Pizza Meeting

Yep. 7:00 Pizza Pie Cafe. See everyone there.

Pizza Meeting

Were we still getting together for the final unveiling of our comic strips tonight?

Street Kids #4 (By Ken)

Situation - The neighborhood kids are having great fun playing their usual game of hide and seek when Big Billy shows up. When he plays he always changes the rules and uses his size and strength to get the upper hand, ruining everyone's day. But Herschel has other plans for Big Billy.....

Dialogue - "Hey!, I want to play too!", demands Billy. "Sure, Big Billy, we'd love to let you play with us." Buzzy looks at Herschel like he's gone crazy, but Herschel knows what he is doing. "Okay Billy, you just need to go hide while the rest of us count to 100. But you can't hide anywhere in the neighborhood or you'll be disqualified." "Where am I supposed to go?", says Billy. "You have to go where we can't find you, silly." Billy is totally confused as he is last seen mumbling to himself heading off to who-knows-where. Meanwhile, as the "street kids" continue with their usual game of hide-and-seek, Herschel once again takes pride in his handling of Big Billy.

Street Kids #3 (By Ken)

Situation - Harry's candy store is the "mecca" for street kids. Harry's has all the basic food groups for kids: ice cream, soda pop, chewing gum, candy, and best of all a pinball machine. You can spend an entire day in Harry's and not spend more than 50 cents (10 big bottles). Buzzy and Herschel were making their way to Harry's, all fired up to play the pinball machine, until they noticed Big Billy was already flippin' and shakin' the big metal balls for all he was worth.

Dialogue - "Heck Herschel, he's gonna be playin' that thing all day!" "Not a problem", says Herschel. "I'll have him out of here in no time." Herschel walks over to Big Billy and says: "Ya know, it's a proven fact that playin' a pinball machine too long causes you to lose your ability to communicate." Billy responds, "that's silly!" "What?", says Herschel. "I said that's silly". Herschel's voice gets louder, "WHAT? Big Billy is aggitated but responds again, "I SAID, THAT'S SILLY!!" Herschel looks at Buzzy and says, "can you hear what Billy is saying Buzz?" Buzz responds, "did Big Billy say somethin'?" Oh my God, it's true, it's really happenin'." "Here, you guys can play til' I see a doctor....." "Buzzy says to Herschel, "How do you do that?" Herschel smiles and says, "it's like taking candy from a baby!"

Street Kids #2 (By Ken)

Situation - Buzzy delivers newspapers for the "Bulletin", both weekdays and Sundays. The papers are the heaviest on Sundays when all the ads were stuffed into the news section. Sometimes Herschel likes to walk with Buzzy to keep him company. This day is no exception.

Diaglogue - "Hey Buzzy, how are ya?" "Okay Hersch, you too?" "Yep! Mind if I tag along?" "Naw, suite yourself" "How long ya plannin' on deliverin' newspapers Buzzy?" "Gotta save up enough money to buy a new football helmet for next season." "How many newspapers do ya need to deliver to buy a helmet?" "Don't know exactly, maybe 1,000 or so." That's a lot of newspapers for a football helmet! Is it really worth all the trouble?" "Well", says Buzzy, "Big Billy tried playin' without a helmet when he was my age, and......"Say no more, I see what ya mean!"

Street Kids #1 (By Ken)

Strip #1

Situation - Herschel is walking down the street with his "Red Flyer" wagon, filled with bottles, on his way to "Harry's" candy store. Harry buys empty bottles back, 2 cents each for small bottles and 5 cents each for large bottles. Buzzy is play "wall-ball", but stops to talk with Herschel. Buzzy is warning Herschel about "Big Billy" who is roaming the neighborhood looking to spoil someone's day.

Dialogue - Herschel says to Buzzy, "I can't go too fast or I'll break my bottles and they won't be worth nothin'! Buzzy suggests: "cover the bottles with your jacket so Big Billy can't see what you got! Great idea Buzzy!" So Herschel covers the bottles just as Big Billy comes around the corner, and he asks Herschel, "whatcha got in your wagon?" "Oh, nothin', just some old magazines." "Magazines?", says Big Billy. How come they're rattlin' around like glass bottles?" "Cause the magazines have pictures of glass bottles in them, silly". "Oh, no wonder. See you later Herschel".

