Archive for December, 2009
9 items.
Christmas is over, but the idea of Santa Claus as a corporate entity was too much to pass up. I’d had several disparate ideas for Christmas themed comic that I tried to roll into one really long page for Christmas Day but it didn’t really pan out too well so I went back and reworked them to give them their own space.
Santa Claus, at least here in the States, is single-handedly responsible for the unholy resurrection of capitalism every year from November to December. Most businesses do okay throughout the year, but it’s not until after Halloween that everything really pulls together. The most poetic part of all this is that it almost mirrors the resurrection of Jesus himself. Am I saying that capitalism is the Messiah? Maybe.
Using religion and holidays as a tool for turning profits is nothing new in the world, unfortunately. For years the Catholic Church made a fortune selling indulgences to those rich enough to afford them. Nowadays, companies can sell products to the masses much more easily and push ideas that, in days gone by, would have been considered distasteful. Times, they are ah-changin’.
I guess it’s okay though. Giving gifts to others and being kind to human beings we don’t know is admirable. It would be lovely if we could cultivate this attitude throughout the year instead of on select days but I suppose life is difficult and people should be forgiven for not being able to keep up that level of enthusiasm.
Next up: New Year! Happle Tea moves into 2010 with a vengeance!
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I tried to think of a strip befitting the Lord and Savior of all Mankind for his birthday. I couldn’t think of anything like that so I wrote this instead. I hope he likes it.
Personally, I don’t subscribe to the belief in the divinity of Jesus, but that’s just me. I know a lot of people that do and to them, I wish them a very Merry Christmas. To most everyone else, I hope the Holiday season has been awesome. For those of you that were not covered by the first two well wishes, I hope your winter is mild or something. Or warm if you’re in the southern hemisphere.
I think that covers everyone.
Seriously though, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kick-ass Kwanzaa, and an Exciting Everything Else to all. <3
You know when you’ve found someone you think you can really connect to but then it turns out that they think you share a name with some guy from a movie made in 1966 that was totally awful? Yeah, me too. I hate when that happens. It bums me out so bad that I wrote a strip about it.
In other news, the semester is almost over for us here at 10kM and that means a bunch of fantastic things will be happening over Winter Break! A brand new Ten Thousand Masks website, advertisements for Project Wonderful, T-Shirt designs, and a new comic project worked on by both William and I will be hitting the internet in a matter of weeks if all goes well! How exciting!
This comic features two of my favourite things: Tengu and Engrish. I’ve been wanting to find a place for some engrish in the strip for a long time and when I got the idea for this Tengu character, the lines practically wrote themselves. I have to say, it was incredibly difficult not go whole hog and have him speak entirely in Engrish.
As far as Engrish goes, I got some wonderful results for the poster by using Yahoo’s impossibly bad babelfish translator. The site is fiendishly awful for acquiring any sort of purposeful information from other languages. If attempting to translate something using it, please be aware that it spits forth only venomous lies and misinformation. However, if you like to use things improperly (as I do) for hilarious results, you would be wise to try translating something from english to japanese, taking the japanese results and translating them back to english. I believe William made some awesome Facebook statuses this way.
That said, please do not correct my Japanese. I do not speak the language and I didn’t even try to get anything right. The more wrong it is, the funnier it is to me.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way…
Japan is an interesting place, rife with strange creatures, some terrifying, some meant to be terrifying but that are actually hilarious. The Tengu falls into the latter category. There are a great many different kinds of Tengu, originating in different time periods from many different people and for gods only know what reasons exactly. These humanoids began their mythological lives as terrible bird demons and somehow became ridiculous red faced men with long noses and bulging eyes. Not what we would call a respectable and impressive retirement.
I warned you on Friday that we may need a full three panels solely dedicated to the incredibly complex characters known as The Owltons. Today’s strip features Mr. Owlton doing what he does best: dramatic zooms for absolutely no purpose.
This is the last time we’ll see the Owltons for some time, I think. I’m contemplating doing some bonus strips of The Owltons for when I get the first Happle Tea book printed. I’ve known for some time that I wanted to include some bonus materials to people helping support the site in such a way, and have been kicking around what sorts of things I could, reasonably, pull off. Future K and Benjamin Franklin Rex is a definitely possibility. Now we’ve also got The Owltons. You guys are sure in for a treat.
I’m glad people seemed to like the video of me drawing the strip. If you missed it, here’s the link again.
We will return to our regularly scheduled mythological monster madness on Friday.
There is a problem with mass market appeal that goes beyond the simple avenue of comics. To grab the lowest common denominator (read: the majority) among us, anything reaching national or global levels, typically, needs to be so watered down that it nearly fails to say anything at all. Comics in American newspapers are a great example. Maybe I’m in some minority, but I don’t know a single person that really likes newspaper comics anymore. There are a couple that are alright, but most are so dull that you’d have to remove one of the central figures, create an entirely new experience, and make a habit of doing so for it to be funny in a strange, sad sort of way. Or maybe you could take a that same character and turn him into something a little…different. It got me thinking, who could possibly be in charge of picking up these comics and what sort of delicate sensibilities must they have?
For my part, I’ll take vulgar webcomics with something to say over a cat who hates mondays any day. But hey, that’s me.
Also: owls are back! Hoo!
This comic was actually born out of a very stupid drawing I did on the small pad of paper we keep on our kitchen table. William and I got to talking (as we often do) and then drawing, and thus the owltons were born.
