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-->June 10, 2005
Eric Burns-White: A preemptive strike.
This is not a Nukees snark.
This is not a Nukees snark because I fully expect to do a full strip Snark on Monday for Nukees. Darren Bleuel (that remains one of the four coolest names in webcomics -- I still say, months later, that he sounds like Bleu-el, a Kryptonian jazz musician from the scruffy coast out past the Gold Volcano, who pioneered Kandorian Soft Bop) has been building his story to one ineffable payoff.
See, Gav died again. And just like the last time, Gav took a bye on the whole "tunnel of light thing." Last time, he met and fell in love with a truly fantastic character, Ma'at, the Goddess who is the personification of Truth, Order and Efficiency. I've been looking forward to her eventual reintroduction.
Which, apparently, is happening Monday. And there has been astounding degrees of buildup. And, like all potential energy, the more you build up the greater the release.
There have been times this has felt like it's gone on too long, like it's gotten away from what Nukees is. But most of the time it was so much fun I didn't mind. And now, on the threshold of Ma'at's apartment, with Gav reacting (with shock? Disappointment? Horror? Pain? Lust? Hard to tell) to what we presume is Ma'at...
Well, we don't know.
Tremendous amounts of potential energy. Will its release be constructive or destructive? We don't know. What we do know is we'll find out Monday.
So this isn't a Snark, because I've waited five frigging months for this, and I'm not going to snark until I see it, damn it.
In the meantime, Bleuel's posted links at the top of the page that can catch you up to date with Nukees and this plotline. I recommend them, because... well, dude. Monday.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:32 PM | Comments (16)
-->Eric Burns-White: It's like a reset button where everybody dies horribly!
(From Wigu! Click on the thumbnail for full sized turds!)
I'll admit -- I was one of those people who was sad to see WIGU-TV disappear in lieu of Magical Adventures in Space. And then I was sad to see Wigu classic return in lieu of Magical Adventures in Space itself. I'm just a whiny bastard, I guess.
That being said, I just wasn't feeling it. It seemed... played out, maybe.
And then we went through a plotline where the entire universe was destroyed. Which wasn't the first time. Butter Dimension Cubed and all associated worlds got whacked a while ago, and we went to Butter Dimension Quad. Now, I assume that with Butter Dimension Quad and all related worlds whacked, we're up to Butter Dimension Quint and a whole new Tinkle Family on Earth.
It was somehow really nice to see Wigu playing with his Topato and Sheriff Pony toys in today's strip. It's a subtle way of saying "we're back to normal, thanks to billions of deaths and the destruction of an entire universe."
And so, I'm feeling fully good about Wigu again.
Which means next week Rowland will relaunch American Platypus. He's just TOYING with me!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:04 AM | Comments (5)
-->Eric Burns-White: The Half-Life of Drama
This is, if anything, a snark about the evolution of the Penny Arcade/Documentary/PvP/Scott McCloud/Websnark/Rosenberg/Garza/Barber/et cetera thingy.
It's not going over the core bits again. I said my piece, others have said their piece, the venues have moved on. This snark isn't about that, this time.
But one thing I find interesting -- as other have as well -- is the evolution of the discussion. I mean.. it's June 10th. The Penny Arcade post came on June First. Nine days in Internet Time is the rough equivalent of nine months in normal human time. This thing is swiftly becoming the Webcomics Community version of the O.J. Trial. Only without Jay Leno's crappy sense of humor.
Now, it's largely (possibly entirely) my fault we're still talking about it. My post came at the five day mark. The thing hadn't ended, mind -- comments and Kris Straub's strip came out just before my post. But without a doubt, my post turned the drama dial back up to 9.3 and flared it back up. In effect, it was like we were entering a wholly new drama cycle -- which is unusual. Drama usually has a half life of about a day and a half. So either I dumped a pile of new drama into the core and increased the reaction, or further experimentation is necessary to explain what this means to Internet Physics.
Anyway. It happened. Drama went back up. There was recriminations and yelling in many directions. And, like I said -- Drama half life of a day and a half. Things declined, and declined some more, for several more days.
And then, Scott McCloud's essay came out. If you haven't seen it, there are links to it and to Jerry Holkins's response in the comments thread on my own essay.
And now, we're back at 9.2 on the drama dial again. Which means we're probably looking at Sunday before things quiet down. And then I'm wondering if Monday or Tuesday we'll get a response from the documentary filmmakers that'll ramp it back up again.
Am I decrying the drama? No -- I'm not that much of a hypocrite. But it's interesting to watch the process, and analyze my own part in it. And figuring out what I should do differently next time -- or whether I should do anything differently.
Well, there's one thing I should do differently -- if there's anything in my own essay on the subject I regret, it's a phrase that got called to my attention earlier today. A phrase I used, which wasn't germane to the essay and which, in my opinion, weakens it.
See, a couple of times, I made reference to Krahulik and Holkins "playing videogames for a living."
And that right there? That was bullshit.
Gabe and Tycho are cartoonists for a living. They make art. They get paid for it. That's not easy to do at all.
See what I did, in that essay? It's a pretty common rhetorical technique. I minimized them. In a discussion about art and illustration I made them out to be pretenders. "They play games for a living." I didn't do it consciously, mind. I was angry and in full on rant. I was doing a comparison designed to evoke emotion and make "Gabe" and "Tycho" seem less than they were.
Which, if you get right down to it, is a shitty thing to do. And if you remember, that's the kind of behavior I was saying people should be called on.
So I'm calling myself on it.
I stand by my essay and what I said. But in saying it, I should never have made it seem like Krahulik and Holkins were less than they were and are -- webcartoonists and artists. Ones who have influence not just on the community, but on the evolution of the art form. I won't cut those bits out of that essay -- like I've said before, I don't do that -- but I'll acknowledge the error.
