It's all Fiction, but it Comes From Somewhere Real

Not so long, long ago in and not nearly as far as a galaxy far, far away:

Two summers ago my former place of employment rellocated to new office space and I no longer had to commute through King St. to get to work. It was a breakwater moment for the King St. Capers - -

It felt weird not seeing Mr. Minestrone every day, not seeing Beard-o, not seeing his Tim-Hortons-toting companion with the concert t-shirt and side-stepping all the cigarette butts laying all over the sidewalk. But, the new officespace was really great and most attractive were the big scenic windows at my workstation.

The sun pored through the glass warming everyone and everything. It was brilliant, in both the colloquial and literal sense of the word. And as much as the old characters I used to spot / detest every day on my way to work were in my past (though still only a few blocks away) I was unprepared for the new cast of characters that I'd be able to see, not only on my daily commute, but through the window while I was working. 

Crackhead is one of the guys.  

More after the break - - 

You can see I drew the crackhead-behind-the-tree element separate and then layered it in to the final product. I drew a second Crackhead to include in other iterations of the strip. Ultimately, I think the quality / fidelity of the final image suffered for it. It came out blurry and garbled. A lesson learned. Images need to be created much larger if they're going to be included in composite products.

Panels 3 & 4 feature in "Have to be on Crack" and "This Street Sucks," panel 2 is "Casual Fridays" (which was fun to make!) and Panel 1 is "Case of the Mondays".

- - continued

Crackhead is a bit of a conglomeration of many of the people down at street level in the busy dirt parking lot located across the street from a downtown Tim Hortons. There was a LOT of weird foot traffic. One guy looked like a cracked-up Bob Dylan, lots of folks with tatoos and baby buggies, and plenty more smokers just ... standing around doing whatever it is they enjoy doing while they smoke all the time.

However, with no need to return to King St., I sort of forgot what it was all about, lost the feel for actually walking down the road and just being pissed off at every step while people stepped out of the parking garage and flicked and tossed torched cigarettes to the pavement.

This past Crackhead story arc was a fun integration of how the two worlds might have interrupted one another had they ever converged. Don't get me wrong, there were a load of crackheads on King St., but they were more "down by the river" types than they were "out in front of the barber" types.

The guys in the parking lot between Tim Hortons and downtown - - those crackheads are the "out and about" types. They were on the go. In any case, it was fun bringing those elements together into the Capers, and especially as it all culminates in a big cameo appearance from another out-of-towner that Ontarians will definitely recognize.

And the Business Man @ Home bits are sort of a more modern extension of my work experience, too. While the drug-addled chaos from King St. remeained outside the office, inside the conversation and articles I was writing revolved continuously upon discussing improvements in the workplace, human resources, health and safety, and other business matters.

I suppose the creation of Business Man can be considered a result of the Culture Shock from spending your days in an environment where you're continuously researching and discussing those workplace issues, and then having all that crash into the unadulterated ego of a toddler, fulltime.

Ultimately, this is all a work of fiction, but it's derived from a very real place from no-so-long ago, and just around the corner.
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What's up with Salty Advice?

A question people are probably wondering about: What's with the Salty Advice that you think has been so funny that you keep posting?

[You can find Salty Advice here: Salty Advice]

Mr. Minestrone's first stab at good advice.

Well, the origins of this go back to all the encouragement I was receiving from a friend who enjoyed the King St. Capers so much he insisted that there was more content more often starring Mr. Minestrone.

While he was having a particularly bad "migraine" at work one day, I succumbed to his pleading and created this spinoff from the Capers. Salty Advice gives a voice to the otherwise mute Mr. Minestrone, providing some insight into this psyche and professional attitude.

What would someone who doesn't give two shits about doing a good job, and is hellbent on having a cigarette and staring at you while you walk down the street, despite his age and personal hygiene, have to offer? I had to try and figure it out.

And if this asshole had any advice for you, what would it be?

"Salty Advice" comes from the "Take it with a pinch of salt," etymology -- it's one of my favourite "sayings," so to speak, because, as far as I understand it, it's a complete admission that the next thing you're going to say is complete bullshit.

In the good ol' days, there was no refrigeration (of course) so meat had a very limited shelf life. It'd last for a couple of days (imagine a family with an entire slaughtered cow, but no deep freezer). As the end of the week rolled along, that heifer started getting pretty rank, making it completely unpalatable.

They were dirt poor, so instead of pitching the whole thing to the buzzards, they just kept adding salt to the meat to mask the rancid, rotting maggot-motel while they kept eating (and giving themselves the bubonic plague).

So the idea has always been hilarious to me, that someone saying "take this with a pinch of salt" is really saying that their advice is about as good as a medieval, rotting slab of pork. That's just funny!

