New Movies, New Guest Art from Mason Wimmer!

Once again Mason has graced the virtual pages of Super U. with this sweet, sweet E.P.I.C. pic.  He's been working like a madman on lots of stuff for me, and I can't wait to show you more!  Click on it to enlarge.  And click on his name in the tag cloud to see more of his amazing stuff!

Also, have you checked out the Super U. Store yet?  My mom bought this for my dad for Father's Day!  Buy some merch and send me a pic of you with it and I'll put it up on the site.

Also, new movies!  Check them out below.  Don't forget to subscribe to the Super U-Tube Channel, and when I don't forget to post them the night before like I did last night, you'll get to see them early!

Are you sick of me promoting this shit yet?  I'm sick of it.  But I must persevere.

Seriously though, buy some stuff.

Last but not least, I've made a lot of progress on the Super U. book.  I decided it's going to be a compilation of Chapters 1 and 2 (everything strip so far).  I'll keep you posted.

A Strip from a Special Guest, More Chapter 2 Movies, and a Game-Plan

Today's guest strip comes from... my wife!

Jenny is an incredibly talented children's book illustrator and a 3D designer in the entertainment department of Disney.  She actually didn't draw this for the site; she drew this just for me on Manga Studio as part of her anniversary present to me.  But when she showed me, I was like, "Oh, I have to put that on the site!"  

There's a story behind this strip, and you'll need to know it.

In high school, she and I were very interested in each other, but we were both dating other people (read: psychos).  She and I had art class together, and had lockers in the same hall.  As part of a courtship ritual, every morning she would try to steal my X-Men lunchbox.  Happy Anniversary, sweetheart.  I love you!

Here's today's new Chapter 2 movies!  Gonna try to embed them right from YouTube, rather than upload them into Blogger.

<iframe width="960" height="720" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/m-7hryeeAxc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="960" height="720" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BGSxaEJmWSM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Well, that didn't work.  Guess I'll have to post them some other way.  (See above)

So, it's crazy, but I may actually be busier with this comic during this hiatus than I am when actually drawing comics.  Here's the game-plan of things I want to have accomplished before the beginning of Chapter 3.

-Finishing and posting the YouTube movies of Chapter 2.

-Opening the Super U. Store.  In fact, I did yesterday!  The store is up, and when there's actually, you know, merchandise to sell, I'll link it to the site.

-Creating merchandise for aforementioned store.  Yesterday I did two T-shirt designs, and I have a couple more in mind.  Also, there will be stickers!  Maybe some other stuff, too, but for now, that's what I'm going for.

-Business Cards.  Yeah, I should have done these a long time ago.  

-Tweak the site logo.  It's just too damn big.  Came up with a different one yesterday that I might go with.

-Learn Manga Studio.  Haven't toyed with it much yet, but I did sketch out the first panel of the first strip of Chapter 3 on paper, so when I get the rest of it done, I'll just dive right in and try to make the finished version on MS.

-Create a physical book or books of the strips, and make them available for purchase.  I'm still undecided if I want to compile Chapters 1 and 2 into a single book, or sell them separately   I guess it'll depend on what ends up costing the most reasonably for me.

So, there you have it!  Big things going on.  Hope you enjoyed the movies... two more comin' at ya on Thursday, and maybe some more excellent guest art as well!

One More Thing...

I got the movies posted on the right page, finally, and managed to clean up some of that mess.

I should mention for any new readers that movies look best when viewed on YouTube, not here on the Blog, and I have a link to the Super U-Tube page up there in the top left.

Also, a link to it right HERE.

Chapter 2 on Super U-Tube, and Expressions of Rage

So, before I begin, let me try to post some movies.  They tend to look like shit on Blogger, but I'll do it anyway.

So, now I'm going to tell you about the nightmare I've endured for the last couple hours.  I'm going to be offensive, and I'm going to say "fuck" a lot, so if you're easily-offended, I think it would be best if you just didn't read anything beyond this point.

I'll start off by saying fuck you, Google, you evil fucking monstrous fucktards.  This whole "one Google / one password" thing is terrible on so many levels.  But let's leave out the obvious implications for internet security for the moment (though let me just tell you how absolutely thrilled I am that if someone hacks my Blogger site, they have access to my YouTube and gmail accounts as well, so thanks for that), and let's focus on how fucking complicated you've made it.

I have a Google+ profile under my name, attached to a particular gmail account.  You've connected that, somehow, to my wife's YouTube account, which has three videos of my daughter and / or cat, but you tell me they are, in fact, my videos, not my wife's, and if I want to post any of my Super U. movies to my Google+ page, I cannot, because those aren't my videos; the kid and cat ones are.

I have had a separate gmail just for the purpose of Super U. and the posting of videos to the Super U-Tube page.  You've connected that to everything else, and in an attempt to access it you made me connect it to a Google+ profile.  A new one.

