Homestuck shirts/prints

(I thought I'd record the explanation of the Homestuck shirts and prints here, for a little bit of posterity and persistence.)

Ok, so this is all a little different from the usual stuff for sale. Instead of just slapping humorous or story-relevant stuff on a shirt (which is all well and fine, don't get me wrong!) I sort of wanted to take the opportunity to let this stuff tell a little story, and add some depth and detail to the Homestuck universe.

There are two character shirts available, John's and Rose's. But the shirts have their own little backstories, which are conveyed in corresponding prints, also for sale.

I think the stories sort of speak for themselves through those graphics, but I'll go ahead and overexplain anyway. John's shirt, which of course appears to be Slimer from Ghostbusters, is actually a depiction of an Asian knock-off of Slimer called the GREEN SLIME GHOST. Rose's shirt was once a depiction of a character from a fake cute cartoon show which I totally made up called "Squiddles!". She then went about defacing this shirt to make it look mean! The shirt itself actually appears to be defaced, with ink missing around the eyes and mouth area (but it's a pretty subtle effect, because the ink color is very close to the shirt color).

The cool thing about Rose's print is you can get either the faux-Lovecraftian defaced version, or the undefaced version (so you can deface it yourself!) Just make sure you select the option you want underneath: "LOVECRAFT MY SQUIDDLE!" if you want the defaced version, or "DON'T LOVECRAFT MY SQUIDDLE!" if you want it unmolested!

So there you have it. The story of the shirts, and some sweet merch all rolled into one.

Fan Art: The Penny Arcade

I did this Penny Arcade fan illustration a while ago, which will appear in their new book coming out (which I can't seem to find a link to any info on, but I guess just keep an eye out for it!)

The fact that this drawing will appear in the book is as good as any reason for you to buy it. And among "any reason" I suppose is the fact that it's a very funny comic that makes you laugh.

Click for full image!



I would like to do some more fan art soon for other comics I like. Though I cannot promise these works will appear in books! They will at least appear in this blog. And soon, in your heart.

Old blog redux: Internet Adventures

I used to do an awful lot of blogging. But those days are behind me.

Or are they??

The answer is yes.

But now and then I get the impulse to dredge up material from those archives, whose web facades and database machinery have long since deteriorated. I have done this a couple times already, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. It's sort of selfish of me to horde those articles, so I have resolved to slay the dragon in my bosom known as Avarice and release this treasure unto you all.

In this case, that treasure was plundered from several adventures I embarked upon through the world of dumb internet banner and popup ads.

The first was An Offer You Can't Refuse, first transcribed in the heady times of 2006.

The second, authored more than a year later, was Come With Me on a Magical Journey Through the Internet!

There's plenty of other stuff I will release later, in lieu of writing actual new content (GOD FORBID). But some of it is pretty exciting. Among the essays are excerpts in which I voice a strong desire to accost host of Food Network's Unwrapped, Marc Summers, with a bright red ping pong paddle. There are also numerous articles about Jimmy Buffet, and how he was almost my father, and how I hate him and his music and everything he stands for, but especially the stupid books he writes sometimes.

And a lot of other stuff. But those will wait for another day.

FLASH IS HARD

I'll explain my thinking on first using Flash, then switching back so fast we all achieved powerful and enchanted new WHIPLASHQUIP: FULL PLATE OF THE NECKBRACE TEMPLARS.

Here is a summary of what actually happened first.

On April 10th, I launched the new story, "Homestuck", made entirely in Flash. My plan was to complete the whole story in Flash, adding interactivity, music, and stuff like that. I completed 8 pages.

This turned out to be way too much work. To put this in perspective, doing these 8 relatively simple pages was MORE DIFFICULT AND TIME CONSUMING THAN ALL THE SEPULCHRITUDE ANIMATIONS COMBINED. I am not joking about that!

