Thursday, October 27, 2005
We haven't been very organised here at BifSniff.com lately. It was always our intention to stockpile cartoons so that we would have a catalogue to choose from ahead of time. If I went on holiday or got sick, there would be a backlog of cartoons for Bif to upload in my absence.
It never happened.
And lately we have been doing the cartoons last minute. It's no longer only my fault though - while Bif always has a stockpile of ideas, he has lately been waiting until the last minute to refine and polish the ideas.
Heh heh heh, I knew I'd bring him around to my way of thinking! What this has meant is that the last couple of cartoons have been somewhat more collaborative than usual.
All the concepts are Bif's and, admittedly, the final wordings are all his - but I have been contributing to the
shaping of them a bit more lately.
Take this week's cartoon for example: The process basically involved Bif
Skyping me a cartoon, me explaining why I don't get it and sending him a different angle on it - which Bif quickly explains is badly phrased, lets the cat out of the bag too early and is way too obvious.
Bif then sends me the current cartoon. Which I think nails it.
I think my awful suggestions scare Bif's creative mind into coming up with the right captions...!
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Stumbled across this
lovely blog of Elodie G's today, most of the entries are in the form of a drawn journal instead of just plain old text. Entries often feature some text too, but mostly in French so haven't a clue what she says. Some of the drawn entries are in English though, coz she's living in the UK, and they are are really excellent.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Just in case you miss it, I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that
Ning have posted an encouraging response to my post.
In short,
Ning plan to roll out options which would allow me to create BifSniff battle without having to license the cartoons for commercial use.
Yay! This is good news.
I'll take this opportunity to say also that Ning has the potential to develop into a very interesting resource - especially if they continue to roll out changes and further options based on user feedback... just to balance my initial disappointment with the user agreement :)
If creative minds get to work in the Ning playground we might all end up with free access to some very useful and easy to implement apps to compliment our sites. I hope apps like BifSniff Battle are only the very tippy top of the iceberg...
Sunday, October 23, 2005
I'm disappointed. Everybody was talking about
Ning. Ning is a 'playground' where you can develop your own social apps. Allegedly. Whatever that means.
So I checked it out, and it's some kind of platform for making it easy to develop social software... yeah I know, I'm not sure what that means either. But I noticed they had a 'battle' type application, and you can clone this application and edit it to make your own.
I immediately thought it would be excellent to have a BifSniff Battle application!!! You know, like
Webcomic Battle but with ONLY BifSniff cartoons in it...
It would be something like the
girl battle application or the
beer battle, only I edited the app to only allow me to upload so it would only be BifSniff stuff.
So I applied for Ning developer status, and waited and waited for it to come through as they are 'throttling' the addition of developers while they are in start up phase.
But to my delight it arrived today. So I dashed in, cloned the battle app and set up BifSniff Battle. However if you visit
BifSniff Battle you will be disappointed. There is nothing there.
'Why, oh why?' I hear you crying out in frustration... well, it's because of the user agreement and how it handles content:
Your Content remains yours. Full stop. We claim no ownership interest in the Content you provide on Applications running on the Ning Playground. However, we also want to encourage sharing of Content between Users and Applications across the Ning Playground. To this end, by uploading Content to an Application, you grant to Ning and all other Users and Developers a Creative Commons Attribution License or SImilar License to your Content.
If you want to license your Content under a license different from the Creative Commons Attribution License, you can, as long as you comply with this paragraph. Your Content license must be a “Similar License,” where it: (1) permits everyone to copy, distribute, display, and perform the Content and create derivative works of the Content, for both commercial and noncommercial purposes and (2) imposes no restrictions or conditions on the licensee, except that the license may require reasonable attribution of the copyright owner, may require the licensee to identify the license terms to others, and may include a disclaimer of warranties. If you want your Content to be licensed under a Similar License, you have to explicitly state the license terms at the end of your Content entry.
I have made the problematic bit bold.
Commercial use? No restrictions? Whaaaat?
Ok, open source and creative commons licenses are all very well. Admirable even. I'm all for it. But isn't this a bridge too far?
I mean... Ning isn't open source itself. If it was I could understand their wanting to perpetuate this spirit of openness and selflessness. But it isn't. As far as I know anyhoo. Ning is a commercial venture which fully intends to
figure out how to make money from their social experiment.
I think this may well prove to be a shortfall for Ning unless they change the license. Copy, distribute and share are one thing, but commercial use? No way.
