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-->February 19, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Something to spend a little of your money on
If you've been following along for a while, you know I'm besotted with Hitherby Dragons. Rebecca Borgstrom -- one of the most brilliant RPG writers and designers... well, ever (her Nobilis brings a level of brilliance to the field of Roleplaying that I don't think has been equalled since) and a woman who channels a kind of brilliant insanity -- has created a truly remarkable collection of vignettes and short stories -- a form she has so redefined that I refer to stories of that length and kind as 'hitherbys' now.
Well, today Borgstrom announced Hitherby Dragons over at Lulu.com, which is the most writer-friendly of the Print on Demand self-publishers. I've been curious about the quality of Lulu's work, and I know the quality of Borgstrom's work, so I've ordered. I'll let you know about the quality of the book when I get it.
As for the stories? I recommend them wholeheartedly. Go give Borgstrom some money. She deserves it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:01 PM | Comments (1)
-->February 18, 2005
Eric Burns-White: For those playing along at home...
...my blood pressure is back into the normal range, and we're thinking maybe things have settled back down. And I get to eat bread again.
But no biscuits.
I spent a good amount of the evening doing some beta work in prep for the Websnark move. It's going well, but there's a lot of t crossing and i dotting. Fortunately, my current hosting isn't going anywhere as we do it. And there was an idiosyncrasy in Mac OS X server that meant I had to change groups on all our students, followed by shifting their primary group to the new one. Only there's... well, no way to batch process it.
So, several hundred students, and I had to open each record, drag the group to the primary group blank, then save the record. One at a time.
Did I mention that because my diet's been highly restricted, my blood sugar is below 'low.' So I've been kind of... surly today.
Anyway, I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow, I will snark. About many things.
Like Flint.
Sigh... Flint....
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:15 PM | Comments (3)
-->February 17, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Short phrases convey long meanings, sometimes.
I love Boing Boing. Their links are interesting and fun and exciting and funny. And Mark Frauenfelder is one of my favorites -- the stuff he's interested in tends to be the stuff I'm interested in. (Which isn't to say I'm not interested in Cory Doctrow or Xeni Jardin. The former's one of my favorite writers -- I have an essay on Wuffie as it applies to Slashdot's moderation system I'd like to get around to writing one day -- and the second is brilliant and gorgeous. I like brilliant women. Gorgeous is just an addon.) Frauenfelder just has a perspective that seems right to me.
Well, he managed in a throwaway comment to encapsulate the significant problem I have with Flash in webcomics in one throwaway comment in A link to a "Famous cartoonists now and then" site:
Here's a fun "now and then" gallery of famous cartoonist's work as adults and when they were kids. The fun is only slightly diminished by the use of a Flash interface.
I read that and thought exactly!!!!! He gets it!
Some people do innovative and exciting things with Flash. Patrick Farley's Apocamon leaps to mind. But most Flash interfaces, either in exhibits or comics themselves, are clumsy and simply take the simple task of navigating from one bit to the next and make it needlessly more difficult. It's to the point that when i see the "Flash Loading" bar appear on a comic, I'm instantly predisposed against it. And that's not fair to the people who really are doing innovative Flash work.
So please please please. If you think it would be neat and cool to do your comic in Flash because then you can have a "click next" arrow and a few cheap stock sound effects on your comic strip... do us all a favor. Export the strips to pngs, throw them onto a web page, and put a simple, cheap HTML "next" link at the bottom.
For me. Eric. Your friend.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:16 PM | Comments (15)
-->Eric Burns-White: You know, I think I've seen those sensitivity training videos...
(From Narbonic! Click on the thumbnail for full sized tolerance!)
Sometimes, I can go on for hours about the subtextual relationships we find in stories. Sometimes, I can burble on about symbolism or meaning, or the underpinnings of comedy in webcomics. Sometimes, I can babble on and on about incredible nuances of meaning.
Sometimes.
And sometimes I read a given comic strip and just laugh my ass off, because it's that damn funny.
Over to my side, you'll see my ass, over on the floor, because of Shaenon Garrity.
And so Garrity? Gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:18 PM | Comments (4)
-->February 16, 2005
Eric Burns-White: A day.
It was a busy day at work. It was a busy day of recovery and internalizing the medical issues I found out about yesterday (the less said about the better). The evening I've spent deep in Gossamer, Sekret Projekt J, and conversations with the smartest human being on the planet. Midway through all of this, I got e-mail from the composer of I'm Just a Bill. E-mail referring me to his publishing company regarding some quoting I want to do in Gossamer Commons, and perfunctory, but dude -- Dave Frishberg sent me e-mail. How bad could it be?
Pretty bad, actually. Both the health issues and things I had to do, plus some monetary things that needed doing. Plus some chores. Including getting new Renter's Insurance, because it's been an interesting enough year that I want to be sure things are okay in case of disaster.
