February 2009

Buy the Original

Friday, February 27, 2009

I've been wanting to make my original comic strips available for purchase. My main obstacle to doing this was not having the time. But I finally stayed up late the last couple of nights to make it happen. So now most of my original art is available for purchase. You'll see the little "Buy the Original" option beneath each strip. They're priced "just right" at $45 - a little too cheap for them to be considered valuable, and a little too expensive for my average reader to actually fork over the dough. But at least you've got the option now, right?

Makes a weird gift!

~Jeff

Grounding a Joke in Reality

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Sometimes the basic idea for a joke will pop into my head, such as, "let's make fun of Koff Eepot's baldness by making Nancy a nurse that deals with baldness." It seems like a funny concept, but unless it has some truth to it, some grounding in reality, it probably won't come off well.

I do have some firsthand knowledge of baldness, because I am, in fact, mostly bald. What I don't know is this: what kind of doctor treats baldness? Is it a dermatologist? And do dermatologists have nurses working for them?

So I did what any sensible bald human would do and did some research on Google. It turns out that dermatologists DO, in fact, treat baldness, as much as they treat other diseases of the skin. And there ARE, in fact, dermatology nurses. Who would have known? Well, my sister probably. She's a nurse.

See - webcomics can be fun AND educational!

~Jeff

Over-Acting

Friday, February 13, 2009

Sometimes when I finish inking a comic strip, I take a look at my character's expression and think, "That's not what I was going for - it's too much." In today's strip, for example, I wish I had made Koff Eepot's final expression a little less intense. He's overacting. No doubt he's annoyed, but he's not the kind of guy who likes making eye contact with people, so maybe I went too far with him.

After going through film school, overacting is something I always want to help my actors avoid. In the case of comics, the expression of the characters is completely in my control. But sometimes when I realize a scene has been overplayed, it's too late - he's already inked in. Much like making a movie - if the scene has been captured on film - it's probably going to be in the movie.

~Jeff

Inspired by 24

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I'm a fan of the show 24. I've never seen anything quite like it - the way it builds tension and keeps the excitement in every episode is very impressive to me (and, of course, flat-out entertaining). One of the unique aspects of 24 is the way that the different seasons relate to each other. Rather than picking up where one left off, a year (or even three) may have transpired between the events in the characters' lives between seasons. One of the great advantages of this approach, for the writers, is that it gives them fodder for new stories. The writers aren't bound by the constraints of picking up right where the last season left off. So new stories are much easier to write with new raw material.

If I am even nearly as successful as I hope to be with the commandos comic strip, I'm going to put together a book collection of my strips. I don't know if that will consist of 300 strips or 500 strips, but my goal is to make that book all one cohesive story (or moderately cohesive, at least). Like a season of 24, all of the events of that book would take place within a very finite amount of time, something between one day and a couple of months. (If you remember, I skipped ahead three weeks back in strip #26). Once I've got a book's worth of strips completed, then I am essentially free to come up with whatever new, unrelated story I desire. Even though I love telling the sequential story via the joke-a-day method, at some point I'm going to need something completely fresh to work with... at which point I'll probably just make a new sequential story via the joke-a-day method.

I know I've jumped way ahead of the gun here. I was just excited to come up with a plan. I wonder if I'll actually follow it.

~Jeff

Commandos Reviewed

Friday, February 6, 2009

So this is kind of neat... The Smiley Face Commandos has been reviewed by the guys at TGTwebcomics.com. It's the first time anyone has ever written a review about the commandos and I found it really encouraging. It's pretty interesting to get an outsider's perspective on my work. I hadn't realized how weird some of my stuff is until I read someone else's comments about it. Follow the link and check it out.

~Jeff

RSS Issues

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Due to my technical incompetence (or just ignorance, I suppose), I haven't figured out how to make the RSS work with Microsoft Outlook yet. So even if you sign up for the RSS feed in Outlook, you may not get the updates.

The RSS feed seems to be working in Google Reader. But when you sign up in Google Reader, you just might get all of my tests when I was figuring out how to make it work. I can't make the tests go away. This is a learning process for me, so thanks for putting up with me as I muddle through it.

~Jeff

The Commandos RSS Feed Has Launched

Friday, January 30, 2009

A while back, one of my readers, named Dave, suggested I get an RSS feed for my comic strip. At the time, I didn't know what he was talking about. Even though I'm a website designer and can make some neat-looking stuff on the Internet, the truth is I'm not techno-savvy. I'm slow to catch on to new things. This applies to things both mainstream, like MySpace and Facebook, as well as things that are extremely high geek-factor, like coding languages.

But I did a little research and finally set it up. The Commandos now have an RSS feed. For those of you who don't know what it is, I'll make a lame attempt at explaining it (and then someone smarter than me, like my brother, can tell you later how it really works).

It's essentially an alternative to receiving the new comic strips via e-mail. If you sign up for a feed-reader, such as Google Reader or Microsoft Outlook, you can subscribe to the Commandos feed much like you were subscribing to a magazine. Whenever there's a new one, it comes directly to you, with no effort on your part. If you want to subscribe, click on the nifty RSS button above.

Thanks, for the suggestion, Dave. Hopefully this will make the Commandos accessible to many more people.

~Jeff

Revisionist Cartooning

Monday, January 26, 2009

Back in 2004, George Lucas released the Special Edition of Star Wars: A New Hope. He had his team of smart people get together and clean up the old, clunky special effects and then add in a bunch of wizz-bang CGI to make the world of the movie richer - more creatures, more droids, more amazing landscapes, etc. And then he made a ton of money all over again by releasing the movie AGAIN in theaters. Smart fella.

The move was controversial (though not earth-shattering) because many people believed the original to be a work of genius already. The new effects, in the view of some people, were a distraction from the main story and the great characters which the film already possessed. Nonetheless, it was what Lucas wanted to do. It was his movie and his vision, and so he chose to improve upon his original film.

In fact, he did it with all three of the original Star Wars films. And then Spielberg followed Lucas' lead by retooling bits of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial - changing a little of the dialogue, "improving" E.T.'s mannerisms, and replacing handguns with walkie-talkies.

Now following in the footsteps of these titans of cinema, I decided to change the last name of one of my characters. It's not momentous or exciting. Maybe it's not even worth mentioning. Did anyone really notice besides my brother? In comic strip #102, I changed Bob's name.

Bob's last name used to be Hackemoore. But I never liked that name. Joe's full name was Joseph Platypus and Will's full name was William Chesternut. Weird and memorable. But Hackemoore? I didn't like it, so I changed it to a name with more personal meaning: Robert Q. Witt. Bob is now named after a friend of mine - it's not exactly his name, but it's pretty close.

As a result of this decision, I had to go back to an old strip (#65) and change it out. Commandos history has been forever altered. And the galaxy hangs in the balance.

~Jeff

The In-Joke

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Today's joke probably isn't very funny unless you've been reading the comic strip for a while, because it references an old joke in order to get the laughs (which it may or may not do effectively). The most obvious pitfall of the in-joke is the fact that a new reader probably won't think it's funny at all.

But at least it moves the story forward, right? This is my excuse for all the lame jokes in my comic strip.

I've always thought that both telling a funny joke in every strip and also moving the story forward was a big challenge. Sometimes I'm only really effective in one or the other. I don't mind if it's funny, but doesn't move the story forward. But I DO mind if it moves the story forward and just isn't funny.

So hopefully a few of you chuckled today.

~Jeff

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