There are important issues at the core of this drama. The question of the relationship between commercial art and experimental art. The question of the suppression of innovative or controversial art by society -- or lack thereof. The question of the balance between satire and bullying. And there are a lot of opinions on both sides every one of those questions being explored.
Those questions deserve to be asked without being obfuscated through cheap shots and minimizing the people we're debating.
As for the latest developments in the drama... I'm taking a bye.
Besides, they hardly need me at this point, do they?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:17 AM | Comments (68)
-->Eric Burns-White: Dare I hope my posts will become fodder for this? Dare I? DARE I?!?
So, if anyone asks me from this point forward where I get my Webcomics Community news? My answer is Webcartoonist vs Webcartoonist: The Tabloid!. This is the up to the minute coverage of all drama that has infected my life that I've been waiting for.
Besides, I'm given to understand there are topless girls on the third index page, if I can just find it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:57 AM | Comments (17)
-->June 9, 2005
Eric Burns-White: There's something just right about "Renn Fest" Kestrel in sepia, and "Goth" Kestrel in greyscale, isn't there?
(From the Queen of Wands Rapid Fire Reruns. Click on the thumbnail for full sized avoidance!)
For those of you not following along on the Queen of Wands "Rapid Fire Reruns," where Aeire puts up the once thrice-weekly strips seven days a week and annotates and comments on them, this is a good time to go have a look, because this is the point in Queen of Wands where something interesting is going on.
Specifically, this is the point in the comic where Aeire went for the Cerebus Syndrome. And as one of the very few to actually pull it off, watching the actual points of shift is fascinating.
A number of things are happening here. Beyond the simple elaboration of story and backstory and the fleshing out and deepening of everything that's going on, Aeire's also growing in sophistication as a visual storyteller and as a writer. We went to sepia tones for a flashback (and then -- and I think this is hysterical -- we went to full greyscale for a flashback being told inside the flashback. At the time, I wondered if we'd go to black and white line art and another two year jump back in time next, and then maybe Microsoft Paint....), and her panels began to separate from one another to give more room for the dialogue boxes in between. The story began to fully take center stage at this point. You can even see the lightning path she used to tie her panels together visually appearing here -- interestingly, it's in the foreground, actually changing the shades of the greyscale here.
I was a Queen of Wands fan almost from the beginning -- I don't remember when I did the archive trawl on it, but it was pretty early. I remembered being startled by the more serious tone of some of these strips (and they get more serious still over the next few coming days), but I got pretty caught up in it. Later on, it looked to me like Aeire was moving fully into First and Ten syndrome. But then she hit a twist that threw the whole thing into perspective, and kept going up.
So, students of the form should be following along. They should be reading Aeire's notes on the process. And most of all, they should be seeing the way a Cerebus Syndrome that ended up working looked during the process. This is a good time to be following along with a so-called "rerun."
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:48 PM | Comments (7)
-->Eric Burns-White: Writing for cash
People sometimes ask me what it's like to be a professional writer. Albeit, a professional writer with a day job, which describes 95% of writers who have received paychecks for their writing. Still, there is a moment of allure that clings to the title. A mystique. "He's a writer," they say.
Usually followed by "I really need to write a book. I just need to sit down and do it. It doesn't seem that hard. And I've got lots of good ideas." So the mystique lasts about twenty-two seconds. But for that near-half-minute, you're a sorcerer possessed of powers beyond the ken of ordinary men.
The practical answer to "what is it like to be a professional writer" can be summed up in two words: humbling and tedious. It's humbling because no matter how good you are -- or consistent and fast you are, which in things like RPG development can be more valuable than good -- there are several million people who are just as good as you are, and at least twenty or thirty people who are vastly better. And the vastly better people are typically looking for exact same work you are. Sure, I'm okay at RPG design, but Bruce Baugh is in the same market for work that I am, and Bruce Baugh has more experience, knows a lot more people, has a better track record and is a better developer. So, if Bruce Baugh and I both put in for the same freelancing assignment, I only get it if he doesn't want it.
And there are several Bruce Baughs in RPG design. And a whole lot more of me. And a metric ton of unpublished freelancers who want that first assignment desperately, and don't mind accepting a half cent a word for it. Or less. Or are willing to write thirty thousand words of a sourcebook for the privilege of having their name on the cover.
Don't believe me? Remember, I pay for the privilege of writing Websnark. And the amount of In Nomine material I've written for free and put up on a mailing list or website vastly exceeds the paid work I've done. By a factor of about fifteen. Seven years ago, I'd have happily done work for free if it meant seeing my name on a Steve Jackson Games product.
Like I said. It's humbling.
The tedious side comes after you get the assignment. I don't mean the writing. I love doing the writing. I mean, some people like being "a writer," and like I said, that's fun enough. And so they suffer through the writing part so they get to go to conventions and wear a badge with GUEST stamped on it and the chance to sit at the front of the room. Or they get to wear tweed and smoke a pipe and hold court at poetry slams or writing circles as "the professional," and speak in hushed tones that imply wisdom.
That's perfectly valid. No one says you have to like your job to enjoy the fringe benefits.
But others write because they really like writing. They like the process. They like putting words together. They like the sense that they are creative. They like hearing the keyboard rattle as the urge starts flooding through their fingers. That's where I fall in. I write all the time. I write stuff no one will ever see because I enjoy writing. I outline projects I couldn't possibly do. I've outlined the way I'd completely relaunch the DC universe as a series of novels, if only there weren't pesky laws enjoining me from doing so. I write articles and short stories and essays and whatever else. I put stuff down in Websnark most every day, because I like to write.
But writing is just part of the "fun" of being a writer, and once you have a gig, it's hardly the part that sticks out.