I don't know if this says more about my inexperience with Flash, or my proficiency with Photoshop (in which all PS work was done). Probably both. I don't mind dealing with Actionscript, really. It was the whole environment I had trouble with. It felt very unnatural to draw in, and difficult to manage everything spread across multiple time lines and movie clips. Even doing simple things was like pulling teeth.

So in order to prevent the story from grinding to a halt down the road, I just switched back to Photoshop and started over. I kept the Flash version online, and recast it as the "Homestuck BETA", which now appears to have been "released" three days prior to the current version. You could even call this a happy coincidence that appears to have been planned, since it echoes an aspect of the story, in which the beta for a game was released three days prior to his birthday.

But I guess MSPA tends to be full of these sorts of coincidences which make you wonder what was planned and what wasn't. But here I am telling you it wasn't planned! I should really work on being more mysterious.

(You will also note, the age of the character jumped from 10 to 13 in this three day span. This is, for mysterious reasons, because the "magic number" for this story is now 4/13 rather than 4/10.)

Perhaps ironically, the Homestuck beta, which was never supposed to be a beta, genuinely did serve as a beta! I had a chance to test out some things there, and when I realized it wasn't working, I pulled the plug. But I got to establish the Flash page infrastructure on the site, so now I can use Flash pages whenever I want.

And I intend to! Sparingly. Mostly for when I want to include musical elements, which was really my biggest reason for switching to Flash in the first place.

The bottom line is, the adjustment I made now feels right. Overall, I like the look better. And the production is virtually effortless, a process streamlined over hundreds of pages of Problem Sleuth. This will allow me to update with crazy amounts of pages as usual, which I think you will agree is a very important thing. Maybe the most important thing!

Getting ready for the next adventure!

So I guess it's time to get serious about this.

The first matter of business is related to music and sound. As I've hinted at before, I'm going to take a stab at a Flash production this time. This means I'll be incorporating music and sound effects on some of the pages.

Here's the catch: I am not actually a musician and have no particular talent for the craft! My plan is to have the music be reader-created, through a collaborative process. If you are proficient in the field of music or sound, and would like to participate in this process, please email me!*** I will send you the information you need to do this!

*** The response to this was great! Thanks to everyone who contacted me. I'm sure that's enough participants for now, but if this changes, I'll let you all know.

(A note on sound for the next adventure: music/sound will never at any point be critical to following the story! So it's still fine if you check it out at work without the volume or such.)

That's the main thing I wanted to mention. If all goes according to plan, there will be a new story on the front page tomorrow.

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A side note:

Many have wondered if PS will be printed in a book at some point.

I can't say when for sure, but there WILL be a Problem Sleuth book. Probably released in multiple volumes on account of acute hugeness.

Corporate Pranksterism!

I thought about doing something funny on my site for April Fools, but then I didn't because I don't really have time for that nonsense! Instead I thought I'd regurgitate this article from my old blog I posted on 4/1 last year about how big corporations like to play these really limp-wristed April Fools gags on us now.

But then I reread it and thought it was kind of long and boring. It sort of spun out of control at the end into a rant about how stupid "funny commercials" are. I thought I'd post that snippet alone, because man, I really hate funny commercials!

Originally posted: 04-01-08
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I fucking HATE funny commercials. I deeply resent the arena of humor being hijacked in this way. It makes me sort of hate the universe of humor itself, somehow. I almost find it distasteful to participate in the same discipline in which thrives such a loud and broad display of clumsy, floundering suck. I guess this phenomenon has its roots in the coronation of the Superbowl as the great custodian of funny commercials. These commercials are popularly alleged to be as much of a draw to the high ratings event as the game itself, and I guess this just got corporations thinking; why not make every day the Superbowl? And they did. Now every day is like a fresh, highly competitive Superbowl of unfunny bullshit.

