Subject: Re: my departure, my return, and the comics strike. Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 12:20:31 -0400 From: Bones Organization: NecroBones Enterprises, The Dragon's Hoard Armory, Undead Army High Command, & The coalition to infest the planet with meaningless verbose silly stuff. To: "Kurtz, Scott ." Kurtz, Scott . wrote: > > Bones, > > First let me congratulate you on your massive racking of hits! Well done > sir! I am happy to hear that you are doing well (especially since I have a > permanent link on your site and milk around 68 hits a day from it). Heheh, thanks, and no problem :-) > My comments on UO comics going on strike: I know that you tend to get ugly > here. I also know that you "draw" one of these FUSE generated strips. Try to > have a thick skin, my ego is flaring up! I can take it! Ugly!??!!? :-) > * First of all, if you're not Steve Allen, you're stealing my bit. ?? What do you mean? What did I do? :-) > * Learn from my mistake. Going on strike produced nothing but > frustration, animosity, poor quality of work, and a distaste for the game > and drawing the strip entirely. > * No one at Origin is going to change the way they work because you > didn't draw a strip. Nor are they going to change the way they work because > 1700 players wrote them bitching about you not drawing a strip. Basically, > no one at Origin is going to change the way they work. > * Ask yourself why you started drawing the strip in the first place. > If it was to bash UO, why strike? Origin just provided you with a wealth of > material. Agreed... In fact, during the multi-site comics strike, I was the first UO-comics author to make a visible public stand *against* the strike. I mentioned several of these points, among others. You can read some of the comments I made at: http://bones.questgate.net/c2.htm#comicstrike The times during which my comics aren't updated is usually due to RL obligations or just simply taking a break from UO-related stuff altogether... not because I'm trying to make a statement. > * Jokes about lag, patches, pk's, bad designers, and how much the game > sucks are NOT funny. The humor comes from how your characters react to those > things. If the joke is PK's always use energy bolt...ho hum. If Moe says, > "Look I'm a PK, CORP POR, CORP POR! That's funny! Well, that can depend on how it's constructed, but generally yes, it's how the characters deal with it. One thing I've discovered is that people have widely varying senses of humor. I've had people tell me they like so-and-so's strip better than mine, and upon looking at their comics I would fail to see the humor in it. Everyone has different tastes, though a great deal of people tell me they like mine the best of the ones that have been available recently. Differing opinions seem to be a dime a dozen these days :-) Some of my recent comics haven't dealt specifically with my main characters, simply because I haven't had the time to write some real quality material. But if you go back and follow my entire series, you'll see some underlying storylines and connected jokes, some of which I'm rather fond of. :-) I think mine tends to lean towards monty python and away from stand-up comedy in terms of what the style emulates. And actually, I will admit that I fall into the trap of just finding ways of killing people as punch-lines a little too often. It's dull, and I'm trying to steer away from it. > * (here's where I get lynched) FUSE STRIPS ARE BORING TO LOOK AT! The > first rule of cartooning is to catch someone's eye. All you guys look the > same. Keep in mind that most people are upset with the game. Why would they > want to continue to look at it. DRAW SOMTHING! If you think you can't draw, > it doesn't matter. Scribble. just be original. I can't completely agree on this point. It's a different style. Some might argue that it has a certain appeal to it because it's done in the same medium as the game itself, that it somehow seems closer to the source and more connected to the context in which the jokes are formed. Some might even say that hand-drawn is somehow less valid... Not I though, I think the chosen medium isn't nearly as important as the content. Each medium does however present certain advantages and disadvantages in being able to get the point across. Jokes involving connection loss just work better in a FUSE-generated strip, for instance... But certainly you can't show facial expressions in FUSE. Actually, it's a little known fact that "Bones Comics" was something I created long ago (over a decade ago) as a hand-drawn strip. Most of it was pretty silly, if not stupid, but it had its moments, and it was the inspiration behind Bones' UO Comics. I chose to use FUSE, not because of a lack of a scanner (actually, I have a very nice one), but because I wanted my comics to look like they *could* happen in-game. I wanted the players to feel connected to the comics. The fact that they spend so much time using the game-interface to interact with the game-world would give them a sense of familiarity with the graphics in the comics that would draw them inside. The down-side to this is that many many many other strips have since jumped on the bandwagon and are trying to use the same medium, and many aren't pulling it off well. At the time that I started mine, there were only something like 2 or 3 comic series of the type, including mine (actually, I only knew of bonedood and platedewd at the time). I would truly like to see more hand-drawn comics, and more variety. However, I'm not inclined to change my site's style just because everyone else has "flooded the market" so to speak. So with that in mind, I'm glad to see yours has returned. :-) > When we decided to bring Samwise back and host it with MPOG.COM, I made the > executive decision it was NOT going to be about, take place, or mention UO. > Now you and I know that Sam isn't in just any forest, that's YEW! But I'll > never say that directly. I was afraid that people would respond poorly to > it. You know what? Not one single complaint. Hey, that's great. I was curious about how you were going to handle the return as such. I figured that it would become more generic in the sense that it would be about characters in a fantasy setting and less specific to UO. BTW- did you hear that Kazola might be quitting? I heard about it about a week or so ago... I don't know what happened since, so she might still be around or not. I have no idea which way it went. > What I am trying to say is that if you are drawing one of these strips, > don't get caught up in the game so much as to keep yourself from having a > good time. Either use the situation to further brow beat the designers and > GM staff, or take your characters out of the game as well. and remember.... > > * Ogre's with very LARGE mouths are funny! Oh certainly.. I've always been of the mind-set that despite the annoying problems in UO, that it's still a great game. The comics were one way to revitalize the game for me, since I created them around a time when I was starting to get bored with it. I find that I'm getting drawn back in at various times by various things. The comics sometimes see nasty down-times, but it's not due to disinterest or frustration with the game, but rather it's because of real-life limiting the time I can spend coming up with ideas or actually designing the strips. If I had my way, I'd post 3 a week or more. And remember... Neurotic skeletons are funny! :-) -- -Bones- ============================================================= _ = Ed T. Toton III, Wanderer -===- NecroBones@necrobones.com = ( ) ==== Bones Dragon (UDIC) -=====- http://www.necrobones.com/ = --+-- ============================================================= | ["Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"] |