Friday, December 30, 2005
Ok, first off, the new funny cartoon is late but it's coming and is probably up by the time your reading this.
So, apparently
Frank has tagged me for a meme. I suppose I should have seen it coming but I kind of blindly hoped it would never happen. Not that I have anything in particular against them or the people who propagate them but, put quite simply, I am just as contrary, remote and slow to make friends online as I am off. That is to say I don't actually know anyone who blogs and so I cannot pass the tag on. Now, yes there are bloggers who leave comments here and, I suppose, I could tag them. But, to me, that would be like having a passing conversation with someone in a bar one night and then showing at their house the next day expecting to drink all their beer and score with their sister. It just seems ill-mannered and thus, I'm not doing it.
Eric at
Websnark has
been singing the praises of
Edible Dirt, another single-panel cartoon with a fairly random, scatter-fire humour. Now I'm not about to take anything away from Matt Rosenior, I quite like what I've seen of his stuff so far. I just had to take this moment to gloat about the fact that the
particular toon that Eric chose to highlight is very much along the lines of one of my
old favourites - which, no offense Mr. Rosenior, I think is actually better.
Oh, nearly forget, have a happy new year every one.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Right, right, it's Christmas and
Frank's all excited like the giggling schoolgirl that he is. Me? Well, I can take it or leave it - preferably I'd leave it. Not to sound all bah humbug about it but it's just a monumental pain in the arse as far as I'm concerned. Great for children I know but, over here, once you hit a certain age it slowly morphs into just another one of those days when they close the pubs. That's not to say I don't enjoy the dinner or that I don't have a laugh. I do. And I do tend to get very, very drunk. All that's fine. It's the build up that gets my back up. The crowds rushing around the shops almost killing each other for the perfect gift. The weekend warriors streaming into our pubs and taking up our spots at the bar (I realise I'm unreasonable on this one but I don't care). The incessantly repetitive Christmas songs everywhere you turn. People complaining about how much Christmas costs and yet still sinking themselves further into debt every year. Maniacaly cheery folks insisting everyone should be really cheery and excited, even though their none of them would show their face in church from one midnight mass to the next; and turkey & ham just isn't that special anymore anyway. However, in the face of all this, I am still strangely ambivalent to the whole experience. It might sound like I hate it but in actuality it just makes no impact on me what so ever. So I guess I should be grateful for small mercies.
In case anyones wondering,
yes I am going to replace Frank.
Oh yeah,
Merry Christmas, or not if you don't partake. My guess is these posts will be a bit sporadic and spartan until some time in the next year. Bye.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Do you know what I was thinking the other day? I was thinking wouldn't it be great if we had another webcomic review blog. I mean there just isn't enough of them out there. So, just in time, we've got the (apparently) reintroduction of
Fleen - the webcomic blog about webcomics set up by the boys behind
Goats. However, unlike alot of other review/commentary sites,
Fleen aims to be the first blog to draw a clear line between the creators and the reviewers. It's starting out with two writers, Jeff "Zamphir" Lowrey & Gary Tyrrell, but hopes to add to their roster in time. A basic set of rules for the site have been drawn up:
1)None of the writers that appear on Fleen will ever be webcomics creators.
2)Posts on Fleen must be about webcomics.
3)I will not be allowed to tell the writers what they can and cannot write about (aside from the "posts must be about webcomics" mandate) . I will attempt to post my dissent in the comments, just like everyone else will be allowed to do. In some instances I may write them directly if the nature of my comments demands it (as you can also do), but they have every right to tell me to screw off.
4)I cannot fire a writer without the consent of a majority of the other writers.
5)Each writer must post at least one piece each day, Monday through Friday, with exceptions for things like childbirth and plague.
Contrary to the tone of this post, I'm actually in favour.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Bob Byrne has an interesting post up at his
Clamnuts blog about
his attempts to get funding from the Arts Council of Ireland. It gives a great insight into the insidious nepotism that goes on in this country. A struggling talent creating
something unique and original gets turned down, while a successful writer gets an €8,500 grant on top his already assured 12,180 annuity.
