Nismorack.com

A few days ago I talked about my new comic needing a name and now I can tell you that a name has been found.

After some bouncing around and showing images to people I finally came to the name of No Tie Zone.

So where did it come from? Well I have a very deeprooted dislike for ties. So by extention so do most of the characters in my comic. It also kinda sets the tone of what sort of company it’s going to be.

Already some changes have been made in who owns the company and who fulfils what function. Added to that the comic will also feature jokes and things that are not entirely IT related.

Currently still working on ending THOM but this ending is coming closer and closer.

Recently I’ve been watching the Batman cartoon from the ninetees. Which is handsdown the best Batman cartoon ever made. While watching it I noticed something interesting. Whenever Batman is up against a regular gangboss the stories are a lot better then when he’s up against an excentric foe. The obvious reason behind this is because with an excentric foe you can focus on the fantastic nature of it. But when the bad guy is just a gang boss, the writers can’t fall back on that. They have to write a compelling story.

This is kinda the same reasoning I used when deciding to stop THOM and moving on to another comic. THOM has no ‘rules’ or ‘boundaries’. Everything goes from sci-fi to fantasy. But this lack of limitations makes it very hard to write good stories. With the exception of Shazram none of the characters have had a chance to develop or grow. Too much weird stuff going on for that.

This is why I wanted to create the IT comic and deliberately set it in a real world. Though I’m still unsure about the inclusion of something fantastic. A lot of IT webcomics tend to have either an animal, artificial intelligence or other non-real thing in it. Often these are included for the toyetic nature of them. Which isn’t bad, I’m just not sure if I will include something like that.

Most likely if I were to do anything like that I’ll probably use something like dreams or such. Why? Because I want to deliberately limit myself to a real world setting. With people that ‘could’ be real. Just to challenge myself in my writing and create actual compelling characters.

There’s one of these in every IT company if they have any hope of survival. The code guru. The one that can code in assembly, while blindfolded, tied to the back of a rabid wolverine.

Like each and every character for this comic, Rain started as just a doodle of a cross between Neil from the Young Ones and cousin It from the Addams Family. A friend pegged him as a the code guru and I liked that.

The name Rain McKnight came from the fact that it sounds cool. Originally his parents, or one of his parents, as going to be a latent hippy which explains his name. But recently whe deciding colors, I opted for an Asian tint for him. This immediately creates an interesting background, his last name obvious comes from his father who’s from Great Britain and his mother was most likely Asian which explains his name. However this does not explain his preference for coding.

Which is why his father is a traveling business man and his mother was dead. Without a lot of friends or attention he turned to computers. Resulting in an overly developed ability to code.

Personality wise I want him to be the most calm character in the comic. Where Jay is relaxed, Rain will always remain calm no matter what happens. This is partially caused by the fact that he has no facial expression. He can’t convey emotion and thus will always come across as very robotic. But that works, those guys exist, I’ve met them.

How Rain will further develop we’ll have to see.

This drawing was done when I was working on the competition comic. Who I sort of called Bob. This of course conjures up all sorts of images of Jay and Silent Bob with people. But in truth at this point I was very much inspired by SLC Punk. In which there was a character called Heroine Bob (who didn’t do drugs).

At the time I was toying with a two page story about two punks that generally sit around doing nothing. But a decent story never really formed so I tossed the idea and Jay got a solo adventure. Though he wasn’t named Jay at the time.

Interestingly this is part of the history of the development of the character. The current version doesn’t smoke, but it’s not beyond the realm of possible that he did at one point before starting his job.

As said, nothing is set in stone.

It is said that Akira Kurosawa wrote detailed biographies of each characters in his movie. Right down to their favorite food and color. Things which aren’t really relevant for the movie. But they do create a personality which reacts to situations in certain ways.

One of the things I want to do with this comic is do it as best I can. Part of that is preparing the characters as best I can. It should not be forgotten that people change and grow over time. But having a starting point helps greatly. For this reason I started to write down information about my characters in my notebook.

First up was of course Jay. While I wanted to avoid overt self insertion in this comic it is kinda obvious that Jay can find some of his inspiration in me. For this reason I wanted him to be slightly different from me where possible. Even then this list is not set in stone. Most likely his last name will change to something else as will his musical aspirations. This is something I haven’t decided yet.

For the most part this is a starting point. From here I can use this to write dialogs between him and the others to see where it goes. What sort of personality he has and how he reacts to others. We’ll meet the rest of the cast in the weeks to follow.

When last you read about my exciting life I had just finished an education in Technical Informatica.

By now I had started on an HBO eduction in Communication Multimedia Design. This was one of the first bridge educations between programming and design for multimedia purposes. It was a mishmash of design, webdevelopment, print design, multimedia creation (in MacroMedia Director) and a lot of marketing.

Through some internet chattery I had met someone who would have drawn the idea for a comic I had. But he was too busy to be able to and at some point I had fun ideas and scripts laying around that I decided to draw it myself. Of course I had horrible drawing skills and I was about twenty at the time. But with some decent books and determination I managed to improve my skill drastically over the past few year. In case you we’re wondering, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards is the shiznit in learning to draw.

At some point while I was still developing my skill I decided to jump into the fray with my comic in 2005. This version ran for a total of about fifty comics before I stopped. It used a bunch of different drawing styles and stories were a bit cramped due to flaky updating schedule. Somewhere when I stopped I was doing an internship at forty hours a week, a weekend job which also had evening slots, and karate training twice a week. It was no wonder I hardly had time to actually draw a comic of any kind.

In 2007 I decided to give it a new fresh start and rebooted the entire comic on December 31st. This started out fairly well but quickly ran into spotty updating schedules as I was also making a brave attempt at finishing school. For future reference, trying to write a thesis, starting your own business and doing a webcomic are all fine activities. Just not all at the same time. Somewhere something had to give which was more often than not the webcomic.