I could go on about "funny" commercials and why I hate them forever, but who has the energy for that? (Especially after we've all eaten ourselves into a wheelchair from the customary April Fools feast.) Occasionally there are some genuinely funny commercials. I just don't care. All the unfunny "funny" ones ruin the funny "funny" ones completely. I'm tired of waiting for the shoe to drop in the 30-second bullshit vignette on Glade scented candles. I'm tired of "funny" moments being punctuated by awkward pauses of silence (while we all laugh, I guess. And then meditate on Werther's Originals.) I'm tired of people getting hit in the groin with a can of Green Giant corn, or backed over by a Hertz rental car, and hearing them shout "I'm ok!" in the fading moments. I don't want to laugh, and the attempt to inflict this reaction on me is causing me pain. There's a good chance I am watching the show I'm watching for this very purpose, to be made to laugh. The creators of this show are ostensibly good at causing this reaction. You aren't, Holiday Inn.

It's not that I want commercials to be funnier, up to the standards of the few that are funny. It's that I want them all to stop being funny. Do you remember a time when not every commercial was trying to be a damned Farrelly brothers movie? I do. They just said, "look, we sort of have this product..." and played some catchy music. They were benign. Ignorable. Corporations have forgotten their role in the social order. I don't want them to be cool, or to be my friend, or to make me laugh. Corporations should be stodgy, blunt, and humorless, and if it's not to much to fucking ask, mildly nefarious.

Now we can look forward to them latching on to pranks. Oh boy! And as with "funny" commercials, they will seize them as competitive advantages (re: adhere to them unwaiveringly as competitive upkeep). Thus will begin the kind of obnoxious one-upsmanship we see with funny commercials, with companies trying to be ever edgier, ever more surprising in their April's gotchas. Coke isn't going to take it lying down when Pepsi reveals in April, 2012 that 30% of all Pepsi cans the previous year contained moderate to major amounts of fetal tissue floating in the liquid [PSYCHE]. Let us begin a great arms race. Not one of munitions and warhead stockpiles, but of whoopee cushions and chattering teeth.

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END DIATRIBE

Anyway, I wonder which big company will play pranks on us this year and bag a few chuckles from the dude sitting behind the desk at CNN during a 30 second spot? Last year it was Google uniting with Virgin and pretending to colonize Mars. Hehehehehe! Nice one guys!

Edit: I just went there immediately after I typed that expecting to find some fun stuff, and sure enough, I knew it was a gag before I even clicked it. Damn, I just got SO PUNKED actively seeking out that joke I knew would be there before I went there!

WCWE Addendum

Wait, there are more people I wanted to talk about!

KC Green draws outstanding comics. His myriad of websites are all among my favorites ever. Please go to his site and visit his odd collection of satellite-websites like horribleville and gunshow and please read all of the comics there at once.

I bumped into him on the street the first night of the weekend when everyone was roving around the town under varying magnitudes of inebriation and chilliness. I recognized him and proceeded to orbit about his radiant, molten core of affability, but I did not introduce myself. Later in the evening I mumbled my name, and he recognized it, and offered a hug to celebrate the recognition. It was not because he was inebriated; the beverage in his hand was a root beer you see. Neither was it on account of chilliness. He's just a hella nice guy!

I also met Zach Weiner, which was another high point. He does SMBC, which is a comic that has the uncanny ability to be EXTREMELY FUNNY on EVERY SINGLE OCCASION IT UPDATES, which is JUST ABOUT EVERY DAY. Zach was also all hells of cool and drew me a picture of a llama with a brain in a jar for a head. I'll keep it folded in my breast pocket for the rest of my life, until one day it takes a bullet for me. The very bullet which passes clean through it and into my heart, rendering me not alive anymore.

There was also a gentleman named John Keogh who does a comic called Lucid TV, which I had not read before. I just checked it out and it is quite funny! You should check it out too.

This encounter was precipitated because he said hello and told me he liked my work. Not MSPA in this case, but a comic I used to do a while ago called Humanimals. I'm always impressed when someone has heard of Humanimals before, and I am downright flabbergasted when people tell me they actually like it. Here's a sample if you care to trespass into...

I'll shut my flowery trap this once. It is a comic about nude men with hooves and udders and stuff. They work in an office and they are always happy.