Indeed, guys — it’s my birthday today! Just a heads up, though; you do not have to shower me with gifts and elaborate surprise parties. No, really, please don’t! But if you insist on giving me a present, spreading the word about my comics would actually be the best one I could ever wish for. So could you, as my awesome reader, share Optipess with at least one person in your life, a life-long friend or life-long enemy, who has never seen or heard of the strip before? I would appreciate that immensely!

Maybe you know someone who loves dogs, cats, chickens, birds or zombies? Or perhaps they’re in love, or falling out of it? Either way, with this plan in motion every person on this planet should know about Optipess within the day!

Behold! It’s a “making of”-video depicting the delicate process of creating an Optipess strip, presented in time-lapse-o-vision over 13 glorious minutes!

GASP… at the overly ludicrus attention to unessential detail!
MARVEL… at the razor-sharp accuracy and blazing speed of the inking process!
SHUDDER… at the obvious frustration with the third panel, culminating in offensive swearwords!
ROCK OUT… to the tones of Icelandic post-rockers For a Minor Reflection!
LAUGH… at the realization that this entire process in real time is something like 10-12 hours total!

The making of an Optipess comic strip from Kristian Nygård on Vimeo.

Please share this video with your artist friends so they can learn how to NOT make a comic strip!

As you may or may not have noticed before, I’ve threatened on a couple occasions to post older and more embarrassing comics from my “archives”, i.e. various sketchbooks I have laying around. Now, none are quite as old and quite as embarrassing as the one below, which is none other than the very first Optipess strip, scrambled together with hackneyed means (well, pencil & paper) moments after the thought “Huh, maybe I should try to make a webcomic” went through my mind. For your reading convenience, below the image I’ve transcribed the admittedly unintelligible and poorly constructed sentences in each panel.

Panel 1: "I've gotten a new weekend job." "As a Head Procrastinator." Panel 2: "The pay is lousy." Panel 3: "But the hours are great."

Also, below the sketch are “revisions” of the character design I made immediately after completing the strip. Apparently I figured a more rounded look was an improvement, and that it probably better reflected my own appearance. Which also means, yes, that guy is supposed to look like me.

Luckily I have only a couple more of these strips (which may or may not end up being posted sometime as well), as I was pretty soon to start using proper tools like uh, actual pens at first, and eventually Photoshop and Wacom Tablets. Actually the strip above probably only predates “Amazing Superpowers” by a couple weeks, and personally I’m rather proud of how (hopefully) the art has improved somewhat in the 2,5 years since then.

As I cleverly teased along with the most recent strip, I apparently had found some “hidden” goodies in the Photoshop file while preparing it for upload. Quite frankly I had completely forgotten about this since this strip is a few months old, but evidently I decided to redo the last panel for some reason. This happens to me sometimes; I almost finish a comic, zoom out a bit in Photoshop, and suddenly it’s apparent that an alternate take would work better. Very frustrating of course, but it’s all for the best – if I can muster up the willpower to do the necessary changes, that is.

Anyway, here’s the first version of the last panel, which works OK as well I guess, but I felt a lot of the elements didn’t quite work. (Note that the coloring isn’t completely finished, and that I with this version probably meant to remove the “Yaaayy!” speech balloon from the third panel.)

So, is it better/worse, or just equally as unfunny? Let me know what you think.

…But the Damage is Irreversible (shortened to AiLBtDiI from now on) by artist David Hellman and writer Dale Beran feels somewhat like a forgotten secret among webcomics these days, but still, it’s one of my definite favorites, featuring exquisite art and fantastic writing. It has sadly been on hiatus for the past few years, with no signs of it returning any time soon, but the archive is full of brilliant gems that encourages frequent re-reading anyway. Actually, AiLBtDiI is one the comics I go to whenever I feel my own creative inspiration dwindling, as the comic is wonderfully imaginative, often thought-provoking and even strangely moving at times, and succeeds in sparking the readers imagination in ways comics rarely do. The random stories being told ranges from completely bizarre tangents, to heartfelt profound realism all the while being, more often than not, hilariously funny.

Also, if you want more of David Hellmans art, and let’s face it – why wouldn’t you, check out the fantastic downloadable Xbox360 (and soon PC) game Braid, featuring gorgeous art by Hellman. His watercolor backgrounds and fluid style really suits the gameplay of the time-manipulating platformer which received a ton of great reviews when it was released last year. But still, as great as the gameplay is, I feel it wouldn’t be half as successful if it wasn’t for the art, not to mention the fantastic implementation of the music as well. And in some way the game feels like a continuation of Hellman and Berans webcomic, as the premise and atmosphere of the game in some odd ways wouldn’t feel out of place as an installment of ALiLBtDiI.

So yeah, that’s two recommendations I guess, and both the webcomic and the game are literally jaw-droppingly good. No seriously, I can guarantee you will be picking up the pieces of your jaw at least at one point when reading the comic or when figuring out the puzzles of the game. Enjoy!