Lets just say that when I run my own country, Bill Gates better hope I don't obtain nukes ... (just kidding for any of you FBI/CIA/MIB out there watching) ... Anyway, it was brought to my attention that our menu (and links to the archive) weren't working in Internet Explorer (Exploder). See IE doesn't support web standards (even though MS says it does). It is also full of all kinds of nasty security problems that allow other people to take over your computer. Please for my sake and yours try Mozilla Firefox free download, no security problems, popup blocker, privacy controls, tabbed browsing, extremely nifty stuff. Anyway, even if you don't switch (poor poor soul) I fixed the problem so you can see it too.
We are still here. Brad and I are working hard on the new story line and we have mapped out the entire plot (what's that right?).
You may be wondering "haven't these guys been working on this for like 2 months now?". And the answer is "yes, we have" however we don't write the stories in traditional ways. We take ideas from everyday life, and copy, or make up bits of dialogue and then add characters to form simple scenes. We then take the best of those scenes and when we get enough, we get together and discuss how the story will develop. In the process these scenes get more developed, and we discuss settings, parodies and anything else we decided to throw in. Finally all the scenes get written together with new scenes to fill in the gaps and in the end Brad edits it all for the final product.
We are still working on scenes, and since we're looking probably at mid July before the first comic comes out, I want to give you readers an oppurtunity to throw in your idea. Email Veidrick with your idea, and if we use it in the story, we'll be sure to contact you and put your name on the site somewhere :).
Well in case you didn't notice, there's an ad on the screen .. (NOOO say it isn't SO!). It seems that doing nifty comics isn't always cheap and we need some way to recoup some of the costs. Don't worry I will be putting them in a better spot so they aren't as blinding. And if you're interested in possibly promoting your own cause or website: e-mail veidrick. We don't have a set rate as of yet but we'll post one as soon as we do. Ads shold be 468x60 (we may have some other sizes in the future), no more than 30k in size for those poor folks who are still on dial-up, I know that's a bit low but the comics themselves can get fairly hefty so we are trying to trim where we can. Animated stuff is okay so long as it doesn't give me a seizure. And of course, clean and tasteful, PG ratings.
Now to the good news, N:PICC 3, in the works, the writting has started. We don't have a definite date set yet for the return, however Brad and I will be having a little get together planning meeting soon to work that all out. As we did between N:PICC 1 and 2 we'll be changing the format again. This time it will be a little larger, kind of a comic book page style. Because these are more work and both Brad and I now have day jobs, we'll be producing these 1 or 2 a week. Brad will still be doing the art and I'll be doing the colorization, all comics will be colorized. I know its sad we won't be able to do more in a week but I think the quality will go up dramatically as it did between 1 and 2.
I will be dropping the Directors, at least for now, they make make some cameos. In their place we'll be putting up reader-submitted works. More on that as we think it all through.
Finally a completely redesigned website will be coming soon. This design has served us well but with a brand new comic and format it needs to go away now. I'm tired of looking at brown :)
I understand we have some new fans in Tyler, TX who are interested in the origination of the characters. So here goes!
- Buck Naked: Crazy detective, only speaks in questions, carries a mystical skull lunch-box for power. Buck came along with the original idea. Back in 2000, Brad and I were discussing a Dave Barry comment that a movie called 'Naked People in Car Chases' would do really well among men. We decided it was a good idea (hey we were still in collage at the time) and so we set out writting a movie script. Seeing as we wanted to be somewhat family oriented, we couldn't have actual naked people so we opted for a guy named 'Naked' instead. My lovely wife gave him his first name.
- Farquar Devaliente' reporter, Buck Naked's sarcastic side-kick, only certain aliens can say his name. 'Farquar' was the last name of a kid that Brad knew and it sounded interesting. We decided that a cowardly sidekick should be called valient and so we gave him the last name 'Devaliente'. Its funny 'cause its ironic.
- Felicity Lonelyheart spy inside the lobster organization. Felicity is a ditzy version of my wife. We did that because in the original movie idea my wife was going to play Felicity. Her name isn't really significant, Brad came up with it.
- Apecs Dijital and Patty O' Furniture Comic relief members of the Save the Lobsters Organization. Originally they were going to be aliens and their names were because aliens don't know anything about human names and were failing miserably at trying to blend in. In the end they ended up being humans with stupid names :). Apec's is a changed spelling of a DvD player brand that Brad owned at the time. Patty's name is Scottish, obviously ;-).
- Habib Strange, mystical, Indian guy that shows up and gives Buck the lunchbox. Aren't all strange, mystical, Indian guys named 'Habib'?
- Mike Obsessive-Compulsive, normal guy that gets caught up in the mess while buying groceries. The real Mike is a good friend of Brad and I and well ... he's exactly like how he appears in the comic.
- Stacy Male bouncer at the Secret Lobster Hideout. The name is British. Actually his original name was 'Bolus' but we had a 'name the bouncer' content thingee around this time. Some weirdos named him Stacy ;-)
- Vixen Fox the beautiful singer, really a high level alien infultrator. 'Vixen Fox' sounds sexy and well ... she sexy isn't she!?
- Molly and Sculdar. Umm if you don't get it then you've been living under a rock.
- Harry Neeples Mexican-Alien, loves flan, hates dairy. The name: just a bit of low-brow humor.
- Lord Hooded Figure I think this one is self explainitory!
I hope that clears some things up! Update soon on the N:PICC 3 progress!