Friday, March 31, 2006
As
Frank mantions, a little change of direction for today's
funny cartoon. I was a little hesitant at first but then Frank went the whole hog and changed the font style - I think that's what makes it now.
Anyway, I'm sure there are loads of things happening out there that I could be telling you about but I won't. What I will mention is that Frank and
Emmet have been chosen as
ManiaTV! Featured Filmmaker for
Sex, Booze And A Sheep Named John: Crimescene. It will be aired during their Too Short For Hollywood show at 10pm EST on April 4th, 13th, 19th, 28th and May 1st. According to the email it will be broadcast to 2,000,000 viewers. ManiaTV! is a live internet tv network showing a mix of music, short films, action sports, video games, cartoons and news. All their shows are hosted live by 'Cyberjockeys', who you can interact with in real-time.
I mentioned Crimescene before. It's not perfect but I've always found it quite cute. I don't know how the
ManiaTV! audience is going to take to it, as it might actually be a little parochial and it's possibly not as edgy as they're used to, but I'm still chuffed to see it's still drawing some interest. In the meantime, I've got to go try work out what time it's showing local time. I'll try get some screenshots from the next SBSNJ short sorted out soon aswell. We're basically at the stage of our first rough-cut and it's looking pretty nifty.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
One of the stranger addictions I have developed, since starting this site, is bouncing around all the
MySpace pages that turn up in our stats at the start of every month. As the month progresses they tend to disappear under the weight of other links but at the start, you'll find quite a few. I always found the phenomenon a little odd but then, maybe, I'm just too old to grasp it. Still, to add to the overall oddity of it -
MyDeathSpace, which
chronicles all the MySpace pages of folks who have died and a couple of
murderers to boot. It's creepy but strangely compelling - like the audition stages of a reality tv show. Actually though, it's handled quite tastefully aside from some too-dumb-to-realise-I'm-too-dumb-to-leave-comments-in-a-public-forum type comments.
Comics publisher
AiT/PlanetLar have released the
entire contents of their upcoming graphic novel Continuity in PDF format, in the hope that this will stimulate interest in the hardcopy version.
Learn
CSS Positioning in ten steps - helpful.
Ethan Persoff provides a repository of weird and, frankly, quite unsettling comics. His collection includes
a Madonna commisioned one about AIDS which seems to be titled, puzzlingly,
Who's That Girl. There's also a complete set of the
Alcoholics Anonymous comic strips published from 1968-1974.
A blog set up to
follow next years general election here in Ireland. Myself, when it comes to politics, I'm with Billy Connolly - I don't like to encourage them.
The
top 87 bad predictions for the future.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Actually, I was just a little surprised Frank opted to use this week's
funny cartoon. It was one of those ones that I was sure would only appeal to me. But then again after
this gem got through, maybe it was always likely to happen.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
I guess everybody stumbles across an idea every now and again that makes them think 'wow, why didn't I think of that?' I doubt though that many people are looking at the ideas on display at
Patently Silly and thinking it. However, a few might look at the site and think it.
Engineering major and stand-up comic Daniel Wright and desginer/illustrator Alex Eben Meyer have hit on something really clever here. Basically, they take genuine patent applications and, well, laugh at them. Which is easy when people make patent applications for things like a
Peanut-Shaped Prayer Cushion,
Head Mounted Letter “M” Display,
a Platform Chair for Sexual Intercourse or
a Bottlecap Necktie.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I don't follow these things closely, so I don't know much about
The Cato Institute but
BoingBoing reliably inform they are an ulta-libertarian, right-wing think-tank. Not sure when libertarianism became so synonymous with right-wing politics but that's neither here nor there. This Cato crowd just released a policy analysis whitepaper entitled
Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I haven't read the full document yet but I liked the quote
BoingBoing pulled from it.
The movie industry has every right to segment the worldwide market for DVDs, but it should bear the costs of doing so. Those costs might include requiring no-resale contracts with distributors and monitoring sales in low-price countries to make sure DVDs were not being resold outside their intended market. Deciding whether those costs would be worthwhile might be difficult. The indus- try’s desire for market segmentation is not, however, a good reason to outlaw the sale of unofficial DVD players. The role of government is not to ensure that a private business’s pricing strategy succeeds, and consumers, who have not agreed to help enforce the DVD cartel’s segmentation scheme, are under no obligation to respect it.
