Friday, April 29, 2005
Oh it's all change at BifSniff Cartoons, kind of. Along with our regular size
free cartoon, we're now offering a
free automatically updating mini cartoon for blogs. Frank has gone and moved the musings to the front page, so I'll have to reign in my apathy and disinterest somewhat. So ok, that's not all change but it's change enough for me.
Anyway, with regards the mini-toons, I have to send out a big-up - is that the right term Frank? You're hip and happening aren't you? Ok, forget that, I'll just stick to what I know. With regards the mini-toons, I have to send out a gracious thank you to
Brad Fitzpatrick. It was he who first gave me the idea of doing mini-toons for your blog - specifically by
doing it first.
Announced over at
Comixpedia, online comic strip
Melonpool is nine years old. That means he's been online longer than
Sluggy Freelance,
User Friendly and
PVP - three of the biggest players in online comics - and yet I've never even heard of it before. Still, impressive stuff all the same.
To finish off today's post I've got
this. Very well done but, somehow, just so, so wrong.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Get a new mini
BifSniff Cartoon for your blog every week. Following on from offering a free automatically updating cartoon for online syndication, BifSniff Cartoons are now offering a
scaled down version for blogs.
Such is the nature of our funny cartoons, that we believe they are best enjoyed
alongside other content. It's been the traditional role of the single panel cartoon to slot into a magazine or paper and act as it's light relief. So while some people will enjoy the collected works as they appear on
BifSniff.com, they'll mostly work better as a smile-inducing momentary distraction.
This brings us round to the fastest growing and most profligate of content delivery systems on the internet - weblogs. BifSniff Cartoons are themselves delivered through a blog and have been gaining great popularity amongst the blogging community. So it is, from our perspective, an entirely natural progression to offer our free automatically updating cartoons in a blog friendly form. These new Mini-BifSniffs are specifically designed to slot into a weblogs side-bar.
All you have to do to have a BifSniff Cartoon on your blog is cut-and-paste our free code into your site. The code for both regular and mini BifSniff Cartoons is
available here.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Is today's
funny cartoon a desperate swipe at our rampant consumer-obsessed culture or us trying to crack that ever so lucrative geek/sci-fi market. It could be either or it could be neither. I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder because if you were to ask me, I'd say fuck off and leave me alone. If, on the other hand, you asked Frank,
you'd probably end up saying fuck off and leave me alone. Funny how that is.
A
new study, funded by the
Carnegie Corporation of New York, has discovered the shocking news that more and more 18-34 year olds are turning to the internet for their intake of news. Really, I wonder why? I also wonder how you go about getting funding to do a survey of the completely obvious - but that's a side-issue really. What really surprised Merrill Brown, founding editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com and author of the report, was the credibility issue. So, seemingly, he found it 'startling' that people no longer took the word of journalists as gospel. Only a journalist could possibly be left aghast by such a revelation. Of course, I could be taking him completely out of context but I think that's what the hippie at the back of the room might call karmic justice.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
I finally got round to reading
Eric Burn's latest
feeding snarky, after reading a post on
webcomic Finds. Basically this month's
comixpedia is the, like, women's issue - that's women's issue, not women's issues - and Eric wrote a piece about how he never reads anything in
Girlamatic. Now he explained in great detail about why and how he knows that he's not really being rational about it etc etc. As per usual a debate has started and you could be saying, well you know, aren't you a little behind the times on the issue? And you're right, I am but there's a very good reason for that - I don't give a fuck, not one tiny flying one. No. I saw what the article was about ages ago and I thought to myself..well, nothing. I just didn't even have a glimmer of interest...until, as I said, I was on Ping Teo's site and somebody mentioned
Quiznos . Now, forgive me my ignorance, but I had no idea what or who Quiznos was. So I had to check it out. And what I got was this elaborate analogy relating sandwich franchises to Girlamatic. I loved it. It's the sort of meandering analogy that I constantly come up with - the sort that often renders people speechless and confused. The sort that makes absolute and perfect sense to me but comes across as gibberish to everyone else. I just love it - it's a fantastic analogy and Eric should very proud of it.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Right, I don't want to be a webcomic critic or anything like that. It's just that, occasionally, I stumble across something that makes me laugh out loud - like
this. I stumbled across it because it's right there next to us on
webcomics.com. Now, it really shouldn't be that funny but it is. I guess it's just paced right. There, that's my critique. It's not quite
websnark but really, I've better things to be doing with my time. Just have a look at
Wokki for yourself - it's even got
Suggs from Madness in it.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Did a quick trawl through our stats and picked up on some sites that have been sending some traffic our way. I added anyones I could find to our blogroll - something I probably should have gotten round to before. It's an odd mix in there from
Dommynicius' weird news to
O Tempora, O Mores! - a born-again christian who came up with the great tag-line 'A Twisted Comic to Brighten or Frighten Your Day'. Also there were
Yummydown,
Marc Vic and Max,
Supplyguy(nonsense),
Hot Karls and
So Very Posh.
