I am a fantastically lazy person, and as such am always looking for a shorter, quicker or plain easier way of expressing my ideas. A while ago, having read a few stalwarts (Penny Arcade, Least I Could Do, the artistically brilliant Stuff Sucks and the thoroughly English and ever charming Scary Go Round) for a few years, I decided to sprint after the webcomic band-wagon as it disappeared over the horizon. Which to my suprise (and probably as no shock whatsoever to anyone else) turned out to be easier said than done.

Some hurdles I had to come overcome include:

1. My complete lack of artistic talent
I may like to think I'm creative, but sadly 'pictures-in-the-head' creative does not in my case translate into 'pictures-on-paper' creative. I took Art as far as GCSE but I'm not going to lie; I really only scraped my A because of my very supportive teacher, Mrs Wood. I may have taken up painting as a hobby since, but my painting so far has been highly Impressionist. For 'Impressionist', read utterly unrecogniseable.

I'll admit, this was a set back for a while. Luckily some people much more talented and ambitious than me have already faced this problem, and resolved it. Companies such as Rooster Teeth Productions, makers of Red vs. Blue, have been doing a lot to edutain (educate and entertain; a word my old Geography teacher was worryingly fond of) people about the potential of Machinima for some time now. Strictly speaking, Machinima is using existing computer game engines to create films or animations, and was recently done with great success in an episode of South Park parodying World of Warcraft. However, screen captures from games can also be used to make a comic strip, something that other webcomics such as Concerned have been doing for while. So, problem solved. But which game to use; what is easily obtainable (preferably something I already own), easily customisible, graphically quite impressive, and presents a world which gives me the scope for characters and settings other than traditional video game cliches? I considered The Movies, but eventually settled on The Sims 2 because I already owned it, liked it, and it already had the option to take screen-shots built in (told you I was lazy). Then I promptly discovered somebody was already doing the same thing; Rooster Teeth Productions, in fact, have started producing a Machinima using the same game called The Strangerhood. Well - fuck them. At least if EA decided to sue they'll go for the big guys first, giving me ample time to take everything down. Although I think EA already allow stuff like that anyway...

2. Those god-damned annoying Sims
Having purchased all the expansions for The Sims 2, I set about creating my characters. Apparently I created the fucking obstinate, because herding Sims to produce this comic was one of the most annoying things I have ever done in my whole life. Taking the pictures requires pretty amazing timing, often controlling more than one character. Plus you have to make sure all their needs are taken care of before they'll even co-operate. Seriously if I'd wanted things to be this difficult I'd be directing people; I was just waiting throughout for one of my sims to get a drug problem or something. Eventually I worked out more of the code and how to use the developer's debug mode, which made things a little easier, but remember the old adage: "never work with animals, children, or virtual characters."

3. Not having the right software
At the time I was doing all this on my dad's old PC which he eventually gave me (he bought a new one) after I'd persuaded him to up the memory and the graphics a bit. What it didn't have was photoshop or any other picture editing programs. In fact, it didn't even have any proper word processing software. What did it have? Open Office. Way to go dad; too cheap to buy proper software, so you downloaded open-source stuff of the internet instead. To be fair though, I did once download the trial version of Photoshop, and after a brief moment of rabbit-in-the-headlights-terror at how complicated it looked, promptly deleted it. Instead, I attempted to do the comic in whatever passes for a visual editior with Open Office - Draw I think. I used (free) fonts taken from blambot.

4. Coming up with 'Ideas'
I like to think I'm reasonably funny, and I mean when I talk, not to look at. Apparently as soon I try to write funny though, it dries up. That aside, I sat down and wrote a few chapters of storyline and some characters for the webcomic, lying on the lawn last term when I should have been working on my dissertation. Then over the vactation I tried to one episode of the webcomic a day, working to the structure of chapters of plot composed of ten four panel comics each, with an interlude between each of five four panel comics of topical or random one off jokes. As ever, that quickly fell by the wayside when I got bored, but I then found I could do a chapter if I devoted my Sunday to it and didn't get too pissed off too quickly with herding sims.

5. Getting it onto the Internet
The original plan was to do a hundred and then think about getting it onto the internet, or publishing a one off for myself through Lulu. I filled in how long that would take on my calender, so I could tell if I was running to schedule. This plan got abandoned when I left old PC at home on getting my new laptop. Thus my computer at Uni doesn't have the memory or graphics to run The Sims. Looking at the calender, I should be on comic number fifty seven by now. When I gave up I think I'd got to about number thirty. Hopefully I'll pick it up again over the holiday when my exams are over. Either way, I was pressed for things to post with revision being a bit hectic at the moment, so I thought this would be an easy piece of filler. Turns out that was a mistake, because I've spent a few hours today trying to sort it all out.

Anyway, I texted my dad and asked him to send up my old memory-stick, which has a couple of the comics on it. I thought there would be more of them on there, but apparently I deleted most of the archive. They're still all on my PC at home though, so I'll see if someone can get on there and zip them and email them to me here at Uni. Click on above panel for the full comic. Stick with it too, it gets funny if I remember correctly. I realise there are some quite fundamental questions raised about the nature of art and pastiche and stuff, but I'll address those later. As for the name, I realise it's a little rubbish, but I asked the brunette to think up a better one and she hasn't been forthcoming yet. I'm certainly open to better suggestions...

Tune of the moment: They - Jem

Jac

Labels: Webcomic