And Salty Advice definitely lives up to its namesake. There's nothing worth repeating going on here.

Unlike my other comics, I don't worry about loading up on Salty Advice: they don't require a tremendous amount of time to get the artwork uploaded or completed, so I've allowed myself to come up with them on the fly, rather than stocking up on them (for the record, I have Capers, Business Man and Spring Chickens complete into the early weeks of October, just so you know).

I hope you're enjoying them.

Of course, if you have any questions, please drop me a line and I'll share whatever the hell I was thinking when I put this stuff together. If you're enjoying it, please, continue to do so.

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Don't Bother Painting That Beautiful Fresh Snowfall

In our cozy little town, once in a while, the local-artist community has a bit of a neighbourhood tour, where they'll put their art in their garages and have interested shoppers/art supporters visit (and of course they cross their fingers hoping somebody, ANYBODY, will buy something).

There are some terrific artists around here and there is plenty of inspiration to be found in town; beautiful wildlife, incredible sunrises, fluffy and colourful bushes, flowers, waterways and quaint streets/shops that are an artists' dream to capture on canvas.

So, when one of the neighbours down the street had a sign at the end of his driveway indicating he was on the tour, my wife and I strolled over and snooped through his garage to check his work out. There were some great paintings for sure, but my favourites are the winterscapes. They're serene and subtle, there's something peaceful about the undisturbed snow during a sunrise. Plus, depending on the medium, the texture of paint on canvas lends itself so nicely to the shape and texture of snow on an evergreen's branches.

I asked the painter/neighbour why he didn't do more winterscapes, because they were so beautiful - - and he responded quickly, as if he'd done one too many winterscapes already, by saying "Nobody buys them."

And there it was, the corruption of commercialism in the face of artistry. To think you'd be stymied from artistically expressing yourself because not enough people would agree with you to make it worth while? Now THAT'S an artist, am I right!?

That's obviously the inspiration behind Studio Lesson:
(I also liked the painting the painter is working on - - giving hate the middle finger :)

Safety Citation
I see my kid climbing all over everything, and of course health and safety are important facets of any good business. This is one of my favourtie Business Man comics so far!

Stilt Merchants
As for SIRI on Beard-o's SmartPhone, I like that there's a poor, minimalist v. consumerism debate going on between the two - - however subtle/nonexistent. I guess what I'm saying is I'd LIKE there to be more of a philosophical struggle between SIRI and Beard-o (as would be inspired by Bill Watterson's work with Calvin & Hobbes). We'll see what the future holds in store. Most importantly about this comic, is how much these characters despise each other, yet still stand across the street and face off every single day.

Opa!
I'd been sitting on this joke for ages, obviously the Greek debt crisis is OLD news, but the joke finally made the list of comics to write. So here it is!

The Mystery of Mr. Minestrone | Behind the King St. Capers

Here's a different example of how things work sometimes:

Epic Fail, To Do List, Hat Vendor and Abbey Road

Recently I've changed my pattern a little bit.Before, I'd dedicate a week to writing only Capers, or only comics or only Tomb of the Undead, but instead, now I'm drawing up a mixture of strips at a time, including Business Man @ Home, too. It brings more variety to my week.

But this example came before that switch, and after building a deep catalog of King St. Caper strips, I realized a change was a good idea. So a Caper, a regular webcomic, plus a Business Man @ Home, and whatever else is floating my boat at the time is generally what I"m working on at any given time.

This page, however, is probably the last time I wrote four Capers in one week, and likely will be the last. 

I've produced a "schedule" which shows which strips I'm well prepared for, and which I'm lagging behind in, indicating where I should focus attention the next week.

In any case, the first comic here is "Epic Fail," which had a big response on Twitter when it was published.

I suppose the "Epic Fail" meme is still flooding the Internet, which is good to see. It's not what I had in mind when I wrote it, but I'm happy to take the extra pageviews (however modest the increase was). The pure truth is - - Mr. Minestrone wrote this comic. He actually gave me a pair of godawful haircuts where I felt exactly like this. Now it's a stupid comic. Thanks Mr. Minestrone!

"To Do List" was next. While not hilarious (to me anyhow), the joke does get into Mr. Minestrone's professional philosophy. I mean, who's THAT terrible at haircuts? What could be his motive? WHY is he still doing this as a career?

Perhaps it's an opportunity to pursue his vices? I mean, if a meth-head had a job where he could be as high as shit and work at the same time, you think he'd be looking for a new job?

I also think this teases the idea that Mr. Minestrone knows full-well what he's doing: giving awful haircuts. There's something mischievous about him - - like he's MEANING to do it.