In these days of unkempt beds, dead cows and arses; it's quite refreshing to see some real
stand-out potraiture. Specifically look out for his Johnny Cash and Cate Blanchett.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
I had no idea Frank had
his own IMDB page. It's more than a little spartan of course and not in the least bit impressive but, still, he does have one.
This does not make me happy. Found
here as quoted from some chat room or something.
[Twisty] :P
[Twisty] some dudes invented this new things
[Twisty] thing
[Twisty] they place their hand under their ass and sit on it for 2 min then they let ppl smell their hand LMFAO
[Twisty] a bifsniff they call it
[Twisty] so disgusting yet i lmfao'd
[The_End] Wow, they "invented" that?
[Twisty] yes :p
[Twisty] bifsniff!
[The_End] lol
[biotech] lmfao
[Twisty] their crazy lol
[Phasip] my and my grandpa used to do that when i was little
[Phasip] me*
[Twisty] LOL
[Twisty] bifsniffers
[Twisty] grandpa smell my hand!
[Twisty] thats great but now smell the real pro
[Twisty] AAAAW i lose!
Being
accused of anti-semitism, or specifically anti-Zionism (in case there's a difference), also makes me very unhappy. It's a joke about a kid misunderstanding the
lyrics of a popular hymn.
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,
Born is the King of Israel
We've made jokes about
Jesus,
Mary,
The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse,
Santa and
prostituting horses. Yet the first complaint seems to be based entirely on the fact that we mentioned Israel. I mean that, it comes with absolutely no justification and I just can't work out where it's coming from. It seems hugely over-sensitive and dangerously inflammatory. It's also funny since Frank has already
been accused of paying lip-service to "a bunch of jewish supremacist zionist thugs" because of a fairly favourable review he did of
Dry Bones. I am apolitcal and areligious and, by fuck, I intend on staying that way. What I am big on is free speech and I despise the insidious way it is slowly being eroded under the banner of anti-descrimination.
Oh and
Frank is worried about me. Nice card though.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Just thought of something actually. Seen as we're coming to the end of the year, maybe you'd like to let us know what your
BifSniff Funny Cartoons were? Frank did up a top
ten list of his favourites a while back, probably needs updating but what have you. If you're lazy, a top five will do. Laziness is an affliction I understand very well.
I genuinely made a concerted effort to come up with something to blog today, which is weird considering I was out drinking Jack Daniels and coke with Johnny Coughlan last night. Anyway, I failed miserably, which is entirely understandable considering I was out drinking Jack Daniels and coke with Johnny Coughlan last night.
Friday, December 16, 2005
What Frank was doing up at half nine in the morning on his holiday, is a mystery to me. But, for some unknown reason, he didn't trust me to do my duty and decided he had to post up this weeks
funny cartoon. Fair enough, it meant I could go back to sleep because, seemingly, I've got a sniff of Christmas coming and my body has gone into holiday mode. I no longer seem to appreciate the need to work.
Imagine having to
take the penguins for a walk. Apparently, courtesy of Death, because, as we all now know,
Death loves Penguins.
I suppose that, in Frank's absense, I should do a short piece on the development of
The First Noel However, the only thing I really have to say is that it wasn't until I'd gone through two different ideas for the cartoon, that I found out what Noel actually made (it's French for Christmas, apparently). It was then that I realised I should actually go check up the the
lyrics for it. Which is what led to this incarnation. There was some dispute (between the various warring factions in my head) about whether it should be Noel or Noelle. Frank stepped in and decided it should be Noelle and he was absolutely right.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Sometimes it's funny how, even though I've pretty much embraced the internet for years now, I'm still a bit of a fuddy-duddy at heart - if I were cool I'd probably be referring to myself as old-school here. I say this because Frank's away for a few days and I'm in charge of posting the cartoons. Which means, almost without a doubt, they'll go up later than usual. What's odd is, I thought I could get away with this without Frank noticing (not that I actually have any reason to care whether he notices or not). As if they don't have internet access in Spain or, somwehow, the computers over there can only read Spanish.
