Today’s comic is a slice-of-life on 2 levels. First of all, it’s a small dedication to our dog, Angel. If you read the news, a week ago she was clipped by a car (thankfully not hit dead-on, but sideswiped). She ended up with a few broken bones in her pelvis, but nothing serious. Painful, but nothing that will affect her lifelong. The worst the vet said would happen is that she may walk with a limp, but she has a good chance of a full recovery. She is such a trooper and it already trying to run around. We’re making sure she is not over-doing it, but it is so encouraging to see this little dog’s spirit and spunk! A thanks for the well-wishes from several of our fans.

Our dog is such a bright spot in our family, and there are times when the people just cannot console a child, but one of our animals can. We have cats too, but there is nothing quite like a dog to warm the heart of a child. Our kids call Angel their “little sister,” so that tells you how they feel about her. This past week was particularly hard in our house as the kids grappled with the thought of losing their dog. Even though she was not critically injured, it was a scary time, and our kids needed a bit more TLC to deal with it. Having the kids want the dog next to them to go to sleep is a regular occurrence in our house, and we wanted to showcase that in the strip.

Mike is pretty cranky in this issue, and his behavior is very much like our youngest, Violet. Our 2 year old has a fierce temper, and when she is tired, watch out! Nothing will console her, yet she just feels like she needs something. It can be frustrating as she screams “no” and slaps away all of our offerings of comfort. The dog will work to calm her on occasion, but honestly there are often moments nothing works. Usually she will simply find a place to lay down and go to sleep on her own–she is one of those children who really needs to be left alone in order to relax enough to take a nap.

On a side note, I have to admit that our 2 most explosive personalities kids-wise are Monty and Violet. I have to wonder if there is something to the fact that they both were born on the 4th of July (yes, both kids were born on 7/4, 4 years apart).

I do want to note, just in case anyone gets upset, I am not an advocate of “cry it out.” That is the method of putting a kid in their bed to go to sleep and leaving them alone in their room until they do. I know people who use it and swear by it, and I respect that. We are more inclined to have baby in our room with us, or sit with our kids until they go to sleep. Despite common fears that such method will not teach your kids to go to sleep on their own, I can safely reassure that our older ones have no issues with falling to sleep by themselves. We tried CIO years ago with our first and didn’t have the heart to do it. Anyhow, I do believe there is a time, though, that kids are just so overtired, they need a few minutes alone to relax. With Violet, typically she is in the same room as us and we simply ignore her. She usually comes around and calms down on her own, or she falls asleep. I don’t have any problems leaving a kid for 5-10 minutes to get a break. However, any longer and I usually have to go in and try something else. Okay, end of explanation.

We got a dog about the same time (real-life time) as the Pixels did. The Pixels’ dog looks a lot like ours, too. The breed is a “Puggle” — half Pug, half Beagle. They’re pack dogs, which is good considering our house. She likes to be with other people, even at night. She’ll go to bed with me and Michelle, and she’ll be with us in the morning, so we always assumed she spent the night in our bed. Until one morning we had to get up extremely early, and discovered the dog would make her rounds — she would sleep for a while next to each of the children.

So, this is another cute slice-of-life comic we couldn’t resist doing.

Remember I mentioned trying to fit in some reference to Jim cleaning out that house? Well, today’s comic Issue 173 was it. Well, to a degree. This comic is one of those true-slice-of-our-lives strips. When Jim was cleaning out that house, the woman’s pantry was filled with daddy long legs. In his own words: “I didn’t know they could get so big!” Most of our kids hate bugs and totally freak at the sight. That is, except Paige. She’s Paige the fearless, and will stomp bugs, go into a dark room alone to turn on the light, and a myriad of other “brave” things. It’s a bit comical to see our 12 year old run into room to grab Paige so she can squish a bug somewhere else in the house. I have to admit, even though I have to roll my eyes at my older ones being such “babies”, it’s quite hysterical to see this little 4-year old go to town on a bug. Paige (effectionatly called Ram-Paige at times because of her ability to trash a clean room in 10 second)–the courageous vanquisher of spiders and all things ick!

