Nothing to see here, move along...

Oopsie! Sorry folks, there's no Transypoo this week! I've been really busy! I'm told that I'm not the first webcomic to miss a week. (or a day or what have you) This is certainly a first for me... I've got a pretty good track record going, really. The only other goof was when I back tracked during the whole Time Travel story early on where I had to take a page down and rework the direction of the story.

On the other hand I did get a chance to go see UP! 

"What? You went to see a movie instead of working on your comic?!?"

Yes, yes I did. But I did that yesterday (Saturday) and I  try not to work on Transypoo on the weekends because it's the week end! So, like I was saying, I saw UP. It was fantastic!  It goes between really sad in side-splittingly funny! Well, heck it's got a talking dog in it! But really, the three jokes you see in the previews, are not the funniest, and they are much more funny in context. (As you would expect!)

Anyways, yeah, there's no Transypoo this week, but I'm gunna work my hardest to not have this happen again.

Inside the 'poo: The Making of Transypoo

I bet you've all been wondering how Transypoo is made. Let me assure you it's a complex and arduous process! It can, most simply, be broken down into a four-step process. 

 

Step 1: Wrighting Writing!

The writing process begins with a brainstorm session with all the staff writers, usually at 'The Big Table.' We toss around some ideas and finally after much arguing our Director and head writer comes in and finalizes the direction the story will take. Then we divide the pages amongst our writers/board artists and they write two pages with our special "Transypoo Page" writing/story board sheets.    

A lot of the time there are doodles on these pages, we do not discourage these doodles because they keep morale up and at times make for good office jokes. (If not future story ideas ha ha!) In this image we can see Transypoo pages # 121 & 120 as you can see, they were written out of order. This happens from time to time when we decide that one comic would work better if it came in sooner or later. For instance, in this case they were switched to build drama.

Step 2: Pencils!

Once the comics have been written and boarded they go passed our director's desk for final approval. He may make a few changes, redraw the comic, or at

times completely scrap an idea. Once passed his desk the scripts are whisked off to Korea where it is penciled by a highly skilled team over there. After a few days we are sent scans of the pencils, for approval by the art director. At this point he may make tweaks to the art and blocks in the letters and speech balloon shapes.

Here you can see the changes made to Jo's hand and arms, and Amy's shoulder, we work hard to keep these characters on model. Every so often dialogue is changed at this stage, there might not be enough room, or too much, and sometimes a background is thrown up at the last second.

Step 3: Inks!

After the pencils are sent back, our Korean team inks the comics. Recently we found it was cheaper and faster to fill in the black areas in the coloring process, so now we have our team just put an 'X' in the black areas. There's not much we can do when the inks come back, we can erase a line here or there, but we can't make too many changes now, it's all or nothing. Very rarely do we send something back to be re-inked. 

As you can see the speech balloons are empty. For a long time we had an inking team do the letters, but their lettering style was hit or miss, and was frequently fraught with spelling errors which were a pain to fix, and at times we just let them slid on a deadline. Now we have a local team do the letters digitally.

Step four: COLORS!

We have our colors done by a small in-house team. They are broken up into two divisions, basic colors/color selection and effects coloring. With all the sci-fi action in Transypoo we require a lot of glowing effects, they have also taken on the task of adding tone to the characters and not just the backgrounds. They work quickly and can color a page a day. Coupled that with our Lettering team and the comic is finished!

I hope you've enjoyed this look inside the making of Transypoo! Please continue to read/enjoy our comic, there's lots of exciting stuff coming up! Thanks for reading! 

You know what I hate?

You know what I hate? When big ol' monsters in movies give up a perfect meal to go after the tiny human. I mention this because last night LOST had a preview of the up coming Star Trek movie by J. J. Abrams which featured the young Captain Kirk being chased by a yeti looking thing, which is all well and good, Kirk is chased by all kinds of things. But then this awesome giant red monster thing (That looks a little like Clover) bursts out of the ice and grabs the yeti and chucks it against an ice-wall. Now, logic would dictate that if you're a hungry alien, you should go after the thing you just killed. BUT NO! It goes after the tiny human morsel! Barely bite sized! And keeps chasing the tiny human off a cliff!

