Reverse Spam Calls
My ol' pal infinity_nan has been getting lots of calls from telemarketers lately and has taken to turning the tables on them by wasting their time. He shared his calls with me, I laughed, I thought they should be shared with the world and decided to animate them. Well, I've animated one so far and don't know if I'll do more, but I very well might! I haphazardly stuck it in the Videos section (I'll sort it out better later), so go check it out there.
In other Cloudflash news, weekly C-Mix updates have been going strong so far. I still have a long way to go with changing the blue comic borders to white. Sadly, the font I used on my old computer isn't exactly the same on my current one; if I edit old comics, none of the text properly fits the speech bubbles, so it takes a little work to fix it. I'll get around to it sometime.
No comic today
No comic today, I've been busy and burnt out.
Maybe I'll make one in a day or two.
Maybe not.
Grave Robbing
Here's an unsolicited look into the process of how I make my comics. First, I'll come up with an idea in my day-to-day life, while playing a game, or someone I know says something that I think could be turned into a comic. I'll write the idea down right away if I'm at my computer. Otherwise, I might make a little note of it on my phone to save on my computer later... Or I won't have access to any way of writing it down, then I'll hope I remember it later, which probably results in half of my ideas being lost.
Anyway, I keep a list of comic ideas on my computer. Depending on the time of year (for comics with a seasonal theme), how much time I have, how much I feel like drawing, and how well I can visualize the idea, I'll pick something from the list and roll with it. Some ideas get skipped over for months/years, then I might reevaluate some of the ideas. This has resulted in 3 tiers of comic ideas:
- 1. Usable comic ideas.
- 2. Complicated ideas where I can't visualize the comic well, it seems too underwhelming/poorly written, or I thought it'd probably be funnier as an animation.
- 3. Ideas that were too half-assed to make the cut, these are way too situational or obscure for a general audience. Or sometimes I can't remember if I already saw someone else make a comic with the same idea, in which case I sometimes find the original source and scrap my plagiarized plans.
Long story short, the past 2 comics came from some pretty old ideas that I previously categorized as "complicated tier". Like, probably 10 years old. I was on the fence about C-Mix #315 "Bombs for Sale", thinking I couldn't get the point across without making it an animation instead. I still think an animation would be better, but I can't be bothered to do it anytime soon, so comic form will have to do.
C-Mix #316 "Team 8" also had me stumped for a long time. The idea came from when I worked on the 8th floor of a building. Each floor had its own team and manager; employees just referred to each group by their floor, such as "6th floor is so slow." Anyway, through circumstances I don't remember, someone said "8th floor is the best!" and basically we had this comic. I felt like the whole "8th floor (group)" vs "4th floor (group)" didn't flow well, so the idea collected dust for a decade. I recently dug through some of those old ideas and discovered the comic would make sense if I just call it "Team 8" instead of "8th floor".
It's still a pretty mediocre comic, but I was short on time and needed an easy idea. It's mildly amusing enough. Why did I go to such lengths to explain something no one asked about? It's my website, I can do what I want!
Writing Exams
No comic for May 6th or May 13th? It would appear so. I've been busy studying for a gauntlet of 10 tests pertaining to my electrical career. 13 days of school, 10 tests - the final one being a big ol' final exam with everything on it. Or something like that.
Anyway, I was hoping to keep the comics rolling out on schedule and then call it quits at a nice, even 320 comics total, but I've just been too busy. Taking a break at #320 is still my plan - I've got other things I want to focus on. When will we see #320? I'm not really sure, maybe sometime in June. After that, we'll probably see at least 1 new comic on August 18th. Beyond that, I'm not sure when I'll get back to making comics regularly, though.
C-Mix Hiatus
There we go! A nice, even 320 comics. I'm ready for some sweet, sweet hiatus. Cloudflash Mix will receive some new comics on Cloudflash's anniversary, August 18th. Other than that, I have no immediate plans to get it back on schedule, though I probably will at some point. My artistic efforts will now likely be directed more towards Re:Spite and miscellaneous (video game) art.
Also, I really need to get around to fixing up Cloudflash's mobile browsing experience. I kinda put it together when I was using a highly obsolete Windows phone (that's right - I said Windows). The phone I have now should probably give me a more accurate idea of what Cloudflash looks like for other people. Off the top of my head, I think the navigation buttons are squished together on mobile, so I need to space them out better. It'd probably take 5 minutes to do, but I'm just not feeling it right this second!
17 Years Seems Excessive
It's kinda crazy to think I've been running this place for 17 years, but here we are. Today marks Cloudflash's 17th anniversary, so I cooked up 3 new Cloudflash Mix comics for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully I can find some time to upgrade some old comics like I did last year; my goal is to not be embarrassed by the works I display here, but some of my old comics are sullying the collection! Poorly delivered punchlines, weeb influence, ugly blue panels, or just plain crappy drawings in the early days. I probably won't make any new comics until I make more progress on dealing with the old stuff, I think.
I did a bit of work on the site! Quite rare, I know. Here's what I did:
- Enhanced the Cloudflash logo. In 2015, I just kinda wrote "CLOUDFLASH" freehand and mostly left it at that. I finally smoothed it out, adjusted some details, and added a drop shadow to lift the text off the page, as they say.
- Embiggened the logo and site navigation. I was trying to keep them slim before so people could see the site's content immediately without having to scroll down. It's still reasonably slim compared to the clutter on other sites, but now more readable and clickable (especially on mobile).
- Simplified the comic navigation buttons. I was trying to reinvent the wheel before, foolishly. They're also fun-sized now (and clickable on mobile).
- Made a lot of stuff bigger. Some of my design choices were sorta carried over from the old design, so I finally changed stuff to make better use of the screen space, including allowing a bigger space for comics. Comics will be bigger going forward (and maybe backward if I can be bothered) 'cause who wants to squint at comics?
- Fixed several mobile compatibility issues and other sloppy webdesign. There's still a little work to do, it'll continue to be a work in progress.
Well!
I made a new comic for the hell of it. The final Smash Bros DLC character, Sora, was announced and released this month. I'm pretty slow on the uptake here, but what can I say? I've been busy. For many, Sora is a dream come true. For others, it signifies the death of their own dreams. Smash Bros is among my favourite games. It's been a hell of a ride, but part of me is sad they don't just keep adding characters indefinitely until I get the ones I want!
In other news, I've been thinking about shutting down the Cloudflash forum. Social media has effectively killed small community forums, I think. In today's busy life, who has time to navigate a forum, click a topic, click the "reply" button, and type up a well-thought response to be permanently etched into the internet for all to judge? And to do all this while also keeping up with their obligatory social media accounts? Impossible.
Anyway, at this point, it's needless work for me to keep the forum updated, to bother with its mobile compatibility/consistency, and to check it every so often to ensure spambots haven't run rampant. Looks like anyone wanting to be part of the community will simply have to hop on the Discord train! I can't be bothered to remove the forum right this second, though. I have too much other stuff to do!
