Smoking Cat Productions (home to The Belch Dimension Comics and other oddities)

[NostradamusTheSeer]

I'd say go back to the beginning, with my first book, Almasheol. It's an anthology of stories written between 1999 and 2002, including my first vampire fiction (and these were the days before Twilight) and a slightly reworked version of something from a writing course I took back in college.

[Grapefoot]

@NostradamusTheSeer Do you have a particular comic book you made for a month that you are most proud of... or think is your best one to date?

Do you have one that you feel didn't meet your standards as well as it should?

Do you have a particular comic book you made...[that you] think is your best one to date?

I thought on this a lot, and I must say: although I have a special affinity for works like the "SweetTart" arc (now a trade paperback) and "The Case of the Shanghaied Streetwalkers"--as, being longer, I naturally spend more time on them, and find I don't so much write and draw it as live in the story for weeks or months at a sitting... I actually find I enjoy doing shorter, brisker comic scripts. I like that not every story has to be dramatic and epic and world-shaking, and I can do the job in 6-18 pages.  This one's a good example of such work. I haven't officially uploaded this to my site yet, so you guys are the first to see it.
   The main story is a breezy 15 pages long. It has a very sitcom-like structure to it, which I like. You could easily film this thing in live-action if you wished and not break the budget. I see five sets, minimum, pretty basic, an exterior shot or two, maybe a green screen. The cast is tight, not a lot of extraneous characters running about--there's like, six, all told, and two of your "actors" could be played by a couple of puppets, or CGI'ed in.
   The B-story stars dogs. One of them is a canine version of Phil Silvers (from one of my favorite old-timey TV shows), stylized to look (and sound) like a Hanna-Barbera character from the 1960s.   

Do you have one that you feel didn't meet your standards as well as it should?

   I'd be lying if I said I never made mistakes.  Sometimes an experiment in text/panel layout doesn't quite work, or there's a coloring goof, or a joke falls simply falls flat. Take issue #77--por favor. (Little Spanish lingo there.)
  Sure, it started strong: the rooftop-to-rooftop ballet in the opening, the birthday party sequence.  Pretty good for working with no written script. The over-arcing joke was this, see: in movies and TV shows you always hear the villain threaten, if they don't get their way, to "destroy half the city". Well, what about the other half? No one ever talks about that. So one the side I've got an escaped evil robot with a nuclear engine for a heart on the fritz and about to have a serious meltdown. On the other is a part from a downed alien spacecraft that's been left turned on and powering up for several years that needs to be retrieved before it goes kablooey.
Great, right? Exciting! But in the second half I realized there was no way, in the 15 pages I'd budgeted for this one, I was going to satisfactorily bring my A- and B-plots together. So I rushed through last five pages by having my space alien character forget to pay his storage locker fee, and the remnants of his ship got sold at auction. (Yes, it happens. I worked in a shop for about half a summer, and we got a good lot of our stock from stuff that was confiscated from estate sales and foreclosures and such. The lesson here is, don't be a deadbeat; pay your bills on time, or a creepy guy like me will be laughing at embarrassing photos of you he just found in a box of your old stuff he bought for five bucks.)  Then, my SIOC* picks up a major Goober Ball and--if you'll excuse the gamer parlance--gets totally pwn'ed by the villain on the second-to-last page. Then, everybody tosses around that ball for awhile, and even the bad guy is ashamed of them. So, essentially, the story ends with not the promised bang, but a tiny squeaky unsatisfying whimper that sounds like a taco toot. And that spaceship part is still out there. I mention it once in a while in passing, if I remember to, but it may be a few more years yet before I satisfactorily tie up that loose end.

 The thing about artists and writers is, we're like this old joke I one saw in Mad Magazine: we're comfortable getting naked in front of our partner, and we're comfortable getting naked in front of our doctor, but if we have to get naked in front of our doctor and our partner, we immediately turn squeamish. We really don't like our professional and our personal worlds to collide. When they do, friends and family members get hurt. When they see an exaggerated version of themselves portrayed in our work, it can damage a friendship, end a relationship.  Sometimes we put a little too much of ourselves in there. We have to step back and distance ourselves a bit from our output lest we hear, "Dude, is he really into that?! What a sick (bleep)!"  We express what we believe, and if people object, we say, "No, no, I didn't say that; my character did", couching our unpopular opinion carefully in a funny voice. 
   Sometimes I worry I'll be found out as a freak... or, worse, a fraud.  I wonder if I've truly said all that really needed to be said eight or ten years ago and I'm just repeating myself now. Or if I'm just speaking to hear myself speak. Or if my work really only appeals to one person: me. Like a hip, wise old  Muppet once said, "Nobody understands my music... Man, if I didn't know I was a genius, I wouldn't listen to the trash I write."

