23Jul02 (Monthenor): Keek ipi tpi? Well, what do you think a gerbil's crazed yammering sounds like? The file size is a bit larger for this comic...still not bad, but those radio balloons apparently don't take well to compression. Also, I think I finally figured out a way to make the balloon edges a little easier on the eyes. It'll debut on Saturday's comic, and even the small difference looks better to me.

Stay tuned next week, when Wai's secret is finally (almost) revealed!

What are still you doing here when you could be playing Ico? Or, if you have way too much money and time to kill, Warcraft III?

7.24.02 (Morgion):

See, Monty is still using Windows, which means that he can't experience the joy of an OS that has an intuitive understanding of anti-aliasing. Say, like MacOS X, which I am proudly running. Monty also has a lack of throbbing, glossy translucence in his life. But that sounds like a personal problem. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it here... *snicker*

Or perhaps it's Monty's choice of graphics software. Not that there's anything wrong with Gimp... Hmm, Gimp. That's a very interesting name. Brings to mind images of poor, unfortunate, twisted-leg peasants in the Middle Ages riddled with the Black Death, wheezing and gasping their way through life... or more accurately, toward a sore-covered, puss-filled, infectious death. When I think of the edgy and polished world of professional graphic design, I immediately think of things like that. Oh, wait, no, I use Photoshop... a real graphics package. No tutorials needed to figure out how to draw a straight line... I really need to thank whoever gave me that little tidbit about the Gimp. ;-)

But I'm sure Monthenor has a wondrous technique for making the speech bubbles smooth and sexy. He probably didn't have to sacrifice any babies to the Gimp for it to cooperate either. *sigh* I just wish my pet goat could see the final result of Monthenor's labors... he went missing a few days ago, with only a bloody rope left behind... I hope he's OK.

24Jul02 (Monthenor): Lemme tell you a little story about the GIMP. When I think of GIMP, I think back to my high school sporting days. There was a particular foosball table at Luthercrest camp, and on this table one of the defenders had had his "foot" completely broken off. Completely severed, and not cleanly at all. We called him the Gimp, and the Gimp team always yelled at him to keep up.

But you know what? He could still hit the ball like any other player. His plasticy shards were more than enough to get a good hit on a standard foosball. Indeed, the Gimp side was actually fought over because he was so cool. So I think the lesson of the Gimp is this: it can do anything *you* can do, everything that matters, and with less than you have. The lesson might also be "Back off, bitch"...I'm not sure. It looks like somebody wrote the lesson in Yordese.

And when I think of 'Photoshop', I think of pimply desk clerks pawing through negatives of other people's sexual escapades in the dark room, so there.

7.24.02 (Morgion):

"Everything that matters...". OK I'll buy that. Oh, wait, I can't; the Gimp is free. Well, then I'm absolutely sold!

I'll have to drop all my .psd files and switch to this wonderful little app. Then I can forget about using all of those silly things like Bezier curves and vector graphics, editable type layers that can be transformed and distorted—and then restored, the entire CMYK color space and the whole "print graphics" thing... and especially that annoying tendency that Photoshop has of taking esoteric, convoluted, 1337 techniques and making them a one-click operation with a button on the toolbar. I'll finally be able to abandon the pesky habit of using industry-standard software. I know how much you open-source types hate adhering to standards imposed by the big, nasty industry.

I guess you do get exactly what you pay for... ;-)

Don't want to shell out $600 for Photoshop? Get PaintShop Pro. It's only about $100, and you'll still be able to compete in the industry. You also won't have to worry about finding an arcane technique for creating smooth circles and getting excited about their debut.

25Jul02 (Monthenor): 'Drop' your .psd files? I'm surprised you could lift them in the first place, they're huge! Oh, and the GIMP can read them for you, if you're really into that sort of thing.

And as for the speech balloons, they look better on my monitor...but when you take into consideration my Windows gamma, my old skanky monitor, and my possibly-overheating video card, it may not actually make ANY difference for you people. Like I care.

(Just had to get the last word on this...Morgion's outta town for a few days, so I think this settles it ;P)