A Bit Cheesy

Author notes

Modern Moonlight

Fitz

on March 4, 2008

It's past my well-deserved bed-time already, but it's not that long after midnight, so I thought what the hell, Author's Comment time :)

I let you wait quite a while, didn't I? ;) I actually thought of slacking some more - but I just couldn't do it. So, instead, I sat down to do a classic A Bit Cheesy page. The idea for this chapter was among the first that I came up with, even before I started drawing the first episode. So I'm really excited about this one! I'm especially happy about the dialogues here - there's lots of talking and I actually took quite some time making it coherent. As for the color theme, I was aiming for a tomb-like feel. It's kinda playful, tongue-in-cheek - and kinda to make it contrast with one of the main subjects of this chapter. Technology… "Modern moonlight"… For those who can't make anything of this strange title - that's a song by the amazing Dresden Dolls, one of my favorite bands ever. I've loved them ever since I first heard them, four years ago. The song itself is about how communication (and other aspects of life) is affected by technology in a negative way. Another song from the same album, called "Necessary Evil" goes on about how people never talk face to face any more, they resort to more and more impersonal ways of communication.

So now you know. Now go listen to the Dresden Dolls!

No, wait, read on, then go listen :)

Hm… Anyone happy to see the spider back? Two spiders, actually. The bigger one is the female - as it usually is with spiders. The male and female of Achearanea Tepidariorum actually look quite different from one another - the male being mostly red and translucent. Quite the view! And the cobweb was pretty easy to do, because achearanea's net is usually chaotic and messy. No beautiful geometry, no patterns, just mess :) And the other little bug is a dust mite - as viewed through an electron microscope. Hence the "book bug". The more common term would be "book worm" - but it doesn't look like a worm, now does it? The book with the magnifying glass on it is Oxford Elementary Learner's Dictionary. This is the only non-web based dictionary I could find (someone stole my beloved Swan dictionary!). Being the masochists that I am, though, I didn't simply scan the thing. Nope. I typed it all myself, then shaded and colored it. What else…? Oh the things that look like pillars are actually tables at the library's reading room. The library in question is a New York Public Library.

In other news:

I promised you some big news last time. So here it is, then: A Bit Cheesy's Polish version now appears every week in the biggest and most popular Polish online mag! :D www.esensja.pl was the place where I made my debut first as a poet (which I never considered myself to be) and a writer (which I still consider myself to be, even though I haven't written anything in MONTHS!) And now, they publish my comic - on a regular basis. It's kinda like syndication - even if I don't get paid. Everyone there is doing this as a hobby and all the money they get from ads are spent on servers. Either way, it's still amazing! :) HUGE thanks to everyone involved, especially Daniel, who noticed my comic and helped to get it published, and Wojtek, the one man army, dealing with layouts, coding and all that black magic called programming. Oh and my ego ;)

If you're interested in seeing Mick and Ryan talk in this strange gibberish that is my first language, see here:
http://esensja.pl/komiks/paski/tekst.html?id=5001

Ok that's all for today. And now it's WAAAAY past my bedtime!