All of which is why I haven't written anything here today. But I still like you.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:48 PM | Comments (3)
-->February 15, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Man, I'm fixated.
So, the checkup didn't go as well as one might hope. We're taking some steps to change that.
It's a sign that I'm completely obsessed, however, that I actually thought "damn... now I can't have biscuits any more."
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:39 PM | Comments (7)
-->Eric Burns-White: I'm off to see the wizard!
Well, I have a checkup up at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital this afternoon, which is a couple of hours away, so I'm leaving in about 5-10 minutes and won't be doing much on here until this evening. For those who haven't seen Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital (which... well, I assume is all of you), it's astounding. It's huge and mostly made of green glass. It looks like the Emerald City had a baby the Carousel Center Mall in Syracuse, New York.
To give you some idea... this is a hospital with a food court. Not a cafeteria. A food court. Last time I was there, they had Sbarro's, Au Bon Pan, a bank, a branch of the Dartmouth Bookstore, a convenience store, a florist's, a gift shop and a clothing store.
In the hospital.
Walking into the hospital, there's a person playing light piano jazz in the lobby. Mostly standards.
In the hospital.
These are the people who did aftermarket modifications to my abdomen last March. And now they're going to take me out for a test drive and check my antifreeze.
I'll see you tonight.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:30 AM | Comments (4)
-->February 14, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Multiple blasts from the past, and other cliches.
As for today? I don't want to talk about it.
However, having had some issues with my old revived Essay Journal -- which I had started writing in for a few months before the arrival of Websnark, which then overwhelmed it -- I finally got around to exporting those eight posts from it and importing them here into Websnark proper.
So, if you want to read something of mine you probably haven't seen, and would rather it not have anything to do with "Infinite Canvases" or the like, have a look at this group of essays. They cover coffee makes and musical tastes and the excitement and fear before major surgery and even a crappy 'meme.'
I'm going to bed.
Hello, My friend, won't you tell me your name?
Playlists and Coffeemakers: Recapturing the Personal
Confessions of a Liberal Heinlein Fan: Worldbuilding and Utopia
The Alchemy of the Slow Cooker
Good Night, Captain
Six Days
On Names and Innovation
Recycling the Meme: On Writing
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:47 PM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Moving Day, one of these days...
Sometime in the next week to week and a half... we're going to be moving. Pair.com's been mostly good (though with some weird troubles here and there), but at this stage it's costing a little too much to continue as we're going. I'm shifting over to the Talk About Comics Hosting package.
Why? Huge huge huge savings, and a certain symmetry. It just makes sense to me to be hosted at a Comics oriented company.
(Note -- this doesn't mean Websnark's becoming affiliated with Modern Tales or any other of Joey Manley's official sites. It's not that I'd be against being identified with those sites -- they're among my favorites -- but given I do critical commentary, it's best folks know for certain that editorial and creative control for the 'snark isn't changing.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:22 AM | Comments (1)
-->February 13, 2005
Eric Burns-White: It's that time of the month, again!
No. Not that time of the month.
My latest edition of Feeding Snarky is online at Comixpedia! Go forth and read it!
This one might get me some interesting comments.
Also in this weeks' offerings is the latest of T Campbell's groundbreaking History of Online Comics columns. It seems less about history and more an informative current affairs piece now, but by God it's insightful, and you should read it.
Sadly, I haven't noticed anything by the Invisible Wednesday White yet this month. But I'll keep you posted.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:36 PM | Comments (24)
-->Eric Burns-White: THERE IS NO CRYING IN NINJA!
(From Skinny Panda. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Cheeto Assault!)
Since close to the beginning of Websnark, I've had people e-mailing me to talk about Skinny Panda. It has a huge number of fans, all of whom thought I should read the strip, because they wanted it snarked and -- more to the point -- they thought I would like it. Many people who e-mailed me were somewhat chastened, however, because it seemed Skinny Panda had gone away, having suffered a year-long hiatus, followed by a brief flurry of strips, and then another seemingly endless disappearance.
So, I didn't ever get around to reading it. This wasn't because I thought they were wrong -- far from it. I assumed this strip must be something special to inspire such devotion despite not currently updating. However, with the massive number of strips I have in my backlog that are currently updating, I made the decision that strips that weren't updating would go on a back burner.
Well, David Wright of Todd and Penguin let me know that A) I should read this thing right now, and B) it was updating again, which killed that argument. So, having had an odd morning (I'd discovered that Questionable Content was having server troubles, which led me to figure out where the archives were and start reading them, which turned into rereading the whole of them. I didn't expect it, but there it was) anyhow, and seeing the archives for Skinny Panda weren't that long, I started reading.