The
EU has just passed the Data Retention Directive, mandating that all EU states carry out surveillance of their citizens everyday communications i.e. phonecalls, mobile phonecalls, emails, website surfing etc etc. They must then retain this information in case it's needed in the 'fight on terrorism'. Which essentially means they're gearing up to spy on us. It's funny actually, how this is rushed through while the EU presidency is in the hands of a UK Labour government. Remember how in
Nineteen Eighty-Four,
George Orwell predicted it would be a labour government that would go too far and introduce the concept of
Big Brother?
TellTale games have just posted the
first Sam and Max webcomic. Why is this interesting? Well, they're using rollovers to instigate captions and interestingly, as seen in the last panel, actions. I'm assuming it's been attempted before but I don't remember seeing it. It does hint that we could, in time, be looking at a new comic/animation hybrid medium in the offing, which would certainly be a better idea than that
fucking infinite canvass shite. I mean, it's great from a writer's perspective to have the extra flexibility offered by animation (or live action for that matter) but the cost and time consumption issues mean it's hardly likely to really take off as an indie web medium. However, a comic with animation, where beneficial, could be the ideal internet format. I state 'where beneficial' because it could so easily be over done.
Emmet and myself were looking at doing something along these lines before (
as a follow on from this) but we were hesitant that the actions might detract from it. Then we asked Frank to have a look and what he came up with was pretty impressive. I'd post it but I'd have to get the ok from
Emmet first. Oh well, once again, we could have been pioneers.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Just a quick note on something I spotted on
Drawn.
Start Soma, an art gallery in San Francisco dedicated to emerging artists, has launched
Start Mobile. Now you can get some
seriously nifty looking wallpapers for your mobile/cell phones - or at least you can if you live in the United States. Still, it's an interesting development and one that's quite in keeping with the
Aspoke crowd I mentioned
yesterday. People, I think, are going to be more interested in creating unique skins and wallpapers for their handsets or laptops etc. Which could mean some whole new and interesting sources of revenue for anyone working within the sphere of visual arts. I'm sure we could come up with some cute little wallpapers or skins, if people were interested. We're already
doing business cards,
apparently.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Quickly now, Comixpedia have their
End of Year roundtable with some highly esteemed luminaries of the webcomic blogosphere. Much talk about the past and foreseeable future of webcomics. Some of it makes sense, some of it just seems a little wide of the mark and some is just more of the same. An interesting read though, all in all.
Stumbled across a cute new enterprise, through
EirePreneur -
Aspoke.com offers custom skins for things like laptops and the such. It strikes me as being an idea with a lot of potential and could be used as a handy little promo tool for your website and the such. David Sifry, CEO of Technorati, is a fan.
Can't really speak too much on this but I will record this point for, uh, posterity. One day, while having a rather lengthy slash, I was mulling over the problems we were having with our wonderful
Death & Penguins t-shirt designs. My thoughts meandered, as they do, and I was soon chuckling to myself over a, frankly, absurd idea for a children's book. I mentioned it to Frank, who subsequently mentioned it to some others, and the general consensus returned was that it's a great idea. So it would seem we really are going to be doing a children's book. For someone who generally says so little, I do manage to put my foot in it an entirely inordinate amount.
Friday, December 09, 2005
To be honest, I just can't believe we called it
Pimpin' Ain't Easy. Still, aside from that, I believe that drawing of Liam, with his head dropped despondently, is the best bit of illustration work to appear on
BifSniff Cartoons yet. I really was quite surprised when I saw it. That's not a criticism of any of the other
funny cartoons - I think Frank does a great job week in, week out and often elevates a weakish joke into something a lot classier. But that image of Liam, the poor sod, surely wouldn't look out of place on a gallery wall or hanging in a nice family restaurant - albeit without the horse dressed up like a two dollar whore behind him. The joke itself, well, we'll probably go to hell for that one.
