a while back, having borrowed it from a family member.

Can I ask, are there ever any good mayors in comics? Most of the ones we run into are all corrupt and shifty. I guess those types of characters are more fun to write, and make for better drama.

Last, I also have to point to an inside joke, which literally only a handful of our close friends will get when reading the comic. Jim and I have been in a role-playing game since before we were married. I truly date myself here, but the campaign has been going on 16 years!–though only 3 years have passed in game time. It’s a superhero based game, using the DC Heroes universe. My character also happens to run an orphanage. Early in our gaming, I ran a game which had major events happens at the yearly “charity carnival.” Little did we know, that would be a recurring event in our game, and always the source of a lot of fun and drama. Thus, my inspiration to use it in the strip.

It’s really funny because the strip has taken on such a different tone lately, moving away from the “new kids on the block” focus of the Pixels, and widening the focus on the town and supporting characters. This was always our plan from Day 1, but as we mentioned before, we did not want to rush things. It’s neat to finally be writing storylines we came up with nearly 2 years ago! Hope you all enjoy them.

Actually, more like *several* days late. Though, the dollar part is argueable. Despite being a bit behind, our Booyah is up and we’re pretty pleased with it. 

Of course, fresh off the frustration of a server move, I am tempted to spend a page and a half ranting and raving.  Honestly, the move went relatively smooth.  The problem is that our new server has more advanced security, which is good from a general standpoint, but not good that a large number of our scripts and programs didn’t work properly.  That included this blog and a bunch of other stuff.  Not to mention that BMW had a longer time propogating than some of the other sites.  Ah, but I promised not to rant, so suffice it to say it was a pain, but we’ve got it (mostly) taken care of now!

It’s amazing that Bitmap World has been around a year! It truly doesn’t feel that long at all. There was so many plans we had when we started, and we’ve only begun to explore some of them, and there is so much more to come.  We had hoped to start one storyline in particular with this Booyah, but instead decided to do a “birthday” strip with Issue 134. Wanting to do an Easter strip too, we figured we’d just do a few stand-alone strips and will begin the planned storyline next week.

Speaking of the birthday strip, this is again one of those comics that is more real-life than not.  Our kids LOVE bubble wrap and fight over it.  While I have never actually gotten them a roll of it, I’ve considered it.  And I have to admit, I love popping it to.  Why the heck is that so much fun?!  Whatever the reason, it is.  I can totally see my kids having a great time with a big roll of that stuff.  I’m not sure if Jim would be like Harry, thought I’m sure he’d pop a few anyway.

One of the big complaints about some comics in general is that white space is not good.  We have always held that Bitmap World is deliberately minimalistic, since we want to invoke the feelings of the old computers of days past.  Still, adding some additional color is something we have wanted to do, and have made the leap to give many of our “sets” a splash of colors. In all selfishness, we didn’t want to have to go back and color all the past strips, so a convenient little explanation was crafted.

If you visit YouTube, be sure to look up the song, Code Monkey.  It’s a great song written by a talented free-source musician, Jonathan Coultan Jim and I both love that song, particularly since we are the programming types.  I have dreamed of doing a mini-movie to the song using Bitmap World characters.  I may still yet…perhaps when I get more time in the future (whenever that will be).  Still, I wanted to somehow give a nod to the song and did so through this comic.  This is another slice-of-life strip.  My kids can’t stand when we like their stuff, even though we’re the ones that got them interested in certain types of music/movies/shows.

Last, the Easter strip. Honestly, we didn’t plan this one to be a big commentary piece. We were just talking about the Easter Bunny and then the idea was tossed around about the Macrohard bunny being at the mall, and then it went from there.  That said, both of us do find it ridiculous that there has been a trend of companies to “claim” holidays, and even seasons, as their own.  Did you know that Country Time Lemonade, Corona, and Borden’s Ice Cream all claim to be the official sponsors of Summer?  I wonder who they pay royalties to, Mother Nature?

There’s a ton to this Booyah, so remember to check out our News page for details.  We actually had more planned, but our server woes had to come first. The good news is that next month we’ll have a nice Booyah too!

Happy Spring, everyone.  And Merry Easter, too.

In addition to everything else that’s going on, Michelle has come down with strep throat. So you’re getting a rare blog entry from me. When it rains, it pours. Except it’s actually snowing around here.
 
We feel bad when we deliver a comic late. And we feel really bad when a Booyah is late. So, we wanted to put something up.
 
In case you’re wondering, No Rest for the Wicked, MegaTokyo, Absurd Notions, and Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life are four webcomics which are famous for being late or missing updates. Although you probably guessed that already, but mentioning it gives me an excuse to link to all of them.

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).

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.

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!

When looking at Strip 86, some of our readers may think that we chose Harry’s name specifically for this reason/joke. That’s not true. When we were coming up with names for the characters, we tried to give most of them meaningful names. Such as the next door neighbors are a neon green, and all of their names (for the mostpart) are variations of green. And Mr. Smiley being ironically named so because he never smiles. The majority of the other characters have names that are computer terms or related to the computer field. I simply wanted Harry to be different. And Harry seemed like such an ordinary name–honestly Harry Potter never came into my head once when thinking of this. As for Leroy, since he is Harry 2.0 (their equivalent of Jr.) I thought he needed an ordinary, if not seldom used these days name.

It wasn’t until a few weeks into the strip when I was looking on another website and saw the classic “Happy” emoticon that I realized that smilie was Harry! And then of course I noticed the spelling sameness/difference. It was so funny to me, and perhaps a bit profetic. So, I did this strip.

Oh, and I am editing this entry to add that Dott’s story about how she got Cyan’s name really happened for me. I saw Katherine Hepburn in Woman of the Year. Her character’s name was Tess. I just fell in love with the name, and thus that is how my first daughter got her name!

Since our old blog database is not compatible with the new blog system, we have to manually enter all of the old entries. Above this post are all of the newest entries through November 2007. Below are older entries from when we started this blog, moving forward to the current one. Hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll manage to get them all in and the 2 will meet!