Jake and Friends #5 (by Shay)

Strip #5 - "A Visit to the Vet"

Dan and Jake are walking to the local veterinarian where Dan works after school for his father. As he enters the office, Jake bites Dan on the arm. "Ooow!" yells Dan. Jake drops from the backpack, runs and jumps into the arms of Jake's father. "Hey, dad", Dan mumbles. "Hello son, what's happened to your arm?" "Jake bit me!" Dan's dad looks unsure, "Must have been a good reason", as he gives Jake a treat. "But he bit me!" explains Dan. "Aw, you'll survive, now get to work cleaning the bird cages." Jake makes his escape, but returns later riding a huge mastive dog and yelling, "CHARGE!" as he runs toward Dan who's busy on his knees cleaning cages. Dan tries to fend off the 200 lb. dog but is knocked into the bird cage along with the bucket of soap. As Jake rides off into the sunset you can hear a distinct, "Ooops!"

Jake and Friends #4 (by Shay)

Strip #4 - "Jake's Advice"

Jakde and Dan finally arrive at school as Dan shoves Jake into his locker for safe keeping. "Hey!" yells Jake. "It's dark in here!" "Too bad Jake, now be quiet." One of Dan's classmates walks up to him and says "hi!" Dan, caught be surprise, tries to respond, "h-h-h-hi!", as he blushes so hard his hair nearly turns red. "I'm Sidney, what's your name?" "I-I-I-I'm Dan" still trying to recover from this awkward situation. "H-h-h-h-h-ow are you?" Before Sidney can respond, Jake interrupts from the locker saying, "Oh, just get on with it Dan, you big head!"

Jake and Friends #3 (by Shay)

Strip #3 - "Jake to the Rescue"

Dan is on his way to school again when two little dogs in bright red coats come running up to them, "yapping" away. "Shoo! Get away!" Dan yells, "Go on, git!" But the dogs keep yapping and begin nipping at Dan's ankles. "Ouch!, Shoo!, Ooooww!, Stop!" cries Dan. By this time Jake is tired of all this noise, especially while he's been napping in Dan's backpack. Jake jumps out of the backpack, surprising the two dogs. They stop yapping and nipping and tilt their heads to the side while checking out this strange looking object that appeared out of nowhere. One dog comes closer to check Jake out, then the other approaches sniffing all the way. Without warning Jake lets out a loud "ROARRRRR! scaring the dogs, causing them to jump clean out of their coats and running away! Jake says, "would you mind keeping the noise down while I'm trying to sleep?" Dan just shakes his head............

Jake and Friends #2 (by Shay)

Strip #2 - Jake Gets Caught!

Dan is walking to school and you can see he's having a hard time carrying the backpack, something is obviously wrong. "Man! This backpack is heavy!" I don't remember bringing home any heavy books!" Out from the backpack comes, "Aaa-choo!", as Jake can't hold back his sneeze any longer. Dan stops, unzips the backpack and realizes Jake is in his backpack. "Jake! What are you doing in my backpack. You know you can't come to school with me." "Why not?" says Jake. "Because someone will see you, that's why!" "Like who", says Jake, "like your girlfriend?" "No Mr. Fuzzball, the Janitor!!"

Jake and Friends #1 (by Shay)

Strip #1 - Jake Comes to School

"Jake!", Dan yells. "I'm headiing out, please don't trash the house again while I'm gone, ok?" Jake doesn't answer. "Jake!", Dan yells again; still silence. Heading out the door Dan mumbles, "Wherever you are at least your not with me." Dan has his backpack on and you can see two eyes staring out from an unzipped pouch on the backpack as Dan heads off to school.

Buds "The backyard campout"

Panel 1
Tyler and Tate are sitting under a mountain of junk food out in Tyler's back yard.
Tate: Do you think we have enough snacks?

Panel 2
Tyler is surrounded by large spot lights and flash lights. Both Tyler and Tate are glowing in the light.
Tate: Do you think we have a good enough night light?

Panel 3
A horrible potato monster fills this panel.
Tate: Have you checked for the potato monster?

Panel 4
Tyler and Tate are surrounded by potato mashers.
Tyler: I don't think we have to worry about him tonight, I have mashers set up all over this yard!

Something like that. This is hard. I keep wanting to have the drawings tell me what to write, but I think that writing first will help the drawings come to life.

Script/Writing Template

Here is an example of how you might go about formatting the 6 -8 strips you are writing this week.

---

[PANEL ONE]

Clyde is sitting on the sidewalk playing his guitar. Roland is standing next to him.

Roland: Shouldn’t you be in Biology?

[PANEL TWO]

Clyde: I’m conducting my own “Music Appreciation” class instead.

[PANEL THREE]

Roland: Oh yeah? How many credits is that worth?

[PANEL FOUR]

Clyde looks down at his open guitar case.

