Animatic to several older audio promos
By Ben | August 17, 2008
Here’s something cool I made with some older audio promos I recorded to advertise on podcasts. Two of them were based on strips so I made an animatic out of them and used them to sandwich a 3rd which I captioned the words for. Hope somebody finds it amusing. Hope to do some more polished stuff down the road.
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Come read my new blog
By Ben | April 7, 2008
I decided to make a personal blog on a secondary page as this one is better suited for news posts and site announcements. Come follow me as I try to update it regularly
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Forum’s Live
By Ben | January 31, 2008
For all intents and purposes, the forum is now live. I’ll add things to it I’m sure but it’s fine for folks to join and start posting in
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Holy Crap, it’s 2008
By Ben | January 31, 2008
As I look down the page and see a “happy 2007″ post, I realize I’ve been away far too long. I’ve got to get into the habit of working and posting daily. Anyway, here’s the news for the new year: Towniescomics.com and GrimAndSaddam.com will be on hiatus until further notice. I started that first comic back in 2002 and it’s become something of an albatross. 900+ strips in the archive, of varying quality, are hard for new readers to dive into. It mutated in format from a regular gag strip to a complex storyline comic. The tone has always been an issue with me as well. Some stories were cartoony and light-hearted. Others were darker and I wanted them to be taken more seriously. This became a problem as the goofier elements were ever present for continuity, distracting new readers when something seemingly unrelated just happened to pop up in a story. I have ideas on how I’m going to handle it, but the truth is I need to cut my teeth on a self-contained piece before I can get my head in the right place to tackle that behemoth. It means reorganizing the world and it’s characters, possibly even nixing the entire archives and starting over from scratch so I can properly affect changes. G&S won’t require such drastic efforts, but my problem there has been in the production. I need to settle on a style that suits the material. I originally envisioned the strips to be my way of dipping my toe back into the color and rendered world as my other comic went black and white. Now I see they’re going to be something else entirely and I can’t devote so much time to a side project while my main effort is falling behind. I could switch gears and make G&S my primary strip, but one-off gags aren’t where my head’s at. If I’ve learned anything from doing comics, it’s that I crave continuity and decent story telling first. Only after I’ve satisfied that creative urge can I pursue being silly again.
This all means I’m starting a 3rd project - an online graphic novel. I’ve had the characters and story planned out for awhile now. It’s just a matter of getting the character designs chosen and mapping out each specific chapter. I’ve discovered a divide I currently have between my ideas and my actual creative abilities. It’s my hope that working on this project, to be named later once I make significant enough progress on it to make another post, will help me overcome that gap when I return to my other responsibilities.
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To Blog or Not to Blog - It’s Really Not A Question
By Ben | July 7, 2007
With the abundance of places to publish things on the ‘net, alongside the question of what content should and shouldn’t be included in certain places, I’ve been sort of hesitant to do any regular blogging. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that, if I’m actually going to get myself involved in posting and running a webcomic again, I have to get myself involved in posting and running a site. Branching my work into numerous domains (Comics, studio, and print publishing, respectively) has kind of fractured my mindset of running things. So I’ve decided to set up some ground rules for myself to adhere to, in the hopes of picking up some good habits and falling out of some bad ones.
NoRightsProductions.com will be my central hub. This means I’ll use it to link to everything else and make the majority of NRP proper statements. My Twitter posts available on the site will deal with my regular work day, from the “I just got in,” to the “I can’t believe this program keeps crashing!” Actual news posts on the site itself will mostly deal with travel plans, eventually forum and podcast activity, and anything I can actually announce about upcoming projects like a regular news blog.
TowniesComics.com and GrimAndSaddam.com will mostly be comic-specific sites. News posts for the beginnings of storylines will reference the Wicked Wiki and some other goodness. Since Grim & Saddam stories aren’t canon I’m still a little unsure how I’m going to cite them on their respective pages. But they’ll follow a similar pattern.
LilReaperBooks.com will focus on my print efforts and hopefully evolve into my merch section. NRP will be the gallery/art guy section, LRB will be the page you go to to buy things. I’ll still have to work out the kinks in this, as I use other companies to print my work and I think I’ll wait until I’m moving a specific volume before I start shipping them out myself. Expect news on that site to be of the “Coming soon!” and “It’s here!” variety.
My Live Journal will become my personal rant/ramblings section. I need to start regular, if not daily, blogging if I’m ever going to get in the habit of keeping my sites active. I figure I’ll resolve to post on it once the day’s work is done. I won’t censor myself in terms of content or language. Mostly it’s going to be free-flowing prose and the occasional essay. I’ll have one more blog to piddle around with, but I’ll mostly keep it amongst people I know personally. The LJ will serve as a soapbox in some capacities and therapy in the other.
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Site changes
By Ben | May 23, 2007
That’s right. I’m finally dusting the cobwebs off in the studio and that means you’ll probably see some changes to the sites as I finally clean them up. I’m changing the themes on the NRP and LRB sites right now and then I’ll be tweaking the CSS so the links and everything are the colors I want. Then it’s off to resize/re-letter some strips. Then the wiki’s getting populated. I’m still debating whether I should use Vanilla or PhpBB 3.0 for the forum when the time comes. I’m leaning towards Vanilla at the moment. It won’t go live until I get some new strips up, which would probably be some time next month at the earliest. Well, back to work.
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Happy ‘07, kiddos!
By Ben | January 1, 2007
Alright, so it’s New Year’s Day. Hope everyone had some happy holidays. Lemme just share a short list of stuff I’m working on -
1. Currently I’m developing a plugin for Wordpress. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m moving the comics over to Tyler Martin’s Comicspress system and I feel the navigation can use some customization. The system works great if you’re doing gag-a-day style strips, but story arcs are a little different. Plus I want to include a little alert for folks stumbling into the middle of a storyline.
2. I updated the version of phpbb I was using for the forum and it fractured some of the mods I had in place. (I know I haven’t linked the new forum yet. It was pretty much set except for the posting of various material I wanted to have on it before I made it public. I don’t think it’s much deeper than surface changes that can be repaired with a couple template resets, but I’ve also got the older one backed up if all else fails.)
3. I’m adjusting the formatting of the comics and possibly reworking lettering on a few. Today I’m browsing at 1024×768 to try to get a better mindset of what the average viewer sees. I always browse at insanely high resolutions so it’s a bit of a head trip.
4. I need to get the Wicked Wiki updated before I relaunch the comics. It’s going to be integrated with the sites more so hopefully it’ll serve more of a purpose than it currently does.
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Studio changes
By Ben | September 23, 2006
Here’s some shots of how I rearranged the physical studio space around here.
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Notice about the comics and Comic Con
By Ben | July 8, 2006
Both comics will be returning sometime after the San Diego Comic Con. I’m just not sure of the exact date yet because my days have been mostly a blur of, “Pack this! Get Ready for that! Do you mind?! I’m retiling the floor!”
I’ll be helping out where I can at Booth 1317. They’ve got alot of talent packed in there with Sluggy Freelance, PartiallyClips, Fragile Gravity, Super Frat, and The Devil’s Panties. They’ll also be carrying some stuff from Sunday at 10, The Great Luke Ski, and even a couple books from me. If you’re gonna be there, be sure to stop by.
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Quick reminder
By Ben | May 10, 2006
If you’re going to be in the Columbus area on May 13th, I’m exhibiting at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo from 10-6. (Or whenever it looks like I should take my butt home) Table 53. Come by and take a free sticker, buy a book, ask for a sketch, whatever. It’s gonna be packed so I’m looking forward to seeing who all is there.
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