For example -- as I mentioned a couple of days ago, all mysterious-like, I've got a new gig. There's an NDA involved, so I can't tell you what I'm writing. I probably could tell you who it's for, but I'm not going to take a chance. (The NDA, according to the contract, covers everything but the actual terms of the contract I signed. So, I assume it doesn't cover the company's name. However, it's easiest to just err on the side of caution.)
I can say this much: it's not for PDF/electronic publication work. It's for actual physical pressed pulp with ink on it. And, just because any number of folks have asked, and denials aren't covered under NDA, it's not for Steve Jackson Games, which means no, it's not for In Nomine.
I accepted the gig. They sent contracts. The contracts were okay -- among other things, they were the good old fashioned "sign and send in." Other companies have more elaborate procedures to contract work. One, which shall go nameless, actually requires all contracts be notarized before they're sent. This is a monumental pain in the ass -- you don't exactly trip over Notary Publics in today's day and age -- and I can only assume came from said company having a problem with identity once sometime in the last twelve years, and the president saying "fuck it! After today, every contract gets notarized! I don't care any more!"
Whatever -- this contract didn't need that. But it does need to be physically sent, instead of faxed with sent copies afterward. "So what?" you ask. "Sew buttons," I respond, because I enjoy The Venture Brothers, but I digress. The problem with their needing the physical signature is because there is a large volume of material that I need to A) be sent and B) need to read before I can write the fifteen thousand words I'm committed to. And there's not all that much time before those words are due.
Now, fifteen thousand words isn't hard, and I have an outline, and there's plenty I can do before I get the other materials I need, but there's always nagging questions. "What if there are requirements in the game bible I don't yet know?" "What if my core assumptions for the game are off by a few degrees?" "What if in fact all the characters are supposed to be mutated wombats and I don't know that yet?"
See, I like writing. But no writer likes getting through seven thousand words and discovering he needs to rewrite six thousand of them. Particularly since every word you have to throw away and replace with a different word effectively has its pay rate cut in half.
So you plan, and elaborate on the provided outline, and conceptualize, and prepare to write, but you hold for the other materials. And those materials won't be dispatched to you (hopefully electronically, but that may not be the case) until they get that signed piece of paper, because otherwise they don't have proof you've agreed to the NDA.
Now, a writer who breaks an implied NDA, even if he manages to do so in a way that's on the 'legal' side of the law, is a writer asking never to be paid for anything ever again. This goes beyond professionalism and straight into "oh my God, are you stupid?" But remember I mentioned that huge mass of writers who'd be willing to do all this for free? The mass of writers that once also included every single working RPG developer and writer currently producing work? (Well, excepting Gary Gygax and Loren Wiseman. They predated the yearning mass of people who want in.) Well, a good number of those hungry wannabe RPG developers would desperately love to be the ones to break the story on what their favorite company is doing with their favorite line to all their friends. For a brief moment, they would be able to bask in the glory of being the bearer of official tidings. This is a prospect almost orgasmic in temptation.
And RPG companies have no way of knowing if their new freelancer is going to be one of them. So, they require proof of the NDA before they begin. They want that nice piece of paper that says, in effect, "if this person proves to be a self important wanker, we get to sue him to the point that he owes us his own bone marrow, and he has no legal recourse at all."
And it's just good business practice to make everyone sign it, no matter how proven their track record. "Look, kid," they'd say. "We make "Zeb" Cook and Robin Laws sign this. Who the Hell are you again?"
So you wait. With every day bringing you that much closer to the deadline, which wasn't all that far away to begin with. And of course, it's not like the company's going to get my priority mail envelope (no, you don't send it express mail. What, I'm going to pay nine bucks for the privilege of delivering work for them faster? I only sent it priority mail because I like to send contracts flat, and the cost difference is negligible from one nine-by-twelve envelope to the next at this point) and immediately say "quick! Call the editor! Eric Burns sent us his signed contract! Move move move move move!" No, it'll sit in an in box, and then someone down in processing will enter the details and send an e-mail to the editor. And the editor will get those details and think "okay, I've got X number of writers to send this stuff too -- easier to wait until we get at least half of their contracts in, or the end of the week -- whichever comes first. It's not like I'm not buried up to my eyeballs as it is."
Outline. Plan. Research. Scribble notes. Generate skeletons of characters who won't get flesh until you get what you need. Pace a bit.
Sooner or later, the materials show up. And no doubt there will be "fun" with e-mail. There is always fun with e-mail during these processes.
Then, you write, expecting to be done in three days. "Fifteen thousand words?" you say. "Piece of cake!"
Riiiight. And no editor has ulcers from frantically waiting for delivered content. None. Not a one.
But, like I said. The writing is the fun part. So we assume it goes as well as we say it would, and you send it. Then comes waiting for redlines. And there are always redlines. "This needs clarity." "This needs reworking." "This whole section contradicts canon in a supplement you haven't seen that wasn't summarized in the game bible you sent, so we need to cut it and you owe us an entirely different 2,500 word section." "What style guide are you using?" "Do you own a copy of Strunk and White?" "Have you read a copy of Strunk and White?" "Jesus fucking God, Eric -- don't capitalize angels or demons! Do capitalize Djinn and Mercurians! And the fucking plural of Habbalite is Habbalah, not Habbalites! How many times do I have to tell you that?"
Okay, the last was kind of specific, not general. But no matter what game line you work on, you end up getting notes like it. Capitalization, word choices and pluralization are black arts in RPG design at the best of times.
Sooner or later, you survive the redlines. You get everything just plain done. And then....
Well, then you wait. You wait for them to get all the same things from everyone else. You wait for editorial to go over it, and make their own changes. You wait for precursor products to get published. You wait for revisions to the shipping schedule. You wait and hope that they don't decide to cancel the project altogether based on sales performance of previous projects. (Which has happened to me -- and kill fees, while better than a punch in the throat, are never as good as your contracted word rate.) You wait.
