An Interview with the 6 GUYS

Brian here. Following almost nine months (6/1) of having my own strip on the 'Net, I realized a few things: I had to have something extra-special for the one-year anniversary, and I also wanted to show my feelings thus far. So, I'm letting those six guys in my head tell the tale.

First question: How does it feel to have a steady track record, with the rest of 2004 in the bag?

A relief, definitely. For a while after we started there was a lot of pressure to keep ahead, because too many of our favorite comics are chronically late.

And that's just not something you do to loyal readers, even if you have none.

The problem now is that of too many ideas. This interview could be a great start to 2005, if it weren't so far in the future; that's why it's perfect to release it at the anniversary.

And it's hard not to accidentally re-use jokes from other webcomics, or sitcoms, or cartoons.

With everything automated, there's nothing to do but watch the site stats hungrily.

But at least working ahead gives the Body more time away from the computer.

Is working so far ahead a blessing or a curse?

It's both... Some of our best recent work won't show until December, and some of the social context will be stale by then.

But that's just one example. The joke itself, even the whole storyline, are on larger entities of pop culture, and should be well-received.

I have a tendancy to rush everyone... when something brilliant comes -- a change to a page on the site, a new joke -- let's use it NOW, as opposed to waiting.

Such as...

The Cast page; that changed in late February, but it was a strip idea that inspired the change, so the page had to be re-made so that strip was possible.

And that strip didn't show until late May.

Also, the XHTML/CSS changover. Originally it was planned to be an anniversary thing, but we all got so excited that we worked hard and rolled it out months in advance.

It's ironic that the new cast page was hard to re-code for CSS, and the late-May strips -- as originally coded -- didn't look quite right. But, it was only an experiment.

So if you like to use stuff now, why build up such a buffer?

Stubbornness.

Being able to say we're better than other artists working on MWF strips the night before.

Why not change the update schedule?

It's been tossed around a couple of times... Originally in the About page it was said maybe 4-panel Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we can't just cut up strips that are already done, and writing shorter strips is hard.

Truth: most of the scripts would work better in a 6-panel format, but 8-panel gives extra room for titles and other space-wasters. Jokes can be made longer, not shorter.

The other argument is to just publish full-size strips on multiple days, but our audience is used to the weekly schedule. If they miss two out of every three strips, the story falls apart.

That wouldn't be a problem if we had done smaller strips to begin with; not so much plot development in each one.

There's also the issue of burn-out. If we use up the buffer three times as fast, will we be able to devlop new strips in time? It's not fair to the readers if we can't be consistent.

Ideas haven't been a problem. Just look at the buffer now...

Well, you never know. Brian needs a full-time job, you know, and with the stress of work we expect script-development time to fall off sharply.

If I'm using all the good ideas at work, what's left for the comic?

Moving on... What about feedback from other KeenSpace artists?

I assume you're referring to that one comment in the KeenSpace General Forum about one artist wanting to "strangle the artist whose strip looks like it takes 15 minutes to make".

Bring it on, sister!

For starters, none of us really expected fame. We're having fun with this, and we're getting hits, so what's everyone else's problem?

Second, it takes much more than 15 minutes. Once I get an idea (anywhere from 1 hour to 1 month), it's usually for an entire story (4-8 strips). Scripting takes about 15 minutes per strip, and more for revising.

Making the visual strip takes 15-30 minutes each, plus conversion, plus comment file (when needed), plus uploading. And like she said, we usually do a batch at once.

The upcoming November-December storyline took the better part of six hours over three days from start to finish. That's 45 minutes per strip.

Do you take pride in the finished product?

I think I can speak for everyone when I say absolutely. Even with the ground rules in place about the final image, we've found a way to upgrade text quality starting in August, and even the characters have undergone re-alignment and balancing; look for that in November.

And overall mouse dexterity had greatly increased!

What about rumors of switching to GIMP or even a true vector program (Adobe Illustrator)?

My fault!

We've tried PowerPoint, and that failed. We tried getting the cast into GIMP, but it's just too complex.

There has been experiments in August with Inkspace, an open-source Illustrator knock-off. We've written a triple-length strip for Jan. 1, 2005 explaining the change; it's our vector prototype.

It looks good, but it was a pain to learn. It's still only an experiment. If the New Year's strip fails, we'll go back to MSPaint.

Last question: who would you like to thank for your success thus far?

Dear old Dad for buying us the laptop which made it all possible.

The faithful readers who validate our existance.

The other five for letting me have some fun!

KeenSpace, because if we had to maintain everything on the site, it would've died back in 2003.

Our students who let us work on the comic during lab time instead of bugging us with problems.

Brian, for giving us a chance to work together on something other than homework.

Wasn't that fun? No, really, this was a blast to develop, plus it answers a lot of the questions I really was asking myself. Hope you enjoyed it.