So, now when I go to the Super U-Tube page, it asks me, "Do I want to be Super U Webcomic, or do I want to be superuwebcomic@gmail.com?  This isn't a one-or-the-other thing.  They both exist.  So I pick one, and upload a video.  It's not on my page with all my other videos.  Where is it?  Oh, it's on a brand new page.  So I try to upload the movie to the other one, but oops!  I can't  do that! I've already uploaded that movie!

Long story short, I think I now have 3 Google+ profiles, two of which I don't want or use.  I have 3 YouTube channels, again, two of which I don't want or use.  But I can't delete any of them, oh no! Because that deletes everything associated with them!  WHAT.  THE.  FUCK.

What's more, you've attatched all my new stuff that I didn't want to this this blog.  Yay!  

I still don't even know how to access my new videos.  I'd go check now, but that would sign me out of Blogger!  FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK!

Oh, but wait, there's more.

Let's talk about copyrights, shall we?

I wanted to make my own music for the movies, so I could monetize them.  But, as of now, I still don't have a decent means to do that.  I don't have the money to buy a program, and any free one worth its salt generally comes attatched with a licensing issue.  I mean, I could just pirate Fruity Loops, but I'm trying to do this the correct way; because pirates are bad and evil people, right?.  I'm trying to follow the fucking rules.  I mean, I'd buy one, but I don't have any fucking money.  But that's beside the point.

So.  I elected to use existing music, and not try and make money on my movies.  Free advertising, I suppose, just like the last Chapter.  

The Windows movie-making program I use has a simple tool to add music to your movie.  When your movie is done, there are giant buttons right fucking there to post stuff to YouTube, Facebook, etc...  Okay.  So, when you do this, you are often prompted that you are using copyrighted material.

First off, okay.  Well, I'm not trying to profit off of this material, so why do you care?  Free advertising for you!  I even list the name and artist in the credits!

Secondly, WHAT THE FUCK? There's a fucking add-music button, there are giant add-to-internets buttons!  What, do you expect everyone who adds a movie with a song to the internet to be a fucking composer?

You know, I saw a video once that went viral, and there was this cat and there was this song that was playing, and the thing is, this cat wasn't the cat who made that fucking song.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, because it is all YouTube videos.  Who the fuck cares if I didn't make the music?  It is not hurting anyone.

So, in the end, I'm not sure what I can do.  I might have to scrap posting movies entirely, because I no longer know where I'm posting them, who I am that is doing the posting, nor am I 100% responsible for the non-profit-making 45-second movies that nobody watches.

In closing, I'd just like to say fuck Google, fuck Microsoft, fuck Facebook, fuck the internet, fuck computers, fuck digital art, fuck smartphones and fuck society in general.  The quality of the human race is in rapid decline, and the temptation is rising to watch with my spear in hand and deerskin loincloth over my unmentionables while the rest of the world texts and codes and surfs and blogs itself into oblivion.

The Bugs Bunny Effect

Spaz is one of the first characters I can remember creating.  I think it was shortly before the Mask movie came out.  I was too young to know of the comic, and so the movie was my first exposure to the Mask, and I remember after seeing the trailer for the first time being really pissed, because somebody did it before me.  In truth, Spaz was born of my trading card of Slapstick, a short-lived Marvel character, and my desire to have the powers of Bugs Bunny.  I have long said that if I could have three wishes granted, the first would definitely be to have the "Bugs Bunny Effect" on people.  Though, perhaps, minus the cross-dressing.
If you're wondering why Spaz is drawn the way he is, it's because he's a solid-light hologram.  I'm telling you this because I may never get to an origin story for him.  He creates cartoon objects with solid-light, and his "Bugs Bunny Effect" is actually done through light-induced hypnosis.
Yeah, I have spent a lot of time thinking of these things.
Anyway, Spaz has always been a favorite of mine (and my mother's) and he hasn't changed much in like 20 years.  For two decades I've been drawing him on paper restaurant menus and in school notebooks.  So I couldn't pass up the chance to use him in Super U.

I started the Super U. YouTube Channel and uploaded a video of the first strip.  When the "hiatus" begins, I'll put up two of these a week, until we're caught up.  They're kind of lame, for now.  Once I begin working on the new material, they will be created in such a way that they will look better in a movie / animatic format.  Ideally it would be great to re-work the older strips in this way, but I can't.  A good deal of them were created with the newest version of Illustrator, and I don't have that anymore, and so I can't alter them in any way.
To save you time, here's the movie:

I like what just having some music in the background can do.  But like I said, these are going to be a little hokey for a while, but they will get better.  Rather than working in panels, I'll be treating each "panel" as a seperate image, so I can incorporate camera movement and stuff without a loss of text.  In fact, I may do away with the word balloons entirely, and do the dialogue in captions.

Here's today's strip.  It was originally only three panels, but Jason gave me the idea for the last panel.  He suggested Chance fall into Ecstasy's cleavage, but she was knocked out inside her base "off-screen," and Justice was still conveniently laying in the grass.  Plus, this way Chance can get his lucky rock back.

Alternate Title: "Happy Landings"