The business I started was doing websites to support my comic career. But it was getting in the way more and not actually making me enough money. So the decision was made to find a job. At the time I was dating the woman I’m currently living with and she moved to a city two hours driving away for school. Since I liked being with her I managed to find a job there, packed my things and moved there quite quickly. Still finishing school I was doing a full time job, getting settled and doing the comic. You can guess where this is going.

Since finishing school was in my best interest the comic game to a standstill as I worked on finishing school. Having succeeded at this I reinstated my comic and slowly built it up again until I went for a five day publishing schedule which I managed to maintain.

Next week the evolution of The House Of Madness and my desire to do new things.

With a basic character design and style, which is most notable for the mouth and eyes, I decided to try my hand on drawing more faces using this style.

This image only shows the inked variants, there were some sketches which were terrible. But even with these sketches I made a clear selection of characters.

I came to this selection by showing it to friends and gauging their reaction. Everyone pointed out who they liked and they didn’t like. And of course there was personal choice in the matter. For instance the top right guy is a bit boring. Eventually you can see the seven characters picked which I then put into a lineup.

It was around this point that I decided that this cast would be ideal for an IT comic. The exact details of the IT comic were unclear but I decided to go for a small IT company. These roles were quickly decided upon based on their looks and first impression from others. The names for some came later and inspired in various ways.

So from left to right we get:

• Jay, designer and html/css creator
• Abbey, Receptionist and administration
• Manny, Boss/owner
• Boomer, Programmer and DBA
• Darryl, Sysadmin and jack of all trades.
• Gina, Marketing and sales
• Rain, Code guru.

Each character will get a detailed post on who they are and where they came from. As they were all created based on my experiences in the IT field.

The new comic I’m working on began with the above sketch. I was experimenting with the mouth to be accurate, the face and body just kind of appeared around it. The cigarette I just found kinda cool.

Interestingly I lost this sketch for a while buried under papers. So when I revisited this character I had forgotten how I had drawn him and drew him again from memory.

If this is a representation of my memory, then I think I’m in trouble. At this point this character was actually more of a punk slacker than something IT related. That part came a whole lot later. When I drew this I needed him for a competition that required a two page comic. As I didn’t want to use The House Of Madness, I decided to create an entirely new character instead. As you can see I added all sorts of notes regarding his personality.

Eventually I used this comic in a two page comic where he has an interesting pantomime solo adventure. It didn’t win a prize but I did feel the character design was interesting enough to create a comic with it. An idea I let develop in the back of my mind.

But this is roughly where it began. More to follow.

Writing down my origins does sort counter act the whole secret part of the title, having secret in your title makes it look cool. Or not, you decide.

But before I delve into the creation of this new comic, I figured I should elaborate a bit more on where I came from and how I got here.

As a kid I did some drawing, mostly basic stuff and a lot of tracing. I did read a lot of European comics such a Tin Tin, Suske en Wiske, Asterix en Obelix, etc. Most American comic related things came to me in the form as cartoons. But for myself I wasn’t really drawing or making comics. Once I discovered the wonderful world of computers however, the whole drawing thing faded entirely into the background.

Computers were the new hip thing I wanted a career in. I actually considered game programming for a while and making games. After basicschool I headed on to a Technical Informatica school (it’s kinda like college but not). There I learned to program in various languages, how to set up networks and the fact that this wasn’t the career for me. Of course I discovered this in the third year and well, I’m not a quiter.

What I did discover here however were webcomics. Through classmates I discovered comics such a User Friendly, Sluggy Freelance, PVP Online and Penny Arcade. I loved these great witty and quirky comics and was quite hooked. Back then I only needed three days to read through the entire Sluggy Freelance archive. I’m sure these days one needs more time.

There were thoughts of making my own comic like it for the heck of it but since I couldn’t draw to save me I stuck with writing random stuff. Primarily freeform roleplaying on forums. Somewhere at the end of that school I wrote a really short but funny story about two guys living in a house (if I dig up the story again I’ll post it here). This was to be the start of The House Of Madness, though it wasn’t called as such back then.

This was near the end of the IT education where I end this first part of the story. Otherwise this story would be a bit long winded. Next week the second part in the thrilling story of my life. The rest of this week will be used for actual comic related information.

To kick off this spiffy new blog which will contain sensible articles that either help people or inform them. Let’s talk about a new comic I’m working on.

First off let’s go into the details of ‘why’ I’m working on a new comic and what this means for my current comic. You may notice I’m not referring to either as a webcomic. This is because a comic is a comic and the web is just another medium to spread it.

The reason I’m working on a new comic has various reasons. Though th primary reason is because I want to make a comic related to the IT world. It’s a field I have over ten years experience in now and those experiences have yielded a lot of fun anecdotal stories.

Despite there being a whole bunch of comics about IT I’m still doing it because I ‘want’ to do it.

But there are other reasons for this development. While The House Of Madness is a decent and fun comic it has become increasinly harder to write for it. This is caused primarily by a lack of limitations the comic has. Anything goes and anything is possible which believe it or not makes writing for it very hard.

THOM is also my first comic and no one says my first comic has to be a hit or a loss. The years I have spent drawing it has taught me a lot about writing, drawing and comic creation. All experience which I am putting to use in creating this new comic.

But I’m not just giving up on THOM overnight. Before I stop drawing that I want to give it a proper ending. Once it’s ended there might be a character that gets a spin-off. Though that’s still a bit away.

While that happens I want to use this blog to explore the creation of this new comic. By going into the process of how it came to be. Sketches I’m doing about the characters and other interesting facts. There will be the occasional sidetracks into related topics of course.

So join me as I journey through the world of comics to create a new one.