Try a Little Renderness

So we're definitely not the first folks to comment on the issue of over-rendered anatomy with a limited polygon budget but that doesn't stop it from being funny. The fact that Gamebryo is currently being used as the engine for Warhammer Online doesn't mean that some truly ancient build out there wouldn't be licensed for a lower-budget MMO.

If you're not into the whole Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game genre, the more generic MMO (minus the RPG) concept is being deployed on a massive scale across intellectual properties that don't necessarily warrant it. Hello Kitty has one for Heaven's sake. Once Blizzard proved you can basically take a built-in audience and print money with a subscription model and regular updates to an elaborate chat program, well I guess everyone figured it was time to jump on that digital bandwagon. God help us all if the makers of American Pie actually tried this...

Mariah Carey-oke

It happens to the best of us. We think we've got a little bit of privacy in our workplace, in our homes, in our cars, but inevitably we find that privacy shattered at the worst time possible... ...while singing "Fantasy" by Mariah Carey.

Man, this comic honestly took the longest of any of them so far because I'm introducing 2 new characters and trying to decide best how their interaction will dictate the way that their characters are presented. I am of course putting WAY too much pressure on a single strip but I wanted to get the tone of it just right. It is now 1 am and my ability to rationalize this issue is weakening rapidly so I might as well post what I've got and call it a night. I know it is a week late but I hope to do better next time. We'll get back to the dirty jokes soon enough, don't you worry.

~Russell

No Comic This Week

Wow. how mopey can I get? I had an idea for a strip for this week (several, actually) but when I sat down to draw it, two nights in a row, I found I had crap for motivation and crappier crap for output. I let it slip this week because I figured I could get away with having my cake and eating it too on Wednesday with some Frolf but I got home at 9pm and by then, I was in "coast to bed" mode. I find myself in similar straits tonight without the benefit of something to build off of from yesterday.

This means that you, both of you, the loyal readers are now screwed out of a whole week's worth of pent-up anticipation. And for that I am deeply sorry. To both of you. Support system or not, I need to be able to make a strip happen without getting distracted. That didn't happen this week. See you next week.

I can has hygiene?

I swear this is the last "lolcats" picture I make. Really. Okay so let's just admit that it is a dirty little secret of mine that I enjoy Icanhascheezburger.com for reasons I can't explain. Let's just say that bad grammar and cute pictures of kittens doing mundane things somehow appeal to me. It makes me wonder sometimes whether that means years of watching cable television (especially recently) has lowered my taste in humor and entertainment enough to make such a genre even palatable in the first place.

As my cohort can confirm though, I am easily amused. Perhaps a little TOO easily amused. Combine this with a fear of letting my cat anywhere near my bathroom lest it abuse my dental maintenance tools in any way, and well, this strip has way WAY too much of myself in it...

Mono-x-treme

So last week was a bit of a departure from the style that is developing for this strip and what I realized afterwards was that it greatly distracts from the "comic strip" feel we were working on, I think to the detriment of our efforts.

This week we're back not only to the strip format and simple line-art style but also the "punchline" writing and character introductions. That's right, Occam is a platypus and a new character in the strip. His namesake is actually "Occam's Razor", the philosophical notion that the simplest answer is often the correct one. As a platypus he embodies a kind of genetic question that utterly lacks any simple answers.

Rock Hero rhymes with...

Don't get us wrong, we love us some Rock Band. We love us some Guitar Hero. We're very excited about all the new features headed towards us from both. What we fear is the over-commercialization of some of the best rock-and-roll ever recorded for the sake of selling a game and keeping the genre fresh after we've all had our billionth Guitar Hero or Rock Band party.

Keep in mind please that this post and comic are the product of two men who conspired to include Rock Band at a wedding reception. The result was more rad than wedding receptions are normally allowed to be. We'd still love the genre to grow and for the game companies to be as innovative as their business managers allow, but whatever you do, please leave the song mashups to the likes of DJ Dangermouse and not John Riccitiello from EA. Please.

I'm only wearing a sock while writing this.

Here at FoF headquarters, we are both rhythm game junkies. In our spare time between extreme drawing sessions, we like to throw down in GH/RB.