And then it gets announced. And you get to say, finally, what it is you worked on months before. And talk it up. And get enthusiastic about it. "You're going to love it," you say.
And then you wait through a publication rescheduling and a printing delay, but sooner or later it hits the shelves. Two to three weeks after that, typically, you might get your contributor copies. And then you will open them up, smell the fresh ink, turn quickly to your section, and hungrily read the text that once upon a time was yours. And be surprised at how little of it you recognize, and further surprised when you reread your last known good delivered text and compare it.
But whatever. You're once again in print. You did it. You're holding proof you're a writer. You get to send a copy to your parents for them to put on the shelf next to your other published works.
And then, you start waiting for payment. Typically, it's scheduled for 30 days after publication. It's polite to wait about 60 before sending them nice notes. You usually shouldn't start threatening them with keelhauling until 120 days after payment was due.
(If you're a publisher I've worked for before, you may of course safely assume I'm talking about the other publishers I've worked with, above. I certainly couldn't mean you.)
Meanwhile, if things have gone well, you've been doing the same process with other contracted works and have more stuff in the pipe. Otherwise, you troll for more work and hope your standing has increased. Or that Bruce Baugh is passing on a lot of stuff these days. At any given point in your writing career -- assuming you have gigs at all -- you're spending maybe one tenth of your time actually putting words on paper, and the rest of the time somewhere else in this process.
Tedious and humbling.
And so worth it.
Maybe the materials will come in today. Until then, I've got notes, and it'd be all right to write this section, wouldn't it? I mean, what are the chances the game bible will change that....
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:05 AM | Comments (17)
-->June 8, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Okay, here's something I do care about, with the move to Mac Intel
I mentioned earlier that I didn't care if they switched the Macintosh from PowerPC to Windows. And for the most part, that's true -- especially when speculation is dual booting will be possible, alongside the possibility of a version of VPC that will run at processor speed. That pushes everything to "mildly positive."
But there is one down side that has me bummed: the end, so it seems, of Classic mode.
Like I said in comments on the last Mac Snark, I have a copy of Adobe Streamline. And there is no product on the planet that does what Streamline does: make raster graphics into vector graphics. It does it smoothly and quickly and with a dirt simple interface. It does it well -- better than any outlining tool I've used in a vector drawing program, in fact.
And it's Classic only. They've never Carbonized it, much less Cocoaed it.
Losing Streamline would bug me. I can hope Adobe decides it's time to upgrade, I suppose, but it's not all that likely to happen. Instead, I expect it will simply pass into that good night.
There are other Classic programs as well. And those going away legitimately is sad.
On the other hand, I'll gladly sacrifice all of it for a smooth running WordPerfect in VPC.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (17)
-->June 7, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Flash, Infinite Canvas, and me.
People know I regard infinite canvas with a weather eye. It gets me in some trouble with folks, in fact. People also know I regard Flash based webcomics with a weather eye. That also gets me in some trouble with folks.
Infinite Canvas (or, as Shaenon Garrity calls it -- and I prefer this term as well -- Expanded Canvas) uses the natural abilities of the webpage to expand the boundaries of sequential art. The idea behind it is simple -- we're not bound to the size of a printed graphic novel or newspaper page on the internet. There is no technical reason we can't have webcomics that would print out at 20 feet by 20 feet if in fact they were printed. There's no reason not to do branching comics where multiple paths or endings or perspectives can be taken. There's no reason not to put an entire graphic novel into one long file to be scrolled down through or to the side through.
Well, actually, there are lots of reasons not to -- chief among them bandwidth, load times for graphics, and questions of user interface and ease of usability. The web isn't designed to be scrolled a little to the left, a little to the right, now up, now down... not without using the arrow keys on the keyboard or having a mouse and browser that supports center button/scroll wheel click-dragging. (Which mine, on my Mac, does not.) When there is a dramatic or artistic purpose to an expanded canvas work -- Patrick Farley's mind numbingly beautiful Delta Thrives, for example -- it can be a thing of innovative, almost epochal glory. But even Pat Farley acknowledges the limitations -- he estimates almost an eleven minute download time for someone still using a 56k modem, and I still know some people stuck at 33.6 or even 24k without any affordable options for broadband. Twenty minutes of downloading if you're lucky, all to read even a truly great webcomic... well, kinda sucks donkey.
Get someone whose expanded canvas is full of standard four panel comics stacked one next to the other (or my favorite expanded canvas trick -- cutting and pasting the same panel nine or ten times in a row without even varying text, to convey a sense of blank staring), and it becomes an exercise in frustration. The interface isn't good enough for the small return. The overwhelming sense is "it's experimental, therefore it's good," only it's not experimental. The experiment has already been done. The one thing that can be said for it is it's a good learning experience for the webcartoonist in question, and there is a value to that, but the learning experiences don't always (or even regularly) add up to actual good webcomics.
Flash, on the other hand, has certain advantages -- inexpensive and simple (comparatively) animation. Strong file optimization if you compose your strips themselves in Flash -- they can be rendered as vector and made much smaller than raster graphics. Sometimes. For example. Interactive interface elements. Much greater control over one's own images and bandwidth (it's a lot harder to plunk down a bandwidth-hijacking img src tag elsewhere when img src doesn't actually grab the shot in question). And it's shiny, and people love shiny.
And sometimes, Flash is really good. Pat Farley comes to mind again, of course, but there are others.