Which, for my mind, can be summed up as - If your business model is flawed, don't expect us to legislate to fix it. Along a similar line
Derek Powazek has a
very level-headed and even tempered post on how the lawyers and middle-men are, essentially, fucking everything up for the rest of us - artists, creators and fans alike.
I found that last link through Kottke, which is where I also found
Pre-pixelated clothes for Reality TV shows. Handy.
Chefgate is the offical protest site against the recent censoring of the South Park Scientology episode. You can also watch the episode
here and sign the
petition here.
A
musuem of bad album covers - just what the world needs.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Every now and then, you stumble across an illustrator who just makes you stop and stare in awe. One such man is
Zachary Flagg Baldus - as featured on
Drawn. There is nothing more I can say about his work that would do it justice -
you'll just have to go and
have a
look for yourself.
We're still looking for
guest art folks - come on, don't be shy.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Now personally I think the whole thing reeks just a little of navel-gazing but, courtesy of
Kottke, I found this
interesting article on being introverted. The article was published three years ago and such was it's popularity, it drew more traffic than any article ever posted on The Atlantic's website, they've just ran an
interview with the writer, Jonathon Rausch. I can easily see why the reaction has been so strong. There must have been so many people, like me, sitting up in their seats and going 'hey, that's me'. Now I kind of clicked to it some time ago but I did spend a long, long time wondering what was wrong. There are still any number of people I know who think I'm snobbish, arrogant, anti-social or just plain weird. Some people won't talk to me at all anymore. At one stage, some years back, this lass I was particularly friendly with announced that she would no longer talk to me if I bumped into her in the pub. In short, she could not cope with me in a social setting because, while I was happy to chat away with her, I couldn't mingle with her friends. We talk now but I doubt she ever actually got it. It's hard for people to grasp because I don't mind being in certain social situations, just so long as I'm allowed to remain peripheral to the action. I can get very animated in conversation but, more often than not, I'd prefer to be left out of it. And no matter how fond I am of someone, there are times that I really just need to be left alone. And a point that I'd never really been able to put my finger on, or articulate, comes up in the interview. 'Small talk takes conscious effort and is very hard work,' explains Rausch. In a sense my brain just isn't wired for chit-chat. I have to think about what I'm going to say next. I can't just run with the natural flow of a conversation. Sometimes when I go to the shop, I start compiling a set of stock answers in case the shop-keeper tries to start a conversation. Of course, there never any use because I really have no understanding of small talk, so I'm incapable of preparing for it. Anyway, fuck it, I get by fine but the article and the interview are well worth a read. Chances are, you know someone just like that too.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Right, right, Frank and myself have been putting our heads together in the hope of coming up with some fresh ideas for the site. There are a few things bouncing around but first up, we want to do a kind of guest strip bonanza with a difference. That being, we want guest artists to reinterpret a
BifSniff Cartoon from the first year - that's any toon between
here and
here - I think.
Now we still have a few things to sort out - templates and the such - as we will be running these through our cartoon feeds. Also we want to maybe find a way of doing it so that we don't end up with the same three cartoons over and over again. How we do it, though, will depend largely on the interest.
So if you're an illustrator, photographer, have your own webcomic, are very creative with lego or have a special knack for creative knitting and would like to have a go at one of our funny cartoons, let us know. We're not fussy about the medium but if you want it to fit in the feeds, you'll have to consider scalability and file-size - Frank should be able to give out some guidelines on this front. However, if you have other ideas, maybe we'll put up another section on the site especially. As I've said, it'll all depend on the level of interest. Anyone who does get involved will get a link back to their site or blog and, if they so want it, a write up in the
notes attached to their
cartoon.
So if you're up for it, register your interest here or email us. If you know someone else who might be interested, pass this on to them. I feel like I should say something like 'thanking you in advance' but it's just not in my nature.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Right, right, well Frank's obviously too busy to write up one of his usual commentaries for today's
funny cartoon. So it's probably down to me to say something. Well, er, yeah, great eh? Actually, normally
Frank would write some guff about the process of putting the cartoon together - maybe throw in the odd implication that I'm an utterly unreasonable bastard. Well, I don't have processes for coming up with the ideas. Often it just means getting scuttered and scribbling stuff down in a notebook. Do you want me to write about that? Do you want me to write about how I'm turning into the drunk who furtively scribbles in a notebook? I doubt it. If Frank finds a little more space in his schedule, maybe he'll write a little bit up for us - otherwise we'll just have to get on with our dreary lives without the benefits of his insight. It's a good toon though and I'm growing ever so fond of our
goody buddy Clive.
