Username: spiritmonkey
Comics: Timmy and the Bleach
Age: 15
Location: England, East midlands (NOT Middle East)
Marital Status: Single
How you pay the Bills: Bit young for that as it is, still being in school and all.
Other Hobbies: Listening to music, playing music, drawing
1) How did you first discover DD? Why did you come to join its community, and why do you stay?
A friend and I wanted to find somewhere we could start a web comic. I assume he just searched on Google and it was the first thing that came up. He sent me the link, we both started comics (his lasted two pages mine lasted one). I used to go on the forums on IGN a lot but the people there weren�¢ï¿½ï¿½t particularly friendly. Then one day I clicked on the forums, found the WTH and Forum games forums and never looked back�. I stay because everyone is so friendly and helpful.
2) In Hollywood and the corporate world, people often have to pitch their stories to a group of old people who just discovered the internet last week. In 25 words or less, describe your web comic.
Right… Twenty five… I can count to twenty five… I think…
Timmy and the Bleach Is a web comic about a young boy who drinks some bleach. This results in vapid technicolor and many fantastical characters.
Twenty five exactly [face/proud]
3) Timmy and the Bleach is a really unique and original title: Where did it come from? And why is it "a cautionary tale?"
It all started from a conversation a friend and I had about a year ago… no… more than that. About two years ago. We started talking about what would happen if you drank bleach, hallucinations and that kind of thing. Pretty soon we had this character worked out - a young boy called Timmy. He drinks the bleach and hallucinates about a strange bright place where he meets a