Ironically, there seems to be a bit of a webcomics drama brewing up around
Joey Manley's recent Pulse column on webcomics drama. The article was a, somewhat, tongue in cheek look at the top 5 troublemakers in webcomics and it's a well written, enjoyable piece. But Joey forgot that he's actually not just being a columnist, he's a (self-appointed) ambassador for webcomics. Or, at least, he is according to
Scott Kurtz of PVPonline fame. Scott, listed in the top 5 but credited with at least being a reluctant troublemaker, doesn't believe Joey should be representing this side of the 'webcomics community' to the world. Now where I come from I think the appropriate response here is - get off the fucking stage, will yeh. I can't speak for Joey Manley but, I'd imagine, that all he's set out to do was write an enjoyable, light-hearted column. He already does a fuck of a lot for the 'webcomics community', whether you like it or not and I don't remember, though maybe I'm just not on the board or something, anyone electing him minister of propaganda. Because, I believe that's exactly what you want him to be writing. Ignore the horseshit and just tell them about the roses Joey. Honestly, with all due respect Mr. Kurtz and I mean that with great sincerity, if you want unbalanced webcomics promotion, send out a press release. What Joey is doing is writing a column and all he really has to do is write it well and make it entertaining. The fact that it also has the side-effect of drawing more attention to your precious 'webcomic community' is just an added bonus. Oh, and if webcomics drama embarrasses you so much, why not try not getting involved.
And, in keeping with the theme of
this weeks cartoon, I'm going to continue in my efforts at
pimping our shops - one
Euro based and one
U.S. based. If you want your ultra-slick BifSniff gear in time for Christmans, and we all know you do, you'll have to get your orders in soon. So hurry up, for fucks sake. Who do you think is supposed to be paying for my New Years piss up?
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Yes, yes, Christmas is coming. Hohoho, jingle bells and all that other guff. Now how about treating your loved/loathed/mildly tolerated ones to a classy piece of
BifSniff apparel. We have a
Euro shop, for those in the euro zone naturally, and a
U.S. dollar shop for the rest of the world. How could you not want to sport a
Death and Penguins top or declare to the world you're a
Family Butcherer? We've even got
something for the ladies (or
just plain women if you're using the
U.S. shop). We even cater for
kids, or
juniors if you're in the euro zone. Even the founder and CEO of Spreadshirt himself
thinks our designs are cool. Ok, so Frank usually does the sales pitches but I thought I'd mention it, because if you want to get them for Christmas, you'd want to order ASAP. The
Euro shop says it wants orders by the 12th and the
U.S. shop says the 16th (there might be some sort of express delivery up till the 21st but don't blame if that's wrong - actually blame me if any of this wrong, I'm way too feckless for it to be worth your while). If you want, though Lord only knows why you would, you could send us pictures of you in your BifSniff t-shirt or sweater and we'll throw them up on the site somewhere. As a sidenote, in the vain hope that it's worth mentioning, sexy women can just send us their pictures anyway, no matter what they are or, indeed, aren't wearing.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Apparently, and strangely, there was a thirteenth episode of
Fawlty Towers that was never aired. That's according to a new book,
Fawlty Towers: A Worshipper's Companion, which includes the script for aforementioned episode called 'The Robbers'. In
an interview at
Fawlty Towers Revisited, the book's author Lars Holger Holm stated that rarely had he seen 'John Cleese and his crew reach such continuous heights of sublime entertainment'. He goes on to say that episode 'represents the ultimate solution to the problem of how to carry this tormented universe to a happy end'. Now I'm not one to get obsessive about stuff but
Fawlty Towers was something very special. It kills, or at least quite annoys, me to know that this episode exists and I haven't seen it. If I never get to see it, I hope it's a hoax. I would very seriously begrudge the entire world the pleasure of seeing it, if I couldn't.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Frank thinks I'm going to try to persuade you that
this is out of context. I won't because I think everyone will agree that I was in the right.
One of my old favourites,
Chopping Block, is back. Except it's no longer in a single panel format. It'll be interesting to see how well it lends itself the new style.
The Webcomics Examiner has a list of their choice for
Best Webcomics of 2005. We're not in there of course but we're not bitter. No, not bitter at all. Actually, it's an interesting list with some very good stuff there. There's also a couple of ones in there that I could never get into but that, I guess, is just there bad taste. You see, no bitterness.