Even copy, distribute and share should be optional in my opinion, and I imagine a lot of creative people will feel the same. Photographers, artists, musicians... all people who might have fantastic uses for Ning - especially as it develops into an easier interface and provides more options.
But I don't see any way these creative minds will put time and effort into developing creative uses of the Ning platform only to find they have given away the rights for others to use their work commercially. AND have Ning make a buck from it.
In fact it's so insane, please tell me I'm wrong. Please tell me I misunderstood the license and that creators are not giving away commercial rights to their content on Ning!
Or at least someone explain to me why this license is required.
I hope they change this user agreement, until they do any of my work, including the BifSniff cartoons will definitely be kept away from Ning.
And Ning would have been a better, brighter place with a BifSniff Battle - don't you think?
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Got my
Zoinks! webomics newspaper in the post today! Thanks Bill!
So, a big congratulations to the Zoinks team, it's a great publication. I'm off on holidays tomorrow, so I haven't had a chance to read it cover to cover, but I read all the strips and two very good articles - which is testament to the quality of the paper: I really didn't have time to even glance at it, not to mention posting this, but I wanted to let you know about it!
Of course the newspaper benefits greatly from having our '
F. O'Bourke' cartoon in it... :P
Actually, our cartoon suffers a little from being in black and white - the red blood really adds to it in full technicolour. Wouldn't it be lovely to have a full colour webcomic magazine?? I know, I know, it would be crazy costly and push the price up and wouldn't actually be worth it at all... but we can dream right?
Anyway, I shouldn't harp on that because the newspaper is extremely good quality, I was impressed with the quality of the articles. I read an interesting interview with
Andrew Kaiko, creator of 'Norm and Cory' and I read a really great article and interview about
Blank Label Comics.
The articles are well written, informative and entertaining, and the interviews actually ask pertinent questions which elicit answers that are really of interest - not just the usual self-marketing drivel I have come to expect from so many other sources!
Also, we are delighted to be in it ourselves alongside other really great webcomics such as
Dinosaur Comics,
Voices in my Hand,
White Ninja,
Digital Strips and LOADS of others. We're keeping damn good company these days.
Myself and Bif live within twenty minutes walk from each other but we rarely meet up, opting instead to stay at our keyboards, at a safe distance.
Communicating via instant messaging provides an invaluable resource in the form of records of conversations. I thought this one might interest one or two people (me and bif probably) as it illustrates further how we work together.
We made the decision a while back to use recurring characters, which we felt would add to the whole BifSniff experience, and this conversation primarily revolved around who should star in
this weeks funny cartoon.
Frank says: what toon should i be working on as we speak?? Frank says: :)Frank says: hang on.. phone...bif says: i was thinking Gray's Anatomybif says: but that's largely because my brain is fried and i can't thinkFrank says: ha ha haFrank says: it's a good one. let's go with itbif says: thank GodFrank says: :Pbif says: what name is being used in itFrank says: well, it's reg... but i wonder should it be Stephen again...bif says: nah, i was thinking maybe Doctor SinghFrank says: hmmm...Frank says: i get you... but he's not very sinister looking...Frank says: guess I can change that when I redraw him...Frank says: mind you he *is* a doctor...bif says: yeah?Frank says: whereas Reg is a thug and Stephen is a psycho who might have medical delusions...Frank says: both of whom would be scarier with a scalpel perhaps?bif says: truebif says: but it's a little too early for another StephenFrank says: well, that's what i thought... but then I thought again and I realised that it might not be - because it's not a Stephen *heart* based cartoon...bif says: and Reg has kind of lost ground to Clive in my mindFrank says: yeah, I wasn't happy with the way I drew Reg anyway, so if we do a Reg it should be a different reg most likely.Frank says: As far as characters go, I think this is most suited to Stephen...bif says: and we maybe shouldn't be too worried about how quickly characters reoccurFrank says: yeah, I think really we should only worry about recurring themes...Frank says: ie, the devil hands one would be too close to the boss's wandering handsFrank says: too close too soon I meanbif says: yup, so go with StephenFrank says: great.Frank says: now i just have to figure out how to draw it...bif says: good luck and god blessFrank says: ha ha haThis is how decisions get made on BifSniff. At the last minute.. ;)
Really though, it's interesting (to me at least) how BifSniff.com takes shape - we do actually meet up semi-regularly to discuss direction and so on, but little ongoing decisions like this fine tune the whole process... so from now on you may be noticing even more recurring characters.