Eric Burns has a
more detailed post on the that whole History Of Webcomics drama guff.
Nick Wilson over at
Performancing has a
wee potshot at blog snobs. He's dead right and his argument could be carried over to all sorts of areas - like people who spend an inoordinate amount of time (i.e. anytime whatsoever) trying to define what constitutes a comic.
Internet marketing expert
John Scott is offering up a prize fund of $10,000 to bloggers who link into lesser-known blogs, specifically those outside the technorati top 100. It's his way of fighting the incestuous nature of the top blogs. Nice idea in theory but if you go down through the comments, I suspect at least a couple of the blogs have just been set up to try win the cash. Still, no harm in it, is there?
Thursday, March 02, 2006
I could say something clever here - like I love the smell of drama in the, er, well, afternoon - but actually there's a pretty valid argument after been raised.
Antartic Press have published a book by
T Campbell called "The History of Webcomics" and
Scott 'Angry Young Man' Kurtz has taken issue with a couple of things. Besides the accusations of
inaccuracy in the book, these could be levelled at almost any quasi-historical document, and let's ignore
Campbell's self-declaration of world nenown - he can declare himself the Grand Potentate Of French Frilly Knickers for all I care. Let's even ignore the fact that they've had printed ads done up, showing a cover with copyrighted characters that they never obtained permission to use. The really valid argument here is that if any of these accusations were levelled at someone from outside the webcomic cognoscenti, everyone would be hopping mad. A supposedly ill-researched tome masquarading as a definitive history. A blatant breach of copyright to garner quick publicity and kudos. Suspect claims about authority of knowledge. People would be hopping mad. It's actually funny the amount of sneering that goes on when some journalist writes a piece about webcomics but now that it's one of their own...well, now the general consensus seems to be that Kurtz is being unreasonable. The fact is that the publishers and/or T Campbell either lied or behaved unprofessionally. Either side, it's hardly unreasonable to take them to task. Campbell has apologised and defended his position but on, at least, one level it doesn't wholly add up. It doesn't make the book a bad thing and it doesn't mean Campbell is the spawn of Satan but it does raise questions that go a little beyond the usual webcomic drama carpery.
On a lighter note and for no real good reason -
a list of things that are okay.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No, it's David Bowie.
Not so much
because they're discussing Jack Chick but mostly because of Alexis Christoforides' idea - 'How about an online quiz? You get a picture of ten Jack Chick characters, and you must guess whether they will be DAMNED TO HELL or not by their looks!' That's a fucking brilliant idea.
Boing Boing have a link to the
findings published by a special Australian committee on copyright and DRM. The rough outline seems to be that there should be a drastic scaling-back of the protections given to DRM in most countries, so that it doesn't override public rights. How many more governments do you think will fund expensive reports for the purpose of stating the obvious? Some Canadian called Micheal Geist has much more balanced, and less flippant,
analysis of the report than I'll ever give you.
And on a final note, just a quick query - what sort of insanity makes someone believe that spamming me through my own contact link is effective advertising?
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy, started a
blog recently. On it he has started posting cartoon ideas, including the
story of the pilot for his latest idea - The Heartaches. He's also posted a couple of
clips of
them in action. The idea, seemingly, is to get feedback (from kids not middle-aged men) that he can use to generate interest from the money men who will give him what he needs to make it happen. Makes sense.
The Six Thousand is a list of intriguing people you want to meet online before you die - supposedly. Not sure I agree but then I'm probably not noted for my sociability.
I have a bad feeling about this -
an online marketplace for person to person lending.
For the discerning criminal -
everyone else at the crimescene has clothing that identifies themselves, so why shouldn't you.
The
recent riots in Dublin have already spawned a
bevvy of
photoshop work. And a
flickrpool of images from the riots for anyone who's interested. Surely there's a
BifSniff in there somewhere.