Truth be told, he's still a mystery, even to me. I'll bet he has some more surprises up his sleeve for me and everyone else in the future. Especially with the Salty Advice he's been giving lately.

"Abbey Road" was a highly, highly requested comic. I'm happy to take fan input when writing a joke, and this was no exception.

Again, it was inspired by the strip "Buncha Stooges."  Matching the colours and everything was a lot of fun. While the imagery might be a little crass, or thematically fitting in line with the King St. Capers, the colour-matching was a big success.

As well, the man in the background in the original cover art, who is represented by Mr. Minestrone, was named Paul Cole, who died in 2008, who said some surprising things that fall in line with the artwork, to my astonishment.

He says about the Abbey Road cover:
"I just happened to look up, and I saw those guys walking across the street like a line of ducks," Cole remembered. "A bunch of kooks, I called them, because they were rather radical-looking at that time. You didn't walk around in London barefoot."

It's all a coincidence that the ducks and "Buncha Stooges" resembles Cole's thoughts so precisely.

Of all of these strips, my personal favourite was "You Could Use a Hat," which I saved for last. I would usually put my favourite joke at the front of the schedule, but ... this ties into a series of other jokes, whereas the others in this slate of jokes were more "stand alone."

This specially means, you'll be seeing more of the Surveyor and his hat enterprise in the near future, and how Beardo and Mr. Minestrone may react to his hat enterprise.

This was obviously inspired from personal experience: I left his barbershop and immediately wished I had a hat. I'd bet I would have paid a pretty penny for a hat right then and there.

Thanks for reading, and if you're so inclined, follow along on Twitter of Facebook.

Production Notes | Spring Chickens and King St. Capers

What I'm sure nobody's wondering is: what do the comics look like before you're done with them? Well, to answer the question nobody's asking, HERE's what they look like.

Here's we've got the Silent Pirate fan art, kitty sniff, Call Me Gail and the neighbourhood cat's middle finger.

Here we've got Ignacio, from Silent Pirate; Call Me Gail which was my twist on an expression that's a bit of a pet peeve of mine; the Neighbour's Cat; and Fishy Smell.

All of these come from the time before I learned how to add colour to the strips. You can see that I try and speed things up by drawing a bunch on one sheet of paper, then scanning them all at once, and doing the finishing touches digitally. 

Indoor v. Outdoor cats, microadvertizing, laptop kitty and Fretting over brownouts.

In this image I squished two multi-panel cartoons into one quarter of a page - - this can significantly reduce the detail, and make the images small to work with when adding colour afterwards. A lesson learned. Plus, when deleting the whitespace before adding colour, the smaller the details and images, the more difficult.

Here we've got The Difference Between Indoor and Outdoor Cats; Microadvertizing; Cybercrimes; and Fretting Over Brownouts.

I've had the rough draft of Indoor v. Outdoors cats drawn for literally three years before I got to it. I didn't like how it looked, so had to completely redraw it -- and of course it's for the better. Adding colour has made a significant difference, I think.

The Dahmer gag was another joke that'd been in the back of my mind for years and years - - now that I'm drawing up a bunch of the comics, it was time to finally get it done.

When I'm finished with a page, I'll order them to be published with the what I feel is the strongest cartoon to go first. From the above selections, it went Brownouts, Cybercrimes, Indoor v. Outdoor and then Microadvertizing. How would you have ordered them?

Great work and Cuddling Experience

Here's a quick example of two images where I was still making the shift from heavily shaded images to clean outlines to simplify the colouring process later on down the line. It looks like I've left some notes on the page for me while in the digital editing process, too.

In Great Work, I was really pleased with how the shading in the boss's suit turned out. It gave me hope that this could have some positive returns going forward.

My wife is still haunted by Cuddling Experience, which is unfair, because it was more of a joke than a critique, but also an observation ;)

The Hot Tub Drops on King St.

For the Hot Tub story arc for the King St. Capers, I tried something entirely different than what I'd been doing with other strips. Instead of drawing an entire gag in one cell, I chose to draw strip elements that I could incorporate into a series of gags. In this case, the image of two people observing the hot tub can be used in any instance when these people are observing the hot tub.

In Someone Leave Their Hot Tub, panels one, two and three were used; in Hot Tub in the Middle of the Street, I used panel four and another panel from a second page (there were four used in this story arc); and I reused panel four again in What Could Be Worse Than That?

I have to say, adding colour to the Capers has brought a LOT more life to them, and I'm even more happy with how they're turning out these days. The digital editing is making a lot more interesting stuff possible, as well.

Just one further example is, I've only had to draw the barber pole outside Mr. Minestrone's shop once, and then reused it every time - which is much faster than drawing and colouring a new barber pole every time. Same thing with the pile of butts and the pile of empty liquor bottles.