Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Great post over on Bob Byrne's blog at Clamnuts.com. Bob produces excellent
Irish comics, including a free one called
The Shiznit. His current blog post is about a work in progress, based on old style newspaper comics.
Bob and his friend, Brian, came up with the idea of a comic strip which deals with the issue of racism in Irish society with regard to immigrants. I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who has the ability to deal with real issues in any shape or form in their chosen medium... especially a piece like this which is presented in a tongue in cheek fashion, rather than a preachy manner.
It is likely to offend mind you, it appears pretty racist at first glance, until you reach the end of the tale.
Bob's post shows the comic in it's entirety but is looking for feedback on which ending to use; they have two possible endings at the moment- one written by Bob and one written by Brian. Brian's ending includes the word 'nigger' which tends to be contentious...
I wouldn't have any problem with the use of the word Nigger for this purpose, however I think Bob's ending reads better and gets the message across more clearly.
See what you think and leave a comment - if you have an ending you think would work better than either, Bob is eager to hear that too!
Friday, May 26, 2006
Ah yes,
this week's funny cartoon is indeed a funny cartoon. Well, I like to think so, and I imagine Bif does too. I'm sure our critics will slaughter us for such obvious word play, but to hell with 'em, it cracks me up...! :D
The title is also a good one, if quite bizarre. Nice to be sinus? What the hell does that mean? Only Bif knows he texted it to me a moment ago. It was so oddly right for the cartoon I didn't ask any questions.
Another thing I like about this weeks cartoon is that it if you now go to
the cartoon page there are four cartoons that I really like displaying.
Sometimes there'll be one I'm not so happy with, or even sometimes I'll feel that we're going through a weak patch (or I am) and all four will seem substandard, but right now I think we're on top form if that page is anything to go by.
For those of you who may be reading this in the future and wonder which four cartoons were on display, they are:
It's nice to be sinus...Shafted...Once more with feeling...A Burning Question...
Friday, May 19, 2006
This weeks cartoon continues the return to our more regular style, with a fairly straightforward gag. It's pretty late here and I'm exhausted, so I'll just say I was happy with my monster/alien drawing... and with the general layout of the cartoon.
Oh, and I searched everywhere for a word for 'fear of elevators'
but it seems there may not be one...
Anyone?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Talking to a friend, and regular reader of BifSniff.com, he mentioned he was glad to see we had returned to our 'regular style'. In case you're new to BifSniff, I'm the artist for the cartoons (Bif writes them), and I was going through what
Bif described as some kind of 'mid-artistic-life crises' - we developed a style for the cartoons, but after doing one a week for well over a year (my god, approaching the two year mark soon!!!) I had grown tired of the style. I needed to experiment. Plus, the style we had developed for creating the cartoons was
quite labour intensive. And
BifSniff doesn't make us any money, so sometimes the amount of time we devote to it has to be weighed against the monetary return! (Although I noticed the other day that our adsense earnings are up, but more on that in another post soon... )
Anyway, to get back on point, I started experimenting with styles for the cartoons. With mixed results. Over the last couple of months you will have noticed less consistency than usual around here. I played around with several ideas...
a sketchier style,
multi panel -
twice - more subtle changes were tried also such as just
tweaking the way characters are drawn, and even tried
a kind of hybrid style too.
And then I returned to the regular style. And to be honest, its nice to have it back!
I have enjoyed doing the last few cartoons in the regular style. I think I just needed a break from the style, and I think the experimentation was worthwhile. I do think from time to time we will continue to experiment and branch out, but the 'regular style' of the cartoons will never be replaced fully.
What also interests me about playing with the styles is how it affects the humour. Experimenting with styles was difficult sometimes because occasionaly if I had been using the regular style i would have felt I got the humour accross, but in changing style I wondered if I had drained the joke of humour!
Any thoughts our readers have on the 'funniness' of the different styles would be welcomed... Sometimes I think a less elaborate style would serve the humour better, but I think the regular style has a richness (mostly from the colour and shading) that lends itself to the humour. Dont ask me why... maybe Ill give it some more serious thought and post again... any thoughts you have in the meantime would be greatly appreciated!
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Ah yes,
this weeks cartoon features a healthy mix of geek humour and politics... :)
First of all, sorry it's late. I am on the road with a play at the moment and while I was very organised the last two weeks, I slipped up this week...
Anyway, I must say I like this weeks cartoon, it's a nice idea and I do like it when we stray into the political. It's something I'd like to do a bit more of, but I don't think myself or Bif keep our finger on the pulse enough to really do it with any regularity!
The good news is that Bif has come up with a very nice idea for a t-shirt which is based on this weeks cartoon. It's a very simple idea, but one I really like.
Because I'm on the road, it's hard to say when exactly this t-shirt will be available, but I thought I would put some feelers out to see if I vould guage if there would be any interest in it. It's one I will get myself I reckon, so I am optimistic :P
Here's the idea anyway, I hope to get this sorted in a week or so:
If you think you would be into getting one of these t-shirts, please leave a comment below so we can get an idea if it's worth doing at all. I think it'll be worth doing, it's a nice cross over of tech-nerd humour which we all love and a political statement...
Anyway, please leave your opinions below, be they good bad or indifferent!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
We got our hands on the Bosco DVD, and needless to say we were very excited, our hands trembled as we loaded it in the player, our hearts skipped a beat when the familiar theme began playing and a flood of childhood images bombarded us... then we hit fast forward because Boscos voice was far more grating then we remembered... we viewed the entire disc on fast forward, stopping to play parts we remembered lovingly from our youth... but we reached the end of the DVD and there was no Sign of Flaherty OR Faherty. Not a dog in a garden in sight.
Devastated.
However all was not lost - on a road trip from Dublin to Cork we stopped in Mitchelstown to get some crisps and who did I see at the counter? The answerer of all bizarre questions in Ireland -
Ray Darcy himself.
He nodded hello to me as I was staring at him trying to figure out was it really him, so I dived in and asked him would he accept a '
Fix-it-Friday' question in person... 'Go on so...' he said, with a grin-and-bear it expression on his face. A true gentleman.
I ran the scenario past him very quickly and he was very definite that he hadn't a clue what the answer was. BUT he said text in because one of the girls working on his radio show was none other than BOSCO'S DAUGHTER and he would find out the definitive answer for me!
At this point I would like to thank Ray for being so nice about the whole affair, when he was trying to get some petrol and the newspaper on a Sunday - if petrol stations had security I probably would have called them if it were me.
ANYWAY... I texted a huge long text into Ray's show about the Flaherty affair, BUT... I'm on the road at the moment and we are doing a show which takes place in the morning and so we only catch a small bit of Ray's show before we have to pile out of the van and set up... so I have no idea if the question was answered!!!
Anyone here the answer on the Ray Darcy show? Please leave a comment!!!
Oh, and if Ray Darcy reads this by any chance - Karen loves you.