At least some
folks think we're
worthy of
mention.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Right, try to picture it. It's 7 O'Clock on a Sunday morning. We've been awake since about half 5. I, personally, had spent the best part of Saturday in a variety of different pubs, rather over-zealously curing myself of my hangover from Friday night. We're on a train that's cost us 50 yoyos each and we're all set to hit Dublin for the FAI Cup Final. Then, settled into our seats, Ed jokingly turns to
Brian and asks 'Do you have the tickets?' It was funny, because the one thing you couldn't possibly forget was the match tickets - the FAI Cup Final Tickets. More so, if you know
Brian, you know he is near obsessivly compulsive about forgetting things when leaving the house - the man will quadruple check everything and then triple check everyone of those checks just for good measure. I smirked and I didn't even stop smirking when
Brian's face went ashen white. 'Oh shit,' he quipped. 'I actually don't. I forgot them.' Neither Ed or myself were going to fall for that one, of course. 'No seriously, I've really forgotten them. I can't believe it,'
Brian continued his joke. In fact, he kept us going for ages actually. I almost believed him, especially when he had us traipsing around Dublin looking for a ticketmaster. Getting us to stand outside the ticket kiosk at Lansdowne Road was especially funny. The piece-de-resistance though, of course, was when he bought three new tickets for the match. That boy just won't let a joke go. It was so funny I almost didn't notice the pain shooting up from my fucking feet, the aching and creeking of every single one of my fucking joints, the sheer tiredness, the fucking throbbing in my head or the near absolute neccesity to sit down and rest. Brian, you really are a funny guy.
I'm not going to talk about the actual match. To talk about it might actually the delay the process of blocking it out of my memory.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Not got a whole lot of time today. I'm off to a christening this evening and I've a few things to do before then. Still, it's turning into a good day for these little
funny cartoons of ours. One of Ireland's most popular sites,
boards.ie, has just picked up our cartoon feed and we're getting a good talking up around the domestic blogosphere. Plus
Robert Scobie gave us a plug and now we're supposed to be designing his next business card. All of this seems to stem from Frank attending that Cork geek dinner organised by
Tom R. I'll have to send him out socialising more often.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Realistically, in the beginning, Frank and I never really set out to do a webcomic. We weren't sitting around yearning to be cartoonists or anything like that. The fact is Frank had been rooting through some old stuff and he found a
number of single panel cartoons we'd done about ten years prior (some of those were redone or touched up and there are actually a couple that never made it up). We thought, to hell with it, let's chuck them up on the web and see what sort of response they get. It was almost accidental that we continued to do them every week from then on. It is then, and only really then, that I started to look around at other webcomics. Which, rather belatedly, brings me to the point. One of the first, actually the second, webcomic I came across was
Cowpunch. I loved it and have followed it ever since. So, despite what Frank might have said in a vaguely unsettling email to Porter, I am, ok maybe not excited, but at least pleasantly chuffed with the fact that we're doing a
guest strip there. Now, Frank mentioned it before and drew a comparison between Cowpunch and
Red Meat. And while it's true that if you like one, you'll more likely than not like the other, they're still very different animals. The best way I can describe it is this. Red Meat is like a few friends sitting around a room and turning on loads of flashing disco lights, just to see the patients, in the psychiatric hospital across the road, flock to their window out of curiosity. Cowpunch is like setting up some deckchairs, opening a couple of cans of beer and having yourself a picnic in the accident & emergency ward of your local hospital on a Saturday night. You see the difference now?
Incidently, the first webcomic I got into was
Mike Donovan, which is sadly not updating anymore.
CM Evans, Cowpunch's other guest cartoonist, was another early one but for some reason I lost touch of it.
According to
Digital Strips, and I've no reason to doubt them,
Ctrl+Alt+Del, in conjunction with
Blind Ferret Entertainment, is launching an
animated series. It will start off as a new four minute animation every month on the web but their ultimate destination is television. They're essentially using this as a pilot for the networks. I'll look forward to running the rule over this one.
Children's author and traffic campaigner Ted Dewan has taken a
unique approach to reducing traffic speeds in his residential neighbourhood. As a devout pedestrian myself, I salute him.