Skinny Panda is the brainchild of Phil Cho. (No relation that I know of to Frank "I know Scott Kurtz" Cho.) It started back in 1999, which is to say it started back in the Golden Age of Webcartooning. And it was brilliant. Extraordinarily well drawn, with evocative characters, simple to understand but sophisticated storytelling, a clear understanding of the medium and a willingness to go a little nuts. Every so often, the main strip -- which tells the story of the morose Skinny Panda, his angry friend Gopher, their daisy-like potted friend Flower, and the cybernetic and oddly emotive Robokitty -- would be interrupted to tell the story of Penelope, an intelligent young girl from an upper crust family who seeks to be independent but doesn't really understand how (or why) living like common folks should involve acting like common folks. (Penelope would later run away from home and arrive in the main strip proper).
And then there were the stick figure cartoons. And though I fell in love with the strip proper, the stick figure cartoons really blew me away.
The stick figure cartoons happened on an irregular (and sometimes even regular) basis, and was made up of many many small panels with stick figures drawn in them -- generally there were at least sixteen or twenty panels in each stick figure cartoon, and sometimes considerably more. These panels were small, and as I said the art in them was basic black stick figures without features -- but somehow the stick figures were drawn with tremendous fluidity and flexibility -- rather than being simple art that anyone could do, they were spartan -- the minimum art in the minimum panel size needed to tell sophisticated stories. Objects like rocks that appeared in the stick figure strips still had weight and depth and shading, leading to a sense of solidity. And the stories themselves reminded me of some of the best small-panel storytellers, including Segar's Thimble Theater and -- even moreso -- Carol Lay's Story Minute and Waylay strips.
And I don't lightly compare people to Carol Lay.
You see three -- count them, three -- strips in this snark. These are one of the few Stick Figure sagas with some continuity. These are the story of a young ninja learning focus. That's all. A young stick figure learning focus. And yet, there's Cheetos, and cheese dust, and a brutal murder, and crying. And a denouement that just made me happy to be alive.
And reading through this, I realized that Phil Cho gets the medium. He gets it incredibly well. He knows how to take the most basic drawings -- though the art remains pretty, even in stick figure form -- and turn them into powerful and funny stories. He knows how to strip away all the dross and come up with a pure essence of cartooning.
And that's just for the stick figure comics. When you look at the regular strips, you see someone who's an absolute master at crosshatching and inking and the black and white strip form. There's no computer tricks at all -- he doesn't even cut and paste panels as near as I can tell. The writing is first rate, the art matches it perfectly....
He even conveys ennui well. And in the middle of the archive he suddenly does a Winnie the Pooh parody that captures the essence of A.A. Milne vastly better than the Walt Disney Corporation has done in many, many years. This really is worth anyone's time to go through and read from the beginning. And it won't disappoint you.
So, all those people who wrote to me? You were right.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:30 PM | Comments (5)
-->Eric Burns-White: I have to admit, I would probably surrender.
(From Sluggy Freelance. Click on the thumbnail for full sized probing!)
A sprite comic?
A sprite comic?
Pete Abrams needed a filler day because his daughter was sick, and so he threw out an X-Com parody sprite comic?
I love it.
Honestly. The very first week I was snarking on here, I wrote an essay in defense of filler art. In that essay, I wrote the following:
Filler art is exactly what it sounds like. It fills in the space, giving the reader a happy taste of what they come to the strip for in the first place. It may not continue the story, and it may not have quite the same funny as the strip would have, but by God there's something there other than the last strip in the series. It's only one step up from not doing a strip at all, admittedly, but it is a step up, and shows some measure of concern for the reader.The best filler art may be killer fast, but still fulfills the essential strip requirements. The Something Positive Filler Art, both for today (the deeply offensive and damn funny explanation of what happened to Monette's baby) and yesterday (the evolution of Pepito, the sex midget, which you'll have to go to his site to see, damn it!) hits the top mark. He just had to draw one panel's worth of stuff today, and that pretty simple stuff to boot, and fill the rest with expository text and things that would make the Baby Jesus cry. It's exactly what we go to Something Positive for, damn it, so we've hardly been cheated.
Well, that's exactly what Abrams did today. He did incredibly fast work that brought a quick bit of Funny and made the faithful happy when they came to have a look. That counts big in my book.
Of course, it's worth mentioning that if Abrams had a buffer, he wouldn't need filler art today. But not all artists can work a buffer into their daily effort. Abrams throwing up a sprite comic runs a good second. (A second tied with Randy Milholland's drive to make up strips he missed -- yeah, it means sometimes he has no comic and sometimes he has two, but I still give him credit for that.)
For the record, even though we're working on a buffer, Greg's already asked me about the possibility of putting up filler art or the like on the days when we don't update (Gossamer Commons is scheduled to be a Monday/Wednesday/Friday comic). I know he's doing tons of drawing right now. Not to mention working on Nemesis. The man is some kind of artistic machine.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:22 AM | Comments (12)
