It’s been a while since I’ve done some real commentary on the actual strips, so I’ll play catch-up now!

Issue 177 - The Cosmic Dungeon storyline featuring Max Madigan was really fun to do.This was actually inspired by my brother. He is one of those people who is a video game master. And, no, this is not an exaggeration. He is on the top-10 best list of worldwide players in several games. In fact, he has been approached to game professionally and in tournaments, but has turned down the offer because he has a career and a girlfriend and wants to focus on a normal life. Nevertheless, it’s still pretty amazing watching him. Even when he was a kid, he would play for days until he mastered every little nook and cranny of a game. Now, as an adult, he can master most games in hours. He can whomp about anyone on any game, to the point people don’t even dare challenge him! My kids beg him to come over to unlock all the secret characters and stuff they can’t get to. All of that said, with his computer prowess comes a huge ego. He’ll admit it himself. He was one of the top WoW players on his server, and everone hated him for it. Not because he was so good, but because he made sure everyone knew he was a mini-God. So, when the idea came up about the Bitmap World kids being bullied in CC, we thought that a character based on my brother would be appropriate. And it only seemed appropriate to pit him against the other character in the game with as big an ego…Dren! So, while you may think this is an exaggeration, it really isn’t. Though, I think that most people who have played any type of MMPORPG has run into someone like my brother. Maybe you’ve even run into my brother! With respect to the storyline in general, it was oogles of fun to do. There are tons of references to pop culture and stuff in the storyline. You can read about that in the Laugh Olympics section of our forum, or in the soon-to-be-up Wiki.

Issue 191 - The next storyline was the Rasterman/Mayor plotline. I do really love the whole Rasterman aspect to BMW, but that is because Jim and I are incurable superhero geeks. Batman is my hero of choice, but I pretty much love them all. It really has been huge fun creating our own hero and history. The only thing that I think we struggle with is that much of the rest of the strip is light and fluffy. Even though it’s parody and funny, the Rasterman stuff is more intense, simply because it has to be given the nature of crime and justice. So, it takes a little more work to transition from one element (drama) to another (comedy). I think we’re doing okay with that, but it does take a lot of effort on our part, and it was not something we expected when creating the comic.

Issue 194 - The press conference (http://www.bitmapworld.com/smcomic.cgi?a=194 Issue 194) always makes me laugh. I love when the policeman is pushing the reporters out the door. We’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat it for good measure. The mayor really has become one of our favorite characters to write for, and the whole subplot with him has certainly made the strip both funnier and more intriguing.

Issue 196 is a little homage to the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeves. I do like the idea of a superhero having to do all of these little “rescues” and being so bogged down by that he can’t go after the real crime. A cat in the tree seems to be an epitome of that. Speaking of which, it wasn’t until recently that I learned why cats get stuck in trees. Here’s a neat informative page that gives a little more info on it for the curious (answer is further down the page).

Issue 197 - Yes, it’s ME in a cameo here! I actually had a little thing where I did not want to put myself in the comic (even though Tess and Jim’s smilies have appeared in there). But when I was trying to come up with a newscaster, my smiley fit. So, I guess I’m part of the t.v. news team! Doh!

Issue 198 - Scrubbing Saturday is actually an event in our house, and has been for years. My kids groan, but we do manage to get the house tidy then. I can’t say I have any catchy phrases like Dott, but hers is pretty good. And I will be embarrassed to admit I haven’t defragmented one of my computers in years! That little joke is one of my favorites. Of course, I have to question, how many of our fans thought that was a stand-alone comic and didn’t think it was the start of a new storyline?

On some technical points, I am happy to say that as I reported a few weeks back, I am using PSP7 and it has made the comic-doing MUCH faster. Well, actually just the speech bubbles, but I’m not complaining. That font-maker program we bought months ago is still dusty on the shelf…er, hard drive. Perhaps when we finally get it installed and learn how to use the dern thing, that will help things go quicker too.