Clyde: So far, two Canadian nickels and a gum wrapper.

Roland: Good thing education is its own reward.

---

And here is what the finished comic would look like (which we will work on next week):

Getting Ideas: Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

Q: With almost 15 years of separation and reflection, what do you think it was about "Calvin and Hobbes" that went beyond just capturing readers' attention, but their hearts as well?

A: The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts. I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can't explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don't think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once. [1]

Q: Are the adventures of Calvin and Hobbes similar to your own childhood, or is the strip a way for you to create stories you never experienced as a kid?

A: I'd say the fictional and nonfictional aspects were pretty densely interwoven. While Calvin definitely reflects certain aspects of my personality, I never had imaginary animal friends, I generally stayed out of trouble, I did fairly well in school, etc., so the strip is not literally autobiographical. Often I used the strip to talk about things that interested me as an adult, and of course, a lot of Calvin's adventures were drawn simply because I thought the idea was funny. In any given strip, the amount of invention varied. Keep in mind that comic strips are typically written in a certain amount of panic, and I made it all up as I went along. I just wrote what I thought about. [2]

Q: When you sit down at the drawing table, though, do you do one at a time or just keep going?

Watterson: I write separately from the inking up. I'm sure this varies from cartoonist to cartoonist; I find that the writing is the hard part and the drawing is the fun part. I like to separate the two so I can give my full attention to one or the other. Writing it, I'll sit down and stare into space for an hour and sometimes not come up with a single decent idea, or sometimes no idea at all, and it's very tempting to go do something else or just draw up a strip, but I find that if I make myself stick to it for another hour I can sometimes come up with several good ideas. And when I get to the drawing, I really enjoy taking a big chunk of time and working on the drawing and nothing else. That allows me to make sure that I'm really challenging the art, making each picture as interesting as I can...stick in a close-up or an odd perspective. This way, the writing doesn't distract me while I'm drawing and vice versa. I can devote my full attention to each. [3]

[1] Bill Watterson, creator of beloved 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic strip looks back with no regrets.http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html

[2] Andrews McNeel Publishing: Fans From Around the World Interview Bill Watterson
http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/calvinandhobbes/interview.html

[3] Honk Magazine Interview
http://bob.bigw.org/ch/interview.html

Getting Ideas: Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott (Baby Blues)

Q: What was the inspiration behind Baby Blues?

Jerry: About 19 years ago, Rick and I were trying out all kinds of ideas for a new comic strip. Nothing we came up with was any good, but like the John Lennon line, "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans", real events conspired to create a unexpected opportunity. All the while Rick and I were working on ideas for The Great American Comic Strip, Rick and his wife, Sukey were busy dealing with their second baby, who was, um... a handful. The more time I spent hearing his stories of parenthood, the clearer it became to me that this was a couple who was dealing with a force much more powerful (and noisier) than themselves. After rejecting the twelfth or thirteenth stupid comic strip premise we'd come up with, I looked at Rick's unshaven face, pablum-stained t-shirt and wrinkly jeans and said, "Hey. What about a strip about a couple with a new baby?" [1]

Q: Where do you get your ideas for the strip?

Jerry: The ideas come from everywhere. Our own experiences, stories we hear from friends, and just good old warped imagination.

Rick: As I mentioned earlier, our families are a great source, but it doesn’t stop there. We observe a lot of friends and strangers and many readers have written us. They don’t usually translate directly into gags, but mostly serve as germs for ideas. I find that airports and shopping mall food courts are great places for inspiration. [2]

Q: Do you take ideas from your own family life?

Rick: Absolutely, as much as possible. In the first few years of the strip, before Jerry had kids, a great deal was taken from my family. We both shamelessly exploit our families for gags. Our wives are good sources of gag material, too, suggesting things from time to time. [2]

Q: What funny things have happened in your family that you haven’t shared in the strip?

Jerry: I’ve had to have a useable idea for every day of the year for the entire 18 years baby Blues has been in syndication. Not only do I use every possible funny thing that happens in my family, I use everything from Rick’s family, my neighbors’ families and any talkative strangers I come across. [2]

[1] Baby Blues: Interview with comic strip creators, Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott
http://www.thisfullhouse.com/this_full_house/2008/10/baby-blues-inte.html

[2] An Interview w/ Baby Blues-THE COMIC STRIP
http://wearethatfamily.com/2008/12/interview-w-baby-blues-comic-strip/

Getting Ideas: Bill Amend (FoxTrot)

Q: Where do you get your ideas?

