New Episode: Better with age...kinda..

PS: We had the battle of the bands last friday. We played well, but lost anyway. It doesn't matter, as we had a good time and the crowd loved us. For a complete run down listen to this:
http://web.mac.com/projectdoa/Site/Podcast/Entries/2008/3/12_Plot_Device.html

In other news, I finished my Afterworks story, which was an incredible amount of work. Between that, band practice and actual work, I had little time for the strip. That's about to change, however. I will be gearing up to produce the strip 3 times a week, monday, wednesday and friday, or possibly saturday. The other news is that I am looking into moving the strip to a new site that actuall supports webcomics. Maybe a Wordpress?comicpress thing. I want the strip to be more accessible to new readers and one way to do this is to finally move to a real site with archives and an intro page and hell, maybe even a forum and a store!!
It's time to take this thing to the next level. I hope you all will come along for the ride...and bring 10 friends each with you. Any advice as to how to achieve the above is totally welcome.
Thanks everyone!
-John

Comments

[Ben Williams]

Wow, really nice John! This has gotta be the cleanest strip you've ever done! Your choice of font is spot on and I definitely think it improves the strip. I'm guessin' it makes things easier for you too.

[Gareth]

The plot thickens! Is that a tree Fat Future Loopus is a knocking on? Who lives in a tree eh? Can't wait to find out! Keep it up John.

[John]

Thanks Ben! It is easier on me and easier on the reader, as they don't have to try to decipher the scribblings I call "lettering".
As for the rest of the strip, I actually inked this one twice.
I'll explain:
I pencilled it, and then went to find my beloved Kuretake. It was no where to be found. I went to my trusty spare. It was all dried up and the nib was hopelessly clogged. No worries, I thought, I'll just use this nifty Copic brush pen I bought 2 years ago and never really used seriously before. So I did. The line quality was fine, but all of the thicks and thins were too even. I hated the way it looked. It's unfair to completly blame the pen, it's probably more of my attitude while using it. So, I decided to tape a piece of vellum tracing paper over it and re-ink it using a fresh Kuretake I keep in my desk for just such an emergency. When I got to my desk, my eyes settled on a jar of brushes I keep to the side, specifically, a Windsor Newton series 7 #1. "What the hell" I said and grabbed the brush. I gotta say, I loved it. Nothing beats a genuine sable brush for line quality. Then, I just scanned the tracing paper, comped it onto my brand new Comic template I made and bam! I had a Professional looking strip! Only took me 2 years to achieve!
Hey Gareth! Yes, that is a tree. Most of the characters in the strip live in "tree houses", like Hobbits or the Keebler elves. This is one of the several things I've lifted from "Pogo" and "Winnie the Pooh". However, I think the only other time I showed someone living in a tree-house was about 2 years ago when Loopus goes to Chippy's house to show him the nifty "dildo" he found in the ruins of the Strip club. I think Carl and Judy are the only ones who live in a proper house. I'll try to make that clearer in the future....which is where you live Gareth!!!

[Mark Kennedy]

Great strip John! Sorry to hear you guys didn't win the battle of the Bands...is that the Carl Barks font???

[John]

Thanks Mark!
Yes that is the Carl Barks font. I looked around online for free fonts and stumbled upon this one and I liked it. Besides, I get a kind of perverse sense of glee from seeing the word "Fuck" in this font. I used it in the Afterworks story and decided to use it for the strip.
About the Battle of the Bands thing, it's cool. One of the celebrity judges, a certain Jeff Watson, formerly of Night Ranger (Sister Christian, You can still Rock in America) said we were clearly better in terms of musicianship and song choice, but the animator's light show (!) won a few of the other judges over. We only lost by 10 points. So I'm cool with it.
I should also mention that none of us on the Story side had ever played in front of people before (well, except Mark) and I hadn't so much as touched a bass in 14 years. I'm pretty proud of how well we did.

[Larry Levine]

Hi John, The new strip is excellent--I love your brush line! Did you pencil this with a #2 Ticonderoga? I would offer more praises but I'm sick with the flu & gotta get back to bed.

[Michael J. Ruocco]

Hey John, great strip this week! Obese Loopus amuses me very much. I'm anxious to see who futurefat-Loopus is talkin' to (a certain little fluffy long-eared woodland creature, perhaps?). & more SPW (strips-per-week) would be great, but if you do, don't push yourself too hard on getting strips done in time. Alternate once in a while to help soften the workload as much as you can.

I like the idea of putting the strip onto a "web-comic" site. It'll definitely bring in some eager new readers. So then, will this site be like the old Phloo! site, almost like a seperate backup archive of the strip, or will you delete it entirely?

[mark kennedy]

I like seeing swear words in the Carl Barks font too. I checked out free fonts too, for a certain personal project. My favorite free fonts are at blambot.com if you haven't seen those yet!

[John]

Hey Larry! Thank you sir! I owe my inking style to two people. The first is Walt Kelly, who I've studied all my life and the second is Chris Sanders, who I watched ink hundreds of drawings back when we worked together at Disney. I didn't have any Ticonderoga's laying about so I used a Papermate LOGO mechanical pencil. I think the lead is an HB. It's size 7mm, that's all I know.
Feel better sir!
Michael! Thanks! I'll reveal who FF-Loopus is talking to fairly soon. Stay tuned.
As for the future of this particular site after I get the other one up, well, this one will go away and I will have an archive on the new one, just like a real live webcomic. You'll see. It'll be neat.
Hey Mark! Will we eventually see this project?

[Jeff Pidgeon]

Hey, John!
I stopped by Dr. Comics & Mr. Games last night, and they just got a new book - "How To Make Webcomics". Since I'm a mega-newbie, I figured it couldn't hurt, especially since Scott Kurtz is one of the contributors. You can borrow my copy after I'm done if you want!
Jeff

[John]

Cool! I've been waiting for that book for a month now!
The impetus for this coming move to a dedicated site was the "Webcomics Weekly" podcast that the authors of the book produce.
I think I'll go BUY a copy at lunch!
Thanks for the tip Jeff!

[Larry Levine]

Kelly & Sanders are great inspirations and your style equally soars to the highest level of excellence! What I love about your ink line is that it breaths life into both the characters & their surroundings the way Kelly did with Pogo. Anyway, back to my sickbed..
PS: Which site did you find the free fonts?

[John]

You are too kind, Larry. There is no way I'll ever be either Kelly's or Chris's equal, but it gives me something to shoot for.
I always loved that Kelly used the same brush on the backgrounds as he did on the characters. It unified everything, and gave everything character.
Take care of yourself!
And here's where I found that font:

http://www.donald.org/barks/font/

Have fun!

[Lee-Roy]

Wow, three times a week? Ambitious! Well, we will reap the rewards. Too bad you guys didn't win the battle, but it sounds like loads of fun. I've been getting the urge to rock, myself. I played bass in High School, but never got that good at it. Started playing drums several years back and got into it, but haven't had access to a kit in a good while now. Itching!

Congrats on finishing the Afterworks project. I will look forward to seeing that one and will also look forward to less torturous cliffhangers with Chippy and Loopus.

New site idea sounds cool, but when you archive it and ditch this old site, will there be some way for you to save all of our wonderful comments, as well? I mean, I think we should all go down in history as being your original real hardcore supporters and way cooler than all those future noobs. ;)

[John]

Hmmm, there must be someway to save the comments. I'll look into it. I don't want to lose them either. There is a lot of fun stuff in the comments section. Odd discussions about the proper use of the word "taint", discussions about process and writing and well as various philosophies regarding humor, and of course, Handel's helpful critiques and reactionary ramblings. Love that Handel!