I don’t know if you would call it irony or tempting fate. When we did the comic last week about Leroy getting sick on the carnival ride, the punchline was Dott commenting that she was happy she didn’t have to clean it up. Well, I think any parent of a small child can appreciate that. Cleaning up messes like that is no fun, particularly at 2 a.m.–though honestly at any time of the day, it’s pretty ick.

The very next day, a stomach bug hit our house, and it entailed quite a few messes that needed to be cleaned up. I laughed to Jim and told him we jinxed ourselves with that comic. He got a laugh out of that.

I was the last to get hit yesterday, and while I had most of the art done on the comic, I could not stay sitting up at the computer long enough to finish it. I did manage to get it done very late, and left the lettering to Jim. Anyhow,we knew we wanted something funny for the Mayor’s float, and this joke was totally inspired.

I’m feeling a little better now, though I’m not up to snuff. Hoping to be in the next day or so. Until then, the forums are still down. They are on our high-priority list, and we hope to have them up–as well as announce the winner of our contest–soon.

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.

Of course, I sound like such a broken record about an update (you see I even created a category in this blog for it). But swear on a stack of Batman comics, things have been nuts!

First of all, I have to ask a question. If you have a virus, a nasty virus, but your computer is running okay, do you remove it? My first answer would have been yes, that is until after yesterday. As the tech at my work installed the updated anti-virus and did his magic to fix my computer up, inside little gremlins were doing their duty. Needless to say, after 2 hours of “fixing” my computer was far worse off than it had been before. I was there until 9:00 last night and did not want to even look at computers–even for the comics–when I got home.

Now, most people would say, “So what, don’t you have a home computer? You could have worked on it at home sometimes.” Sure do, and I do most of my art on that normally. Problem is, this particularly line of strips I did at work. My office computer is limping along, but it will not allow me to open certain folders and programs, including my graphics package. So, I’m stuck…for now. I did manage to grab certain files and will be bringing them home, but that is going to delay me until this evening.

Now, I should note the reason I’m not up on this is because this strip diversion into Cosmic Dungeon was not planned. We wanted a little padding out of some other storylines, and came up with this little sidetrack. So, I have been doing it on the fly. I probably should have just stuck with the other stuff, since most of that is done. Ugh.

So, thanks for the patience. I do feel better offering you our amusing fillers. The good news is they have earmarked me to get a new machine at work. Just wish it didn’t take something like this to get me there.

No, no server issues.  No dramatic power outages (we did have that the other night, but not last night).  No other acts of God.  I fell asleep.  Yep.  After a couple of days of exhausting work at my day-job and on one of my other sites, I told myself I would take a short nap and then put up the comic.  Funny, Jim laid down next to me to do the same thing.  We woke up this morning.

Upside?  We feel pretty good.  Still overly busy, but sleep is a good thing.  So is getting the comic up on time.  Perhaps next time we’ll manage both.

Sorry…

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.

My friend, Anne, has a popular Blog. It’s simply called, “Cooking with Anne.” From the first time I heard that, I thought it sounded like a good title for a cooking show. That was what spurred the idea of making it a show in the Bitmapworld universe. I ran the idea past Anne some time ago, and she graciously gave me the green-light to go for it. Even though I toyed around with this concept months ago, today’s comic (Issue 133) is the actual strip I had in mind from day one. Anne is very smart and sassy, and I knew that would be reflected in her BMW alter-ego. I just thought the idea of this total chauvenist coming on her show and trying to take over was hysterical. Of course, I immediately knew how she would end up handling him. Her ending monologue, however, came to me as I was doing the actual strip, and I totally love it!

On a somewhat-related note, there was a webcomic that was/is called “Cooking with Anne,” done by Ben Bittner. It’s a short piece and is not your conventional cooking-show type take on the title. When Anne was first starting out, she wanted the URL, but Ben had it for his strip. That comic has not been updated in a while, and Ben no longer kept the name, and after switching hands a couple of times, Anne just got the domain for herself recently.

If you are looking for some great cooking, be sure to check out Anne’s blog. It’s a great read, and the recipes are soooo good. Oh, and if you were wondering why the strip has been running late lately (aside from our server woes), you can look at Anne’s site design, which was done by the BMW team (Jim and me under our Mirz-Jiles moniker). We’ve been doing web-work to make extra money while Jim is still out of job.