So, after 15 years on the job, my company showed me the door in outrageously douchey fashion recently. What’s one to do when the rug is pulled out from under you like that? Start rolling with that cartooning idea you’ve had in the back of your mind for 20 years, of course!
Why not do this 20 years ago? Simple…laziness and a severe lack of drawing talent. Now I’m not quite as lazy, and I’ve realized that while I might not be the best illustrator out there, there’s at least one or two successful guys worse than me.
The concept is simple – take the subject line from a spam e-mail, and make a comic to go with it. And yes, this idea is identical to the one that brought myself and others a whole lot of laughter when it was called Spamusement. But that site hasn’t been updated in over six years, so I’m taking the idea and running with it. (I had the idea a long time ago anyway, so I’m just calling dibs)
Oh, and yes, I know, 1998 called and wants to know if I can work on their web site. I’ll be getting a copy of Dreamweaver before too long, and I’ll finally ditch my Notepad-centric web design.
Congrats! Any ideas about adding RSS to the site? How many different spams do you get to keep this going? I’ve filtered mine out so I don’t see as many anymore. The randomness of the mouseover text was a little annoying. Some were freakishly long and others had none. I kept waving my mouse back and forth thinking I missed something. Anyways, great first step! I look forward to more.
Seems like a worthy standard-bearer for the Spamusement legacy
My sole complaint isn’t the website design but that I’d work a little on making the art less “sketchy”. The drawing itself is fine (again, see: Spamusement) but the lines could use some work. Even comics that thrive off the “poorly drawn” motif don’t necessarily look they were taken from someone’s Social Studies notebook.
I filter as well, but I can still see what’s in my spambox. The real gold mine, however, is on the address my wife uses for signing up for free mailing list crap. I filtered through over a thousand headlines in there last night, and found stuff that was seriously making me bust a nut thinking about what I had planned for it. Even if I didn’t get another e-mail, I have enough material to get me through the end of the year. And it’s not like companies stop sending this nonsense.
Bonus points to you for being the first to notice (or at least mention to me) that alt-text exists on there. But yeah, I know – sometimes I use it for a background story on the comic, sometimes for an extra joke. And sometimes, I got nothing. One of my goals is to make sure there’s something up there for each one.
It’s a fair cop…and I’m working on it. I’m trying to produce a finished comic each day, and I’m finding myself happier and happier with the output as time goes on.
Yet.
Sounds good to me! Facebook message coming forthwith…
Don’t get me wrong, I think the basic art is fine. You might just want to experiment with going over your line work with marker (maybe even different weights) or something for a more finished looking product. Unless you’re producing them on a tablet or something but I assume it also has functions to let you do about the same thing.
Nice! Lots of potential, too. I’ve looked at a lot of webcomics starting from the beginning of the archive, and it’s fun to watch how the art style and delivery change over time. Might I make a couple of suggestions?
When browsing webcomic archives, I really like it when clicking on the comic itself takes you to the next comic. It’s easy to turn the image into a clickable link.
When browsing from a tablet (I often use my iPad), I don’t know of a way to view mouseover text. It would be cool if there was a button to show it, or if it was repeated further down the page.
I second the request for RSS (and for sheep! ;))
You might want to check and see if your hosting company has Wordpress available (or consider linking the domain name to wordpress). It has a plugin called Comicpress that provides tons of tools, including social media links, RSS feeds, navigation systems, commenting, and lots more.
Ok, bad links have been fixed, twitter account has been added and clicking on a comic now takes you to the next comic.
I’ve been noodling with different marker weights, and I’m really happy with the difference. I have a backlog of comics drawn, so you’ll start seeing the difference in a week or two (although I don’t always post in the same order as drawn – for example, spamtoon #25 will be the third one I actually drew, just because it has a Father’s Day theme).
Also, I’ve been messing around with WordPress. Or attempting too, anyway – I’m going to have to spend a lot more time with the documentation before I make any decision to switch.
I appreciate all the feedback – thanks for all the comments, facebook shares and the like. Much appreciated!
It’s been one month and 13 new 'toons since the site launched, so I figured this was a good time to use my one bump.
Thanks again for all the suggestions. The RSS and Twitter feeds are up and running, while the facebook page gets you an extra link joke with each comic.
That is some funny stuff, Hal. I think my favorite is “Don’t get her the same AWFUL gift”.
For your drawing style, I’d recommend practicing contour drawing and also action/gesture drawing. It’ll teach you to draw long, sure lines, which eliminates the “sketchy” quality.