“I think really, really, really hard. Seriously, there's no secret magic formula that I know of. It helps to have good characters to work with and to write about things I'm interested in, certainly. And the always looming do-or-die deadlines seem to help me, inexplicably.” [1]

Q: How have you been able to come up with so many ideas for so long?

There is a moment in just about every week where I stare at my blank piece of paper and think that the well has at last run dry and it's all over for me. And then somehow through a mix of panic and caffeine I get seven decent ideas out and live to see another week. I think what helps me most is through luck and design, I've put together a cast of characters that lets me cover a very wide range of subjects. So I can write computer jokes and golf jokes and academic jokes, etc., and having that sort of range gives me a lot of options when ideas seem scarce.” [2]

Q: What gives you ideas for Fox Trot, your family, or your Siblings?

“Most of the stuff in the strip is made up, but there are certainly influences from my own experiences both as a kid growing up and now as a husband/father.” [2]

Q: How do you go about producing ideas?

A: I drink a lot of coffee and hope that my brain vibrates enough that ideas will pop out. Seriously, I just try to be observant – the world’s full of humor – little nuggets of funny situations wherever you go, and this is particularly true when you’re doing a family strip. I suppose that for about 50% of the strips I depend on some sort of blurred memory of my family – things that happened, recollections of how I felt at different times, and so on. [3]

Q: What’s your writing routine like?

A: I start out with a clean yellow legal pad and begin scribbling down a 2-or-3 word description of some idea that may work, such as the birthday of one of the characters, back-to-school, or a family vacation. I may do a dozen of these in 10 minutes, and they get the brain wheels going along the line of an isolated strip, or of a whole week of strips on the same subject. I then write my dialogue, without any pictures, and the results almost look like a movie script. Previously I have Xeroxed sheets with the outlines of the 4 panels indicated. I write the dialogue in each panel, make rough sketches of the characters involved in each one. [3]

[1] Bill Amend’s FAQ Page
http://homepage.mac.com/billamend/faq.html

[2] Washington Post: Meet the Artist with Bill Amend
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/03/regular/style/comics/r_style_comics021403.htm

[3] 1989 Interview with FoxTrot’s Bill Amend.
http://bakertoons.blogspot.com/2010/02/early-foxtrot-interview.html

Shayna's Comic Strip - "Jake and Friends"

Ken's Comic Strip - "Street Kids"

I have came up with two characters Bill and Zoomaro. Bill likes to play baseball and football. He has interesting opinions about African countries. Bill is kind of mean.
Zoomaro is a Kenyan foreign exchange student. He is really fast but wants to be faster in Kenya you have to be the fastest to get the water and food. Bill is teaching Zoomaro how more American. Zoomaro has a lot of trouble learning though.

Hey Comic Strip Class,

I am working on several different characters for a couple of different scenarios. First I have Tyler and Tate; two best friend next door neighbors around 7 yrs. old. They are highly inspired by Indiana Jones, Bear Grylls, and Scooby Doo. They have a lot of difficulties determining between making good decisions and having a good adventure (for example, if Bear Grylls can eat raw grasshoppers, they must be delicious if they are roasted over a small backyard fire). If people didn't know them, they would think they were twins because they seem to share one brain. Anything can happen with a little imagination and a farmers field behind their houses where adventure lies behind every turn. When the field is planted in potatoes, there must be a potato monster lurking about. When there is wheat or hay, similar monsters will exist. It's just plain logic.

The other characters are based off of people I have met that seemed to share similar interests. There are three guys (not sure what ages yet) that room in one of the guy's mother's basement. They have spray painted the windows black and call the basement "The Bat Cave". Thinking of Rush, Leonard, and Seth for their names. They all like Star Wars way too much and they know their local gaming/computer store guys by name. They highly respect every member of the geek squad from Best Buy and hope to achieve such great success some day. Rush fixes computers and mumbles a lot. He laughs at peoples inability to understand complex computer problems because he can take them apart and put them back together with his eyes closed. Leonard drives truck making local deliveries. It is his mothers basement that the three live in. He considers himself quite the ladies man, but he cant really speak to them without getting sick. Seth knows everything about anything useless. His heroes are Rush and Leonard. This is what I am thinking so far.

Jared

A Copy of our CCC

Here is a copy of our Character Creating Card to help you with this week's homework. Be sure to post your 2-3 character descriptions on the blog as soon as you finish!

J.Clark

[right click and go to "save image as"]

Hello my fellow friends!

I am excited for us to share our work on this blog! It will help us give each other constructive feedback on our journeys to comic greatness! If you need help posting on the blog, please let me know by emailing me or calling me (use the contact information on your syllabus!

J.Clark