By the way... resident psychopath Stephen now has three cartoons:
The current
Gray's Anatomy, the recent
Have a Heart and Februaries
The Last Romantic.
Found an old
article on comixpedia about using creative commons licensing on webcomics.
To be honest, it's not a great article, but it gives food for thought.
Creative commons "lets copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others, through a variety of licensing and contract schemes, which may include dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms."
Unfortunately despite an impressive panel, the article doesn't deal with any of the questions web comic artists themselves are likely to have about implementing such a licensing scheme.
Might be worth looking into for BifSniff though.
Guess we'll just have to do the research ourselves. (shock & horror!)
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Unbelievable. I mis-spelled 'Bif' in the navigation bar for the site and I only notice now. Bif never noticed either mind you, and it's his name. I spelled it 'Biff'. I'll fix it tomorrow, so hopefully a lot of you reading this won't even see it... ;)
pssst.... wanna see
Bif naked?
You can imagine how scared I was when I saw this turn up in a search result...
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Another quick late night illustration Friday sketch. What has this one to do with lost? Well you may ask. The answer lies lost somewhere in the evolution from concept to finished product... suffice to say this robot is most certainly lost.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
The things you find when aimlessly browsing the web at 4am...
Yup, 8.6 on the silktide site score website. I have no idea why this should matter to us, but you can't help but be chuffed at an 8.6 no matter who gives it to you or why. Leastways not at 4am you can't.
Of course they don't tell you how to improve your score, but I guess that's because they are a web development company and are hoping those with low scores will hire them to help get a better score...
Apparently we are "extremely well linked to" and "reasonably popular". They gave us a 10 for accessibility and a 9.9 for design.
It's fun, if you have a site run it through and see if you learn anything interesting. But don't take it too seriously!
Friday, October 07, 2005
First off, sorry the cartoon is late. I do my best to update the site on Thursday nights so that the cartoon is up and ready to be viewed on Friday morning. But I went off to visit my brother and got stuck into some work which went on a bit longer than we anticipated. So apologies for that... but at least I managed to get it up while it's still Friday!!!
So
this weeks funny cartoon features Brian and Martin who must currently be the BifSniff characters with the most exposure. You might have seen them previously in such funny cartoons as "
Tall Tales" and "
Music Depreciation"
I like this weeks cartoon and I think the humour is enhanced by repeat exposure to the characters. Their personalities are begining to show through I think - I know I am hardly impartial, but it even makes me smile to see Brian's joyous expression barely change from situation to situation...
Single panel cartoons are hard to produce. You have to have get so much across in one image and one short piece of explanatory text. I personally like the direction the repeat characters is taking us because while I believe the cartoons still stand on their own, their humour-value is increased by previous knowledge of the characters.
Wow. What a way to make something fun sound really boring. Way to go Frank.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Yup, it finally happened. I got around to
updating our shop section of the site. Well,
I did promise I would.
So now we have a much better looking shop area, with a much more integrated shop using
Spreadshirt to run the shops. I say shops (plural) because we not have a Euro shop and a US Dollars shop, so you've no excuse not to buy!
Not to mention the fact that our t-shirt design is so super-fantastisch that you will just HAVE to buy one anyway.
This is just the first of many t-shirt designs we will be producing... I'll keep you posted.
"Illustration Friday is a weekly illustration challenge. A topic is posted every Friday and then participants have all week to come up with their own interpretation."
My sister told me about this site, and I thought I would check it out. When I did the topic for the week was 'Float'. It immediately reminded me of a dream I had when I was in college (long times ago) and I decided to actually participate in Illustration Friday instead of just talking about it here.
I didn't do a great job though. I spent ten minutes at it and failed to get the result I wanted. "What do you expect in ten minutes??" I hear you say... but it's 3am and I have to turn in, so here's what I ended up with:
"What the hell is that??" <- readers voice (remember that in comics when you were a kid?)
Anyway, it would take too long to explain what it is, and like I said I have to hit the sack. So I'll leave it up to your imaginations. Leave a comment and tell me what you think it is. This'll be like free therapy for me.
I'm not going to do
Illustration Friday every week, but maybe from time to time I'll lash together a quick sketch like tonight for it. It's a great idea, especially if you have the time and don't leave it until 3am.
You can even
sign up for an email to let you know what the topics are every week... currently you have to then notify the site that you participated. It'd be nice if you could 'tag' your illustrations or something to automatically ping the site somehow...