Wait, wait. Okay, I know movies need drama, and monsters chasing humans is scary, and if the monster suddenly gets BIGGER, well, that just up the anti. But come on! An animal is not going to go after a smaller thing when it's already killed a bigger thing!

Example time! Imagine you have a turkey dinner in font of you, with everything that that implies. (If you don't like turkey dinners, then imagine your favorite meal.) Now suddenly you notice a Microwave Cheese Burger in the next room. But there's a sign in the room saying "If you leave this room the door will lock. So, do you abandon your feast to go after the cheese burger that in all likely hood is still frozen in the center? No! Why would you! It'd be like going up to a house on Halloween and when they give you a king sized bar saying, no thank you I'd prefer a 'fun' sized bar!

It's just stupid! Jurassic Park Three, group of humans come upon a T-rex eating a dead triceratops with plenty of meat left on it. It roars at them. "Hey you scavengers, I killed this, it's mine." But that's not what its apparently saying, it's really saying "WOW HUMANS! THAT'S SO MUCH MORE FILLING!" And it runs after the tiny creatures only to get into a fight with a Spinosaurus and get killed... yeah... by a fish eating creature.

King Kong (the new one) Three, count them THREE, "V-rexes" are chasing after a tiny blond woman. One of them just ate half a giant crocodile thing and abandoned the other half. It should be full, if it's not it could eat the rest of the Crocodile... but what does it do? Go after the tiny human. Now when we get to the part of the movie where the three "V-rexes" are trying to kill her she's spending most of the chase in the paw of a twenty foot tall gorilla. Hey, V-rexes, you see the giant mammal? If you work together I'm sure you can kill it and eat it and get some of your calories back! Heck at one point the V-rexes are swinging by vines and are not at all concerned with their own danger they're still after the tiny woman.

You don't see Godzilla trying to eat people do you? Okay, in Jurassic Park (the first one) The T-rex is chasing after humans, but all its had to eat for a while is goats, so its hungry and 'oh look, food!' But as soon as its given the chance it goes after Galamimuses and ignores the humans, even at he end when it comes to the rescue its more concerned with the raptors than the humans.

Seriously, Hollywood, give the predators a chance to be predators! Maybe if the human were covered in blood from and earlier fight, it might instill the bloodlust in the creature and set it into a feeding frenzy. But as it, most animals if given the chance ignore humans, and go after better prey. Heck, sharks spit us out! SHARKS! They'll eat anything!

Well, that's my rant for today. Have a good one!

Edit: I just thought of something! In Star Wars Episode 1, when Qui Gon Jinn, Obi Wan and Jar Jar are escaping in that sub they're being chased by that rockfish thing, right? And then it gets eaten by the "bigger fish." That’s how it’s DONE! The bigger creature eats the threat and ignores the tiny humans. Then when that eel thing with the claws comes along our heroes are nearly eaten by the sea monster only for the monster to then eat the eel thing, allowing our heroes to live. Danger, monster, and monsters going for the better meal!

Blogged to Death!

Hi, folks!

Well, here I am, blogging. (Ew.) But what can I say? Every one's doing it! 

"If Milhouse jumped off a bridge, would you?" 

"Milhouse jumped off a bridge? I'm there!"

But seriously, I just thought it would be nice to have a place to post things where... certain people... wouldn't be able to interrupt. (I'M LOOKIN' AT YOU SKIDS!) 

So, here I'll probably post about the inner-workings of my webcomic Transypoo, including maybe character art:

 
Or what have you. I also wanted to review all the Godzilla movies I own and, heck, while I'm at it, I could review just about anything, couldn't I? Yeeesss... ahh, such bloggy powers! Such bloggy powers indeed!