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*self-insert original character

This one's a good example of such work. I haven't officially uploaded this to my site yet, so you guys are the first to see it.

Thanks for sharing.  I read through the one linked above and you do enjoy storytelling, and you have many classic cartoon motifs (not so much in this one, but from others I've seen) such as visual gags, word gags, and slapstick.

Forgive me, but I also notice the difference in style from stick figures to the more realistic human style.  I assume the stick figure look is from an earlier time, but still your main characters.  What are the names?  Who is the brunette hair woman with the hair that flips up and who is the blonde woman she is talking to with the ponytail.  The cape wearing fellow and his curly haired pal I am sure have names too, but you never said it in the comic.  I'd love some backstory.  I feel maybe we should be talking about this in a different topic too, lol. 

Thanks for sharing in depth your personal thoughts.  It's interesting to see what artists say about their own work.  I have yet to read your least favorite one's yet, but when I do, I am sure I will have something to add.

[Grapefoot]

I read your paragraph on the "negative" comic and I can see you really do care.  You have all these understandings and knowledge of proper writing and cartoon set ups.  Heck, you know a good story.  But you understand the shortfalls due to constraints or just not being able to translate our thoughts on paper as well too.  It's telling how your paragraph is much longer for what you aren't as happy about... but I'd do the same thing.

As artists we love our work.  It's like a baby.  We don't want to hand it off for someone to make a quick buck, we want control.  We hate to see the criticisms and like you said, we wonder if the only person who really likes it or enjoys it is ourselves.  It can be a harsh reality if we really are our only fans.  We just hold on to that modicum of hope that someone comments and enjoys it.  One single comment can truly be the break or make moment for us.  We want to see someone enjoy and understand us. We share our hearts and opinions in our work and to see it elevated by someone else in the form of a comment, makes it all worth it to continue.

What hurts is when we get negative comments just for the sake of it.  Especially when it is something we can't control such our our skill level, or something like that.

I can sense your vulnerabilities and your human side, espescially at the end.  I truly respect that and it added depth to you are a username on the internet.  More than just the guy who makes some crusty comments once in awhile and has a deep love and knowledge for the animation industry.  There is more to you than what we see posted by your username. 

You brought up if how we present too much of ourselves we have to hide back more... or if we make a character say something in our work, people might think that is OUR voice, when it in reality it may just be that characters.  How people think "aww sick, you like that?" and it would 'tarnish' image.  I can relate since I enjoy sneezing content, I had that from my other life and work outside of this community.  It's completely separate and I've never talked about it before.  But one of the greatest things would be for me to include it in my "real" work and for people to accept it and not be grossed out and think it's weird.  It would be a personal bit of me for the public to see, and know if they don't mind it, feel better about who I am and what I make for others.

I 100% get what you are sharing and I truly am thankful you did.

[NostradamusTheSeer]

Who is the brunette hair woman with the hair that flips up...

That's Marcie....

...and who is the blonde woman ... with the ponytail?

...with her best friend Tiffy. Whenever I write her dialogue I hear this voice in my head; it's funny.

The cape wearing fellow and his curly haired pal I am sure have names too... I'd love some backstory.

Ah, that's my SIOC, and Angela, who I based upon a high-school crush of mine. Fear not; I've got backstory on those two coming out of my butt.

[MasterXtreme]

Thanks for sharing.  I am going to try and get more into your work.  You definitely have a passion for it.

[FoxTail]

Well, in the immortal words of Briscoe Darling, "Just jump in where you can and hang on".  Going just by release date, "Hiss Hole Comes to Town" is the most logical stating point.  However, issue #19 features a flashback to events a few months before. The 2009 trade paperback features reprints of both stories. Now if you tried to read the series chronologically, by events in the stories themselves, and factoring in my non-linear approach to storytelling (in which stories published many years apart may actually have occurred simultaneously or within a short time of one another), a necessary sliding scale of time and judicious retcons over the years, the periodic appearance of "lost" stories, and the in-universe existence of time machines and reality-warping alien beings, well, you'd probably go batdook.      Your comic completists will sit and read every issue of their favorite book(s) chronologically, but, especially in the case of your long-runners, your more discriminating comic fans look for just stories featuring their favorite character, or titles/issues covering a particular series arc. So it all comes down to your own preference, I suppose.

It has changed so much from early comics (Especially that first issue) being hand drawn and colored.  It looks like now you do it digitally.