But all too often, "Flash comics" turn out to be regular webcomics with extremely superfluous animations, sound effects (and to be blunt, I loathe integrated sound in webcomics. And not just because I have a job that lets me read webcomics while I work but isn't particularly interested in having me flaunt that fact to the immediate area), and "first, previous, next and current" tags that are identical to HTML controls, only they wiggle when you roll over them with the mouse. While I can understand why some folks want bandwidth control or image control, for the most part if it's something that looks just like a regular webcomic only with clickyinterface controls, then it becomes too much of a pain in the ass in my opinion. Give me gifs or pngs or jpgs that'll load quickly and html that'll move me to the next graphic, please.
I say all of this now as a refresher for those who came in late, because I want to talk about the release of the Tarquin engine. Tarquin is a Flash-driven engine that acts as an interface for expanded canvas and low end animated comics. As such, it should be the devil itself for a straight html guy like me, right?
I'm very excited about Tarquin. I really am. I think this is exactly what both Flash webcomics and expanded canvas comics need -- a mature engine that brings the toolset into reach for both webcartoonists and meets the needs of interface and bandwidth for end users. Tarquin could well make it possible for brilliant, innovative and conceptual uses of expanded canvas to go through the roof, while keeping pedestrian uses of expanded canvas from sucking so badly. This in turn lets expanded canvas be used as a straight technique by cartoonists, not a OMGI'mSOOOOOEXPERIMENTAL technique. See, right now, there's a lot of overhead needed for expanded canvas -- both in interface and in bandwidth. As a result, using it in part has to be an end in itself, because using it isn't trivial. Not really. Tarquin makes it trivial enough (after the Flash learning curve, of course) that it becomes simpler to justify.
At the same time, the Flash interface makes the user interface/usability and bandwidth issues inherent in expanded canvas solvable. Yes, there's going to be a delay for load times, but if the artist uses vector art instead of raster in the flash, it'll should be significantly faster than loading a comparable sized expanded canvas comic strip. And the interface is a vast improvement. The viewing window itself will generally fit inside a standard screen -- I'm of the opinion that a comic strip really should fit within one screen's length and width, when possible. No scrolling should be necessary. And the movement from panel to panel within the expanded canvas itself is completely mouse driven and significantly intuitive. A good example of that is Scott "Scott" McCloud's Mimi's Last Coffee designed entirely within Tarquin and simple to navigate through, with convenient arrows pointing directions of navigation and zooming for the user.
On my work T1, loading the 81 panels plus interface of "Mimi's Last Coffee" took about seven seconds. A friend of mine name of Larry tried it on his dialup (today running at 45.2k), and it took two minutes and ten seconds. Trying to think what eighty-one panels in GIF or PNG format would take at less than 46k makes the Baby Jesus cry.
Further, doing transformations that wouldn't be simple in straight graphics-in-html seems pretty easy in Tarquin. The various examples Daniel Goodbrey has up show a range of different types, with zoom-ins aplenty. I've seen at least one Tarquin expanded canvas that works as a descending spiral, with the animation causing each panel down to seem like a step on the stairwell into Hell. I've seen others expand and contract based upon direction taken, with wild flying across the canvas to pick up at some other point. So artistically, there's a lot more potential in the Tarquin engine than there is in graphics on the page.
In other words, not only does the Flash interface make expanded canvas nowhere near as suckful... but expanded canvas actually gives Flash something legitimate to do. The interface controls can become a part of the overall aesthetic experience or they can get out of the way of said experience, and in neither case does it feel like Flash is unnecessary or inconvenient. Instead, it becomes just the rules of the road.
So. To sum up, I've always reacted poorly to Flash and poorly to expanded canvas. I've seen that both have potential, but that potential has either been difficult for the artist to properly use or difficult for the reader to actually see.
But combine the two? And suddenly everything begins looking rosier. We start getting the mind bending possibilities of expanded canvas (and expand them further, with the potentials of zoom and animation and all the rest), while maintaining solid interface design so the average human can read it without either investing major time to navigation or major bandwidth to downloading the stuff in the first place.
It's a definite step on the path.
Still, don't put nine identical panels one after the other in your expanded canvas strip. Please. It still makes the Baby Jesus cry. And once He starts crying, you can't make him stop on a bet. You think you can distract the incarnation of God with a rattle? He's not impressed with a rattle.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:01 PM | Comments (48)
-->Eric Burns-White: This is like a major change in all the way we do things electronically, only that it's not.
I've been getting a lot of e-mails from folks wondering about my reaction to Macintosh computers switching to Intel based processors.
Honestly.
I'm not kidding. A full day of High Drama on the Internet Seas yesterday, and what's the major e-mail topic coming in? "Dude! Apple's switching to Intel! What the fu--"
Hell. What the Hell. I'm trying, Robert. I told you I didn't get enough sleep. (Again.)
Now, I'm a reasonable bloke. I can understand the implications. Apple. Is going to Intel based Macintoshes. Not PowerPCs. Intels. I mean... Intels. This is exactly what happened to the Catholic Church after Vatican II. People were wandering the streets saying "Mass in English? The vernacularization of the liturgy will bring the wrath of Heaven upon us! We are tampering with things that have been laid down by the Mother Church for many hundreds of years! We are destroying the sacred core of tradition, the essence of the holy mystery, the concept of the Divinity as being striven for instead of suffered mildly! What have you done? What have you done?"
I mean, you can see the correlation. Apple's changing its CPU.
Wait, you can't see the correlation?
Sadly, neither can I.
I was mildly concerned until I learned that they'd been maintaining Intel trees for OS X all along. So, the next generation of Macs might run into a hiccup or speed of process issue here or there, and eventually software that's processor intensive will want to be rewritten. But for the most part, for me a guy just using Macs, absolutely nothing's going to change.
Let me repeat that.
Absolutely nothing's going to change.
It's possible the price of Macintoshes will go down, but I wouldn't put bank on it. Otherwise, this is a total non-event for the life of any Macintosh user not at the developer level, and only a minor event at the developer level. Compared to the transition from OS 9 to OS X, this is barely worth even obsessive Mac fan attention. It's nothing compared to the ever present "is there going to be a G5/next gen powerbook for next year?" question.
