(Nov 4, 2000)
The cartoon for for November 1 really wasn't a joke: I am incredibly swamped. But somehow
I still found time today to introduce gradients and colored panel backgrounds! It was sort of a diversion from what
I really want to tackle at some point: breaking lines of text so that my captions don't have to worry about overlapping
the next panel. Once I can do that, then I'll start to layout dialog, and then I'll also start to draw rectangles where
characters would be, and hey! I'll be able to do Triangle and Robert, anyway.
(Nov 5, 2000)
Prettied up the archives with links to next and previous toons on each page. I've got a little more work to do to get
a regular archive page up (that will show calendars and link to all the existing toons and so forth), but that's good
enough to let you page through the entire history of Toonbots! Woo-hoo!
(Nov 6, 2000)
Wow. This is kind of addictive. I'm finding myself winding down from a day of coding by adding a little touch to the
Toon-o-matic. Today it's Flying Caption Day as I add locations and orientations to the caption layout. I tested font
sizing, too. It works, of course.
I'm really having fun writing the blurbs -- I actually catch myself considering reading some art criticism journals
for subject matter. I find that throwing in a German word here or there gives it a nice touch. Maybe Hungarian would
be even more impressive, but German just looks so very scholarly.
(Nov 7, 2000) (the toon)
See? You can do sequential art with nothing but panels....
(Nov 9, 2000) (the toon)
Who would have thought that an election could be as riveting as basketball playoffs? Go figure. By the way, I didn't
do a strip yesterday because it was my birthday. Sue me.
Just now I put up a spare parts page for miscellaneous junk, including nineteen Boxjam
spinoffs that are just gathering dust here. Check it out.
(Nov 11, 2000)
I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick of caption-only strips. Granted,
I can now do multiple captions in a single panel, but watch this space for
more functionality real soon.
(Nov 12, 2000) (the toon)
I couldn't take it. Yesterday's strip was only up for twelve hours, but this one was just burning a hole in my pocket.
It's got character layout, really and truly! No cheating! OK, the "characters" are drawn by simply drawing their bounding
boxes, but at least you can see where they are that way. And personally, I think they're funnier than the real thing.
Read the XML for this one. Wonder at its simplicity -- see how characters are introduced in their initial panels, and how
simple it is to get one to leave the stage? action="leaves" -- that's all it takes. Cool, eh? I'm pumped.
(Nov 13, 2000)
Oh, he's on a roll now, Jack!
(Nov 15, 2000)
Boy, it doesn't take much to keep me amused, does it? Just some dumb
rectangles and I'm having so much fun exploring the possibilities I haven't
even felt the need for more functionality since Sunday. Let's see how long
it'll take me to get bored, though.
(Nov 17, 2000)
I guess it took me just about this long to get bored. Five days? So now I've started down the long and trackless path
towards cartoon figure rendering. The first step is the ability to specify an image as a character component, and that
means -- collage, ladies and gentlemen. Collage.
By the way, those gradients sure do pump up the image size. Today's cartoon is 29K, compared to the usual 8K or so. The
larger palette sure makes a difference.
(Nov 19, 2000)
In case you're wondering, I haven't updated the toon since Friday because I've been working like mad on Despammed.com's Webmail functionality. As of Saturday, we actually have a radio spot on WLS 890 Chicago,
on the Kim Komando show. It's even pumped up our traffic, which surprised me a little. Anyway, it's an extremely cool
service, it's free, and if we can figure out how to make money with it, I'll have more time to devote to Toonbots instead
of this thankless slavery in the code mines. Go sign up, put it in your sig, tell your friends and familiy, do that jihad
thing. Yeah.
In the meantime, I'll be thinking up my next Toon-o-matic trick.
(Nov 20, 2000)
You like my scaling of the image? Cool, eh? Also I finally figured out how to specify colors by RGB value instead of by
name in the ImageMagick color name database, which is nice, because selecting colors by name meant I always had to go with
primary colors or stuff like "slategray3", which is pretty much a random color.
(Nov 27, 2000)
Ehh. So I'm having a mediocre spell. Sue me. I've been thinking a lot lately about character layout and drawing, and so
I'm bored with what I can do and kind of want to wait until I have more capabilities -- but on the other hand I don't want
to wait that long, because the next piece is going to take some work.
So I end up not doing anything, which is suboptimal.
Keep reading into December 2000 if you're foolhardy.
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