This strip actually went through a few permutations before accidentally landing on the 9-lb hammer that lays before you. We were originally going to poke fun at the growing, ganglionic tendrils of the Rock Band accessory system. Imagine a device that tossed bras at you whenever you hit a max bonus, or as an alternative to star power: "cocaine power."

We also wanted to make fun of GH: Aerosmith. There's nothing wrong with Aerosmith, but there are only so many big name acts that can warrant their own game. Fear the day when GH: Winger is released.

...we'd probably play it anyway...

iPhoney Balogna

So alot of you are probably reading this fully aware of the Cult of Mac (not just the eponymous blog, but the actual cult). Who am I kidding, there aren't alot of you reading this in the first place. But if anyone out there actually DOES read this, you'll be likely aware of the iPhone launch itself. Chris and I decided to mock the hype and the fanboyism that is associated with the launch of virtually every new product from Apple Inc. We might, perhaps, maybe a little bit suffer from what you might exaggeratedly call "jealousy." It is possible, but I admit nothing, that we actually both desperately want a 3G iPhone.

Making fun of movies we've not yet seen...

Well, now we've done it. We've delved into the realm of mocking movies we haven't seen yet. As if that wasn't enough, we're now adding frightening new phrases to our modern lexicon. For this crime, we should at least be treated to a showing of WALL-E, Pixar's newest offering, so that we may learn the error in our judgment; I'm pretty sure the lesson would be strongest if that showing were offered for free. Yeah.

Like usual, the normal apologies are in order for desecrating the hallowed icons of Sci-Fi robotics. But hey, at least I got the strip up early, so there is that.

George Carlin: Dead and @$%*ing Gone.

George Carlin was known for many things. Those of us in the Bill -n- Ted's Excellent Adventure generation likely are unaware of his fight with censorship. But like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, he was among the pioneers of using profanity in his comedy act. Unlike his other contemporaries, he was philosophical about it, ultimately coming up with his routine, "7 words you can't say on television."

As a form of tribute to the humor and philosophy of George Carlin, we've chosen to memorialize the "...words you can't say..." routine one last time. We'll miss you, George.

Bulwer-Lyttony of puns

So I'm clearly very attracted to terrible puns. I wouldn't call it an "unhealthy" preoccupation because I'm not so sure there is the counterpart "healthy" preoccupation. This contest, in case you've never heard of it, is all about writing the most awful opening sentence to an imaginary novel.

Here's the website.

One of the things I like best about their judging of the contest is their habit of splitting the entries into categories such as "Purple Prose", "Romance", "Westerns", "Sci-Fi", and "Vile Puns", just to name a few. This helps me locate the entries most likely to make me laugh embarrassingly out loud.


In completely different news, you may notice that this strip has a gmail address associated with it that is different from this blogger account's address. Well, you've stumbled across the not-so-secret project I'm working on: a WEBCOMIC! Yes, that's right, I'm making a first attempt into building a webcomic. I'm hoping to have a good amount of strips prepared before actually launching the site. I haven't even bought a domain or hosting yet. These are all things I hope to do soon though and for now you'll just have to speculate as to the rest of the details. As I experiment with things like font-size, art styles, and line quality, I'll post the comics here for your viewing pleasure.

Characters, plotlines, artwork and other information should be coming soon, especially once I have the site up and the blog moved to that site from here. I'll maintain this as a sketch-blog for materials that don't really work well with the comic (at least according to my plan anyway). Check back at least every week for updates!

Pandoramoneum

So it turns out that our friends at Pandora.com are under the capricious and trembling thumb of the RIAA forcing them to gimp the user experience of an "on-demand" radio channel. Maybe it helps them sleep at night knowing that while they can't STOP people from using the internet to listen to the music they actually want (nor should they), they can at least force the inconvenience of unwanted music upon the hapless internet radio listener.

The dumb thing is nobody with an internet connection and half a brain is at all a captive audience. The last thing a media provider should do is make it difficult for people to access the products they want. But in the RIAA's twisted logic, they're not technically giving the music away for free if they can exercise at least some modicum of control over the pipe. Skip those tracks too many times and uh oh, you can no longer click the button.

Listen, RIAA, just because you work with and perhaps pay a salary to Satan, doesn't mean he isn't out to destroy your happiness too.