We've picked up alot of nice traffic through
blogexplosion over the last couple of months and I'd recommend it to any with a blog. If I've missed anyone on the blogroll, just let me know and I'll add you. The same goes for anyone who just wants to exchange links - we're happy enough to do so.
Right well, first things first,
happy birthday Emmet. I don't know why we decided to put Reuben in the toon with you - it just seemed to fit.
Also, I mentioned before about Phil Kahn's list of favoured reading over at
I'm just saying. Well, we made it onto
the plate.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Now I don't know if Mr. Jacques thinks his audience are stupid, was just been extra cautious or just likes pictures of birds, but the comment accompanying
today's comic would suggest one of the above.
I'm beginning to think Ryan North should produce
Daily Dinosaur educational text books.
I once thought of doing this -
Spamusement, poorly drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines. Though I was going to make Frank do the cartoons so they wouldn't have been so poorly drawn.
Phil Kahn over at
I'm just saying has put up a list of webcomics he reads on a regular basis and one of comics he has under consideration. They're his
plate and his
slate. He has a little description up for all the comics on his plate and it's worth a perusal if you're interested in finding some new reading material. Unfortunately, our
funny cartoons are on neither the plate or the slate.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Warren Ellis, of course. I only really mention him because last night I read an article he wrote back in 1991. In it he was championing a coming golden age of affordable virtual reality and smart drugs. By 2001 we were all going to be able to afford virtual reality kits and there were going to be a range of drugs that would make us all smarter without any terrible side effects. Actually, I'm being just a little facetious there, Warren Ellis is a successful screen and print-comic writer who doesn't seem to be in any way snotty about webcomics, in any of their guises. Which is refreshing.
Well Jeph Jacques, the man behind
Questionable Content, has launched a new comic
Idietits - it's about little birds discussing obscure indie bands and cracking stupid jokes. What more can I say?
I was over at
I'm just saying earlier and he mentioned a couple of other webcomic review sites. First off is
The Living Comic, where Occultatio seems to do panel by panel breakdowns of comics. Updates every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Then there's
Snarkoleptics, a community of webcomic critics, or at least very vocal webcomic creators/fans.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
It seems some people don't get this weeks
funny cartoon. So, just to clarify, a straw poll is a scientifically determined poll based on the opinions of randomly selected members of the public. They are often used during election campaigns to gauge a candidate's popularity. And that pole Bertie is carrying, that's made of straw.
And while I'm here -
another example of how unoriginal this
idea really was.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Any fans of
The Office (the original English version) should have a look at this
site.
Ricky Gervais,
you old new romantic you.
Hey look it's
politcal satire at
BifSniff Cartoons. It's funny actually because when I thought of this one, I pictured it as being some culchie council elections. Then just as I was about to send it to Frank, I changed the characters name to Bertie - after
himself like. For those of you not familiar with Irish politics, that handsome beast is the leader of our country. Now, even having changed the name I didn't expect Frank to caricature him for the toon but he did, and it's a really good spoof on him too. However what I really like about this toon is the three in the background. Anyone in any way familiar with Irish politics should be able to name them and that beardy gent to the right should be recogniseable worldwide. Which is odd since that fat lass on the left is a representation of our tanaiste, ie deputy prime minister, and beardy - well he's just leader of one of the smaller opposition parties.