Maybe we need a full happle tea strip to explore the limitless possibilities provided by these incredible characters…
In other news, I recorded my work on the strip, edited it down, and set some music to it that you may or may not enjoy. Feel free to mute it. I’m not sure how much educational value there is in it, as it is sped up about 10 times faster (it took an hour and a half to do, reduced to 9.5 minutes) but it certainly looks cool!
Oh and there’s 5 seconds of black at the start of that video. It’s not broken, I just suck at editing. Oh and there’s some weird artifacting that goes on when I zoom in and out randomly. Not sure what that’s about, but just giving you a heads up.
In case you were not aware (being new to this neck of the woods, and such), my associate does a wonderful graphic novel, posted online for your pleasure. Please give it a look!
What could possibly be a more formidable foe and dangerous creature than the mighty bull-headed minotaur? Why, it’s David Bowie and his army of muppet goblin allies, of course! If you have never witnessed the absolute ridiculousness of the 1986 film Labyrinth starring David Bowie, then fie on thee! You are truly living under a rock.
Thanks to Liz for inspiring the punchline to this comic!
I’ve been reading a very popular book by Joseph Campbell entitled The Hero With A Thousand Faces. It is a magnificent read for anyone interested in mythology and how we, as a species, require myths and stories for imparting knowledge, wisdom, and moral ideals to members of our societies. It got me to thinking about the differences and similarities between our modern myths and those of the ancient world. Labyrinth and Theseus and the Minotaur are great examples even though they seem completely disparate. The former is a sort of goofy romp featuring a grown man and his package kidnapping a child. The moral it imparts is that sometimes you don’t miss something until it’s gone and that family is even more important than personal safety. Theseus and the Minotaur (while part of a larger narrative) imparts a heroic feeling to the reader, inspiring them through Theseus’s actions. It talks about fate, courage, and the unification of a people through good deeds.
While these are wildly different sets of information, they both do a solid job of imparting these ideas and morals to a younger generation. How interesting!
Also, the idea that David Bowie lives in a Labyrinth is hilarious. What the hell is he doing there anyway? What sort of lonely pathetic man kidnaps children?
Happle Tea has a facebook page. Become a fan and share it with your friends, perhaps?
This week, HT has seen a rather large jump in visitors in comparison to previous weeks. I can only assume this is from Stumble Upon, which is a rather nifty site, if you’re into that sort of thing. To those that added HT to this internet alchemy, I thank you! To those telling their friends, family, and gods, I thank you also.
Edit: Happle Tea now has a facebook page! If you’d like to join it and help to spread the word about the comic more easily to the 30 friends and 900 near-strangers you are facebook buddies with, please feel free to join it and link it!
Magical fish abound in myths and religions all over the world. There are carp, there are generic ocean fish, there are all sorts of weird sorts of aquatic creatures that cause human beings trouble or grant them wishes. Both Jonah and Pinnochio were swallowed by a whale, for example. Typically, the story goes that mermaids grant wishes to humans that catch them or visit them under the sea but there are variations on that idea.
Personally, I think it’s all very fishy.
Here we are back to our regularly scheduled weirdness. Monday’s strip was my attempt to talk about something that bugs me and that I also find hilarious, but I’m not sure it was terribly successful. I tend to feel a lot better about the concept and the artwork on strips that keep it simple and make people laugh or smile. There’s something gratifying in that. There’s also something really difficult about writing strips that are widely accessible.
In other news, the semester is almost over here at school and that means that I can get more work done on the site and forums soon! Hooray! I desperately need to finish some advertisement stuff so that William and I can get them out on Project Wonderful. We’ve also got a comic we’ve been putting together that needs a website of its own!
The problem with Modern Art is that most people don’t understand what the fuck is going on half the time. The idea here is that you make something so inexplicable that people are forced out of their daily routine and given something to think about. Unfortunately, this practice turns most people off to the idea of art as these sorts of things tend to be really weird. We, as a culture and seemingly as a species, no longer prize execution. We have narrowed the beam of our artistic focus and that beam shines almost exclusively these days on such idiotic ventures as Damien Hirst’s Shark in a Box; AKA The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
This sort of art isn’t for me, I am a storyteller and a comedian at heart and my art is, more or less, the art of words and human experience. I am able to step back from my personal opinions and look at this objectively, even though it seems completely ridiculous. People are and should be allowed to pursue various artistic mediums. My problem is that this is what’s big right now and that we are not celebrating things that deserve to be celebrated in the way we should be. So-called “low art” (that is, comics, cartoons, animation in general, any art that relies on story rather than pure visuals) is spoken of pejoratively and with a sneer of disgust in art communities and schools. Meanwhile, people are paying millions for a preserved shark in a box. Seems a bit…strange doesn’t it?
The best part about this comic is that it is mostly true, minus the Sasquatch and deity disguised as a common household feline. My brother saw this very installation at the Philly Museum of Art and was appalled. When he told me about his experience in this white room filled with white panels hung from the walls and ceiling I was taken aback. He went on to explain that a strange hippie was sitting on one of the stools and listening to various voices robotically naming the days of the week in no particular order. It got me thinking…maybe that guy was the art!
Apparently he had come to the same conclusion independently. What can I say? We are brothers.
This points me to my main problem with Modern Art: people are no longer sure what art is and are, essentially, having to be told by gallery coordinators and school professors what does and doesn’t qualify. It’s a hilarious system but a shitty one at the same time.
Personally, all I want to see is some more diversity.