There is exactly one thing I'd love for this to mean, and I haven't heard one way or the other yet about it. If this means that Intel-based Macs will be able to run WINE in X11 -- WINE being a windows emulator -- that in turn will let me run current versions of WordPerfect (with their beautiful 5.1/DOS mode) with less trouble than dosbox gives me running it, I'm going to buy Steve Jobs a nice new coffee maker.
Otherwise... honestly. The only question the end-user should ever ask about a new model computer running his preferred operating system is "is it faster than my current computer?" With the followup question of "is it faster enough to justify upgrading my current computer?" It's not like we ever have to look at the processor. It's not like we ever have to care. And it's sure as Hell not like Intel is somehow dark and dirty compared to clean, bright, pristine, beautiful, pure and virtuous Motorola and IBM.
Intel or PowerPC based, they're still going to be Macs. Let's keep that in perspective.
Yellow Dog, on the other hand, is in major trouble.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:47 AM | Comments (31)
-->Eric Burns-White: On the other hand, McDuck would certainly shop at vintage clothing stores, so long as they were less expensive instead of more expensive.
(From Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break! Click on the thumbnail for full sized habadashary!)
One of these days, somewhere between update the fucking Lexicon already and finish the fucking Shortbreads already, I have update my three core daily trawls already, you fuck!. This is because the trawls as they exist are desperately out of date. I've added a great number of things to the daily check and taken a few out (over to the Sporadically Checked list, generally). Folks like Jennie Breedan of The Devil's Panties and Steve Troop of the venerable (yeah, he'll love that) Melonpool and Misha and Crash over at Cheshire Grin deserve acknowledgment, and they're just the tip of the iceberg.
One of the others who deserves her rightful place on the trawl is the extraordinary Jin Wicked, who is a wonderfully evocative pen and ink illustrator and artist, and artist and cocreator of Asylum on 5th Street, and the webcartoonist of today's special subject, Crap I Drew on my Lunch Break. See, if I don't put these folks on the trawls, the only way they come up in conversation is when a strip strikes me and I snark it.
Which is of course where we are today.
Today's strip is a good showcase for Wicked's exceptional art skills. She has some of the tightest hatching I've ever seen (how her hand doesn't fall off is beyond me), and her characters are evocative and fun. They remind me, in design, of the good folks over at Goats, though from a much more art-centric point of view.
Today's strip is also gut bustingly funny, in my never-quite-humble opinion. The idea of Scrooge McDuck drinking absinthe and listening to Specimen provokes giggles.
So. A good enough reason to bring the strip up. Now if I just got around to updating these things....
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:58 AM | Comments (38)
-->June 6, 2005
Eric Burns-White: I can't tell you about this.
So. I can't tell you about this.
There's non-disclosure agreements involved, you see.
Dude.
Dude.
I am having an incredibly good day.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:23 PM | Comments (23)
-->Eric Burns-White: Due diligence
I would be remiss if I didn't mention there was a good dissenting essay about my Digital Strips/Penny Arcade Snark over at Goats. Jon Rosenberg calls bullshit on me and does it well.
(I still stand by my essay, mind -- but I respect Rosenberg's dissent.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:28 PM | Comments (57)
-->Eric Burns-White: On pretentiousness, movies, and stuffing kids into metaphorical lockers.
I should have written this snark five days ago.
It's not going to make me any friends, mind. Not on either side of this little debate. But that's no excuse for not having written it then. Still, it's something that needs to be written, because the issue seems to be growing instead of shrinking, and it's time that there be a little bit of reality thrown down for everyone. Or, at the very least, time for me to prove I can be as much of an asshole as anyone.
For the record, several years ago a production company called Top Two Three Films began putting together a documentary on digital comics, examining the crash of print comics in the bust of the 90's, and the rise of digital venues for comics. Obviously, there's a lot of Reinventing Comics thrown in for good measure. And they interviewed tons of people, ranging from Joey Manley to John Byrne, to get their perspectives on... well, what was going on with all this.
They're in post production at this point, and they've released a trailer for the documentary, which is now called Adventures Into Digital Comics. I've watched this trailer, as have many others. If you want to see it for yourself, you can go to their main page and request it.
I should have written this several days ago. I really should have. I'm sorry I didn't. Maybe I kept thinking people would figure out what they were saying... what they were doing... and start doing the right thing. But it didn't work out.
If you watch the trailer, you see a lot of... well, 2001-2002 attitudes towards what was going on with the web. And you see a lot of quotes taken. Out of context, of course -- we haven't seen the movie yet, so we don't know if these are just pull quotes designed to drum up interest or if they're a fair representation of what the movie is about. Someone talks about... well, the infinite canvas, more or less. Someone else talks about the fact that you don't need to be concerned about commercial concerns on the web -- you can honestly make art for its own sake. And others say other things. Scott McCloud makes his requisite appearance. Really, it'd be surprising if he didn't.
And the whole thing is bookended by Cat Garza, of Magic Inkwell. And Garza talks about... well, something that every documentary about art since the invention of the moving picture has talked about -- the barriers to the artist, to experimentation, to innovation in the art world. Doors being shut and the like. I've heard it before. I've heard it all my life. As long as I've had any interest in art of any stripe, there has been the voice of the avant garde saying "we're being held back. The Man fears us. They want the nice, the safe, the things they know we can sell. They hate real art, and we have to take art back from them!"
And, as long as artists have been saying that, it's largely not been true.
Yes, it is true that experimental art often can't find publishers or sponsors. In a lot of ways, this is natural. Publishers and sponsors are generally looking for the innovative, but their impulse is rarely artistic or altruistic. They want the "next big thing." This is why it's important to have a National Endowment of the Arts. This is why it's important to have colleges where art is studied and taught and where artists have a chance to produce. It is important. Art does matter.