The lads over at
Digital Strips are gearing up to make a big announcement next Monday. So it might be worth dropping in to find out what it is. Of course, it mightn't be but let's not be harsh. Also, Digital Strips very own Zampzon has launched his own
webcomic. Probably not quite as much like providing ammunition to his enemies as
Eric Burns launching his
offering but, never the less, a reviewer turned creator is a man painting a target on his back. Good luck to him.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
And I thought the passing of the Pope couldn't possibly impact the pages of this site. Well that was until Pope John Paul II was reborn as the
Satan fighting superhero 'Incredible Popeman. Can't wait for the action figures.
Ah, so now you can view your
favourite webcomics on your Playstation Portable, or at least according to
8Bit Joystick you can. Great, now you can view our funny cartoons on the move because, God knows, viewing them is obviously a vast drain on your time.
I was just reading a
piece on
Phil Kahn's blog about
Questionable Content. It was just about how well Jeph Jacques integrates new characters into the strip and it's right, he does. But it got me thinking about how much I'd like to see Jeph tackle a long form Questionable Content - as in one that isn't broken down into one page strips. Just a thought but he does characters so well, I'd like to see him have a real shot at it.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Ok, I know nobody reads this really. Christ knows I give you very little reason to - much to Frank's annoyance I'd imagine. However, here I go again, asking you for something. You see that little orange and black button to the right, your right, that says vote - click on it. It could help us get more traffic to the cartoons. (For those of you haven't yet realised - we do
funny little single panel cartoons too.) You can only vote once a day and if it looks like this is improving traffic, we might even try to put together some sort of reward/incentive for voting. But no promises.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Today I talk about us. Why not, eh? The very point of this blog right from the start was to draw more traffic to our funny cartoons. So really it's a little odd that I don't talk a little more about them. Actually, what brought me round to this was my daily glance over our site stats. After taking the weekend off, it's always interesting to see if there's anyone new in our referrers. Especially this early in the month because we're not so bogged down in referrer spam. Now there wasn't anything very new in there but there was some traffic, not alot but some, from the
forums on Splurd. Now this kind of confused me because I haven't been on
Splurd in quite a long time. So I had a look and it seems that two people had responded to a post I'd made over five months ago. Which is great and better still they were being complimentary. The comparisons to Gary Larson's The Far Side were back but, interestingly, we're supposedly more gruesome. Which surprised me. Are we really that gruesome? I wouldn't have thought so. I'd always have imagined that we were quite tame, especially if you compared us to something like
Red Meat. But then, I guess, we can get
quite graphic at times. Still, I think we're
quite cutesy on occasion and I don't think we get enough credit for that.
I was also talking to Frank the other day about how we might raise some cash. Realistically neither of us really expects, or plans, to make a living out of this but we would quite like to, at least, recoup our investment in it. Primarily because that's going to be the only way we can continue to do it. Now we'd always believed that the only way to do this is to offer something in return. So we looked around and decided the only real option open to us was a
Cafe Press store. Right now we're on the free version so we can test out the response. So far there's been none. No one's biting. For now, we're not certain exactly why this is. Maybe, we're not getting enough traffic. Maybe, people just don't like to deal with Cafe Press. Or maybe, people just don't think our toons translate well to t-shirts. We don't know yet but if anyone would care to offer some feedback on it, we'd be interested to hear it. It should be noted though that we're not at critical point just yet and I don't want you think I'm bitching or particularly upset about this. We're still enjoying ourselves but the shop has been there for, I don't know, over six months and still not one sale. If we're flogging a dead horse, we'd be interested to know sooner rather than later. We're currently thinking about just doing limited runs. So that at any given time there'll be only one t-shirt style available and it will only last for a month at a time. Which, in effect, will make them limited editions - without limited edition prices.
And yes I got caught by an
April fools joke.
Daily Dinosaur comics hasn't gone anywhere. It kind of dawned on me later that day but I'm going to leave the post up anyway.
The
Achewood auction is up to $506 and won't be finished till Wednesday.
Friday, April 01, 2005
So just a quick post(again). Hans Blom of
Snap-O-Mania dropped by yesterday to say that there are plenty more of those to come. He has already translated 100 of his 712 (and still running) from his Swedish version - KNÄPPO! I look forward to seeing more of them.
Sadly, and kind of suddenly, Daily Dinosaur Comics is no longer with us or, at least, it's no longer being updated. It's a pity. There's a
new comic in it's place but it's not really to my taste. Still, it might grow on me - alot of things do.