It is exciting to be at strip 200. Again, this is not the most popular strip in the world, but it does have a small but nice following. We are very appreciative of the support all of our fans have given us over the past couple of years.

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.

Whatever you do, don’t ask me about my computer. I might just tell you, and the strip’s up late already. Just suffice it to say I haven’t gotten home earlier than 9:00 all week and I’m less than a happy camper. Tonight looks about that same. At the very least, I can say I got the comic up!

In today’s strip, we get the first glimpse inside the K’s house. For reference, this is Tooey’s room. Of course, I had to go about “building the set” as Jim calls it, and that took a while. I get picky about these things I want them to look a certain way, but know my limitations with the pixel art and our style in this comic. Anyhow, I wanted something a tad nicer than Leroy’s room, considering the K kids’s father is a politician and would be a little more well-off.

Oh, those poor kids. I have to admit, I have been the “mean ol’ mom” on more than one occasion. As with most families, our kids play video games, and even did a short stint on WoW. Most of the time they are good about getting off when I ask. But, on the times they don’t, I have been known to pull the plug mid-game to teach them a lesson. I do admit, most of the time I wait until a lull in the action, and sometimes I’m generous and even let them go quickly save their game first. But, there have been a couple of heated battles with bosses which I’ve interrupted. Though, truthfully the BMW kids handled it a wee bit better than our kids. There is usually a lot of screaming and crying and lamenting when the switch goes unexpectedly off here!

Anyhow, I enjoyed this little detour into the game, and I’m also happy to get back on track on other storylines. Be sure to check in tomorrow.

Another series of Cosmic Dungeon strips. I thing I’ve said it before, but I both loving and hate doing those strips! I love them because they are so much fun, and I think the story is great. RPGs and MMPORPGs have been a part of our lives for so many years, it’s really exciting to draw upon that experience for this storyline. The reason I hate these strips is that they require so much more work than the regular strips. Truly, a price for affect.

We hadn’t planned to go back to CD so soon. We were going to come off of the monkey storyline and were going to jump back into one of the other ongoing plots. But, even with the couple of filler strips we had, we decided we wanted to pad things out a bit more in the pacing department. Since we’ve had quite a few fans tell us how much they love the Cosmic Dungeon strips, it seemed natural to go back sooner than later.

I personally hit a big writer’s block when scripting these newest 3. I knew what they were going to be about, but the dialogue just kept escaping me. I was actually getting worried that we’d have a series of stinkers, which I really didn’t want. Then, while walking to the commuter train on Wednesday night, inspiration hit. There is often a lot of musing among webcomic writers about where and how ideas hit. In this case, there was no inspiration, but rather working through the story over and over, and on the 20th time, an element coming to me that hadn’t before. Once that happened, the words came naturally. The added plus was that the idea blossomed into something I’m very excited about.

For those wondering about the other story arcs, be assured, it’s coming. We’ll be in CD a few more strips, and then we move on. Be assured, answers always come. All in good time…and pacing.

Today’s strip (Issue 87) looks like a filler strip. Well, it is and it isn’t. See, we had come up with this idea a while back, and planned to run it at a future date. But over the weekend, a lot of the time we were planning on devoting to creating comics ended up being used for fighting off hackers. Not quite how we like spending our Saturday night.

This strip was actually inspired by watching our kids play a “family-friendly” online game. It was notorious for hanging on the initial load if too many people were accessing it. It was funny hearing some of the comments they would make waiting for the program to pop up, and how they occupied their time before it actually loaded. We thought it would be an amusing addition to the Cosmic Dungeon storyline, considering many online gamers have encountered this type of thing and can relate. As it goes now, it was a quick and easy filler, but very legitimately acts a segue back into Cosmic Dungeon, which we haven’t seen since strip 66.

Note, I DID edit/update this blog entry a bit, because Michelle said the first version was kinda sparce. She’s always getting on me for not making more entries here. Sorry.