And this is the monumental revolution of the World Wide Web. Illustrators and cartoonists, pushing the limits of sequential art, experimenting and finding the next innovation and trend and movement and piece of brilliance, are free to do so at little or no cost.
But don't kid yourself. Innovative and brilliant sequential artists and illustrators and cartoonists are being published. I live in fucking New Hampshire, which is not known for being an artistic mecca. But if I drive to my nearest comic book store and walk in, I can pick up James Kolchalka on the shelf. I can pick up Flight. And for that matter, I can pick up PvP or Knights of the Dinner Table or Nodwick. They have Girl Genius there, and Vertigo titles, and compilations. They have Derek Kirk Kim.
And it's important, at this juncture, to mention Derek Kirk Kim. Because we talk a lot about how our major success stories are PvP and Penny Arcade and Sluggy Freelance and Something Positive. And here's Derek Kirk Kim, who had webcomics, and promoted his webcomics. And then sold his print collections of his webcomics.
And then won the Harvey, the Ignatz and the Eisner Awards. And got written up by Time Fucking Magazine. And who gets grants and who is talked about the way earlier generations talked about Dan Clowes or R. Crumb, and who is no doubt being courted by major publishers at this point.
So yeah. The myth of the Man keeping down artists and closing doors to artists is just that: a myth. It's up there with the myth that the Comics Syndicates don't want funny strips or controversy or good storytelling in lieu of continual retreads of Hagar the Horrible. It's just not true.
But... to take Cat Garza to task for it is patently ridiculous. This attitude, like I said, has been part of art for generations. It's just part of the playing field. It is no surprise that the producers of the documentary would pull this stuff up for the trailer. This stuff plays well among their target audience. This stuff helps sell the film. The kinds of people who'll watch a documentary about online comics are the kind of people who want to believe in the myth of the man keeping down artists out of fear and ignorance and hatred. Trust me on this. I'm a college educated Liberal. I got the memo with my diploma.
Still, there has to be a certain amount of understanding on the part of the dreamers and visionaries that this is pretentious, and it's also... well, not true. And easy to deflate a little. And part of that stems from the fact that Garza's comments are years old. If he were interviewed today, I suspect Garza would talk about different things. I suspect most of the interviewees would. It's been a couple of years -- otherwise known as several lifetimes on the Internet. Things are different. Things have changed.
At the same time, I'm excited for this movie. I'm excited over anything that gives people who don't know the first thing about webcomics some idea that we exist. I'm excited over any mass media treatment that doesn't superimpose BAM, ZAP, BOOM and BIFF! across the screen when talking about sequential art. I'm excited over anything that might help broaden the audience for webcomics, particularly among those people who might not have any interest in all over newspaper comic strips or superhero comic books -- the sort of people the Graphic Novel Review says they're trying to hook -- the mainstream folks who bought gobs and gobs of copies of Maus and went to see Crumb in droves. We want those people checking out online comics -- and to be blunt, those people are more likely to want to read things on Modern Tales or infinite canvas experimentation than they are likely to read Sluggy Freelance or PvP. This is definitely a documentary pitched towards the art appreciation crowd. And getting them to come by the webcomics tent would be a good thing for the development of webcomics as a whole. It honestly would. We have to get something other than geek-fandoms and gamers as our majority sooner or later if more people are going to start making a living at this.
Scott Kurtz weighed in on this and did so moderately well. He elaborated on why he felt the trailer (remember -- no one has seen the movie yet) didn't serve the webcomics community particularly well. You might disagree with him, but at least this time he didn't throw gasoline on the fire. Had Kurtz's comments been the only ones, I wouldn't have had to write this, and I wouldn't feel so badly about waiting.
Shaenon Garrity also weighed in, on the other side of the equation. She talked about how excited she was that the film was coming out, and some of what she hoped from it, and she was overwhelmingly thrilled to announce she was one of the interviewees. She's also not why I needed to write this snark, and why I feel badly.
Checkerboard Nightmare weighed in today too. Dogpiling, to a degree (though at least he was somewhat funny and pointed out the true foible that all the interviews are old). Still, Straub's comments made me realize this wouldn't go away. And I did need to write this snark.
Because at the start of all this, Penny Arcade weighed in, with both a strip, and a rant.
Everyone who's read Websnark for a while knows I like Aaron Sorkin a great deal. And they should know that his Sports Night was a particular favorite of mine. Well, there was one evocative episode I'm thinking of right now, where Jeremy has gone out to produce his first solo remote segment. It's a hunting segment, and they shoot a deer, and Jeremy has a panic attack and has to be hospitalized. Justifying himself, he says the following:
Yeah. Bob and Eddie were using the IR-50 Recon by Bushcomber. It's got a sixteen-inch microgrooved barrel with 30-30 mags, side-scope mount, wire- cutter sheath, quick-release bolt, mag catches and a three pound trigger. So I figured we must be going after a pretty dangerous duck. We shot a deer. [...] There was a special vest they had me wear so that they could distinguish me from things they wanted to shoot, and I was pretty grateful for that. Almost the whole day had gone by, we hadn't gotten anything. Eddie was getting frustrated and Bob Shoemaker was getting embarrassed. My camera guy needed to re-load so I told everybody to take a ten minute break. There was a stream nearby and I walked over with this care-package Natalie made me. I sat down and when I looked up I saw three of them; small, bigger, biggest. Recognizable to any species on the face of the planet as a child, a mother and a father. Now, the trick in shooting deer is you gotta get 'em out in the open. And it's tough with deer, 'cause these are clever, cagey animals with an intuitive sense of danger. You know what you have to do to get a deer out in the open? You hold out a twinkie. That animal clopped up to me like we were at a party. She seemed to be pretty interested in the twinkie, so I gave it to her. Looking back, she'd have been better off if I'd given her the damn vest. And Bob kind of screamed at me in whisper, "Move away!" The camera had been re-loaded and it looked like the day wasn't gonna be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don't play bridge and go to the prom, but you can't tell me that the little one didn't know who his mother was. That's gotta mean something. And later, at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting and how it related to the native American Indians. And I nodded and I said that was interesting while I was thinking about what a load of crap it was. Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food and it was clothes and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin -- and they knew the gods wouldn't be so generous next time. What we did wasn't food and it wasn't shelter and it sure wasn't sports. It was just mean.