It just boggles my mind how a decision to produce this crappy user experience came about...

Carcissism

I think there is a gaping hole in the English language where excessive love of one's personal property quietly resides unnamed. Well not anymore! We've all seen these people and their precious automobiles. We're inundated with commercials showing smiling faces on actors and actresses paid to portray this. I'm talking about vehicular vanity, automobile affinity, yes even Carcissism.

And like vanity elsewhere, we're told to be proud of ourselves because of who we are on the inside while at the same time we esteem the outwardly beautiful people too highly. The same is clearly true for our cars. The man in the Corvette isn't driving a vehicle, he's driving a statement about himself. The woman in the mustang isn't driving a grocery getter, she's driving an attention getter. We tolerate to some extent the vain behavior of pretty people but in the same way that we ignore the plain and ordinary faces randomly on the street, we overlook the sedan, the station wagon and yes, the minivan. Well I'm here to tell you to ignore the small voices of superficial people and allow yourselves a little pride of your own. It is your world, however filled with soccer practices and band trips. Relax and take no heed of the roads crowded with sports cars and ostentatious SUVs, there will always be room on the road for your minivan(-ity).

Wouldn't you know it...

I get all jazzed for a comic idea today at work and then a few things happen:

• work goes 2 hours late
• fruitless attempt to send care packages wastes another hour
• my video card does a great job of making me think my $300.00+ monitor is going out on me and rather than test this theory with my $75 15" lcd monitor, I go and take the old 21" CRT beast to the dumpster (though I didn't throw it in, someone else did that for me before I could bring it back inside and salvage a huge cost)
• thus I discover I need to replace my video card which can't handle playing games anymore and my cheap monitor can't be trusted with color accuracy

Note to self: no rash decisions when it comes to computer maintenance and repair. So this weekend I'll probably be off spending anywhere between $125 to $350 replacing at least my video card and possibly my monitor as well.

"Why not do the comic anyway," you may ask.
"Because it is really hard to drop from 21" to 15" and from over 1600x1200 screen resoluton to 1024x768 and still get work done the same," I may sharply retort. I'm hoping to catch a deal on a nice 19" monitor if possible. Unlikely scenario though it may be, I just don't feel comfortable with anything smaller.

Shocking news

This might come as a shock to you, but it isn't easy being funny when you really get distracted by the wealth of time-wasting options available to middle-class Americans, particularly those of the nerdier persuasions who are into this newfangled thing called "the Internet". Take the image added to this post for instance. Is it funny? I thought so at the time and even forced my poor fiancee to take the picture right there in Ikea when the joke happened. She didn't laugh even for a second. Obviously I crack me up so I have to use other people as a barometer for what is worth pursuing as a joke. Therein lies the rub. If you're like me, living in your own apartment, by yourself, with a "serious" job and little social life outside of the weekends, you've got a real problem finding a reliable barometer for your jokes.

With this in mind, the comics that will be posted weekly here are likely to be simple one-panel gags (although hopefully better than the one in the picture). It really has been a long time since I've drawn anything with the intent of being funny. Oh well, if this comics thing doesn't work out for me, I've still got my "serious" job and the ability to hold up 110 lbs with my, well, you know...

Welcome to the once-per-week

So here we are, at the beginning of another year and here I am nearing my 10-year reunion from North Kitsap High School (in far away Poulsbo, Washington). It is a fine time to reflect upon where I thought I'd really be in the intervening years. I think about my plans for career, my ideas for what I'd be doing for fun, with whom I'd be spending my time, and all those things that you think you've got such big plans for when really you have no clue. I once dreamt of being a cartoonist but my cynical nature and distaste for rejection and effort just combined to make that dream impossible. I've done everything but spend any effort realizing it save for a short-lived strip here and there under different titles and with different themes.

I've started thinking that it is about time for me to at least make an effort to do artwork again and stop all the whining and excuse-making. This is not some grand scheme, however. This is my welcome to the once-per-week. Once per week, I'll be uploading a new comic and hopefully learn more about how this hobby can find its place in my life again. I'll be learning how to build an audience, create characters, write story lines, and hopefully have a helluva lot of fun along the way.

Enough talking, time to break out the tablet and get to work...