Cat Garza is a good artist. He's one of those rare infinite canvas artists I like and respect, because you can see him honestly trying to push his limits, push the limits of the medium, push something as he works. He really is experimental. He really is trying. You might think it's all bullshit or pretentious or whatever, but he doesn't. He believes it.
And he's not been a success story in webcomics. His output has dropped way down, because he's got bills to pay and a family to feed. He believes, with all his heart, but he doesn't get to play fucking video games for a living. He does this because he loves it, and he believes in it, and in the end it hasn't gone where he wanted, and if you have no empathy for that then you're just a stone cold bastard, whether you believe him or not.
Do you have any idea what Cat Garza must have felt to see that trailer? Do you have any idea what that must have meant to him? He was the centerpiece of a trailer for a movie, talking about a subject that means the world to him. For that one, brief moment it must have all seemed worth it to him. It must have seemed like maybe -- just maybe -- he has had a profound influence on this medium that he loves.
And then comes Penny Arcade to take a gigantic, massive dump on him for it.
It's like Krahulik and Holkins are so desperate to be cool that they're emulating the jocks in high school. It's like they're abusing the people weaker than they are because they know it'll make the cool kids laugh, and prove they're cool. It's like they're abused children, who get big enough so they can abuse children of their own -- their lunch money got taken away and they felt weird and awkward and weak -- Jesus Christ, look at those freaks. They play video games way too much. They're, like, obsessed! Hey, let's go smack them around! Let's go stuff them into lockers! That'll be funny! -- and now they've got hundreds of thousands of people reading them. They've fucking won. They beat the assholes who used to rag on them once and for all, because those assholes are working fucking retail and Krahulik and Holkins get to play video games for a living. And so now they're taking glee in tormenting this guy who's never done a thing to them and who couldn't do a thing to them if he wanted to. They mock how he looks and what he says and they just generally tear him down at the moment when he probably felt the best about himself and his art as he ever had.
That's not funny. That's not a joke. That's not editorializing and it sure as Hell isn't deflating the pretensions of others. It's. Just. Mean.
I should have written this on the day. I should have opened up my web browser, gone to Movable Type, and said in a loud, clear, and utterly clear voice fuck you, you assholes!. I didn't, and I'm ashamed of myself because I didn't.
For the record, I'm fat and goofy looking, with a beard. I wear a lot of polo shirts. There isn't a cool bone in my body. If they want to caricature me and make me look lame and stupid, it'll be easy. And also for the record, there's no chance in Hell they give even the slightest damn what I say about them. I'm nothing to them. Every person who reads Websnark could stop reading Penny Arcade tomorrow, and it'd barely show up as a blip in their page views. Whereas I know from direct and personal experience that parts of their fan base are more than willing to bury people they don't like in negative e-mail.
But that doesn't change the simple, inexorable fact that what they did was pure, unadulterated bullying. It was kicking the weird kids who liked different things than they did. It was mean. They should be ashamed of themselves. How dare they take that pinnacle moment from Cat Garza? How dare they piss on all the people who might -- just might -- have been feeling good about this? Who the fuck are they?
I'm looking forward to this movie. I think it can do some good. I'm also glad that the people involved with it are proud of it. And if I disagree with parts -- if I feel that it's outdated in places and extols artistic myths in others -- I also think that everyone involved was speaking in good faith. I think those folks need to know they came off as pretentious. But I think trashing them for it was a horrible thing to do. And it colors Scott Kurtz's rant, because it makes it seem like Kurtz is piling on, and making Garza even more of a chump. And it colors Straub's comic, because it makes him seem like he's piling on too.
It's all happened, and it's all in the past, and there is nothing at all to be done for it now. And everyone involved should recognize both where they're being deluded and where they're being intolerant. But even though the Penny Arcade guys can't take it back, at the very least someone should tell them that was a shitty thing to do. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
And if that means I get buried again, so fucking be it.
At least I don't have to be ashamed of myself for saying nothing any more.
I'm sorry, Mr. Garza. I'm sorry this happened to you.
And I'm sorry I didn't write this five days ago.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:50 AM | Comments (85)
-->June 5, 2005
Eric Burns-White: On the WCCA bandwagon
The 2005 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards nominations list is out. This is my first year being able to vote, what being a webcomics writer now and all. So, I went over and voted now, because... well, I can't sleep. And besides, I blew nominations. I put in a few placeholders and thoughts and random bits in... and then didn't get back until after nominations were finished. So, rather than put it off until it was too late, I figured it'd be best to just get it done.
For the most part, I agree with the nominations (with the occasional "what the fuck" moment that crops up on any list of nominees). There were several categories that I had to wrestle with -- Outstanding Comedic Comic, for example, had a quarter ton of excellent choices. Picking a winner from it was simply not simple.
I'd tell you my choices, but I'd rather wait until voting closes. If you're a webcartoonist and reading my words, go check the list out, follow links to the unfamiliar strips, weigh your choices and put your votes in. If you're not, go check out the nominee list, and feel free to comment down in the comments section.
Going to take another run at sleep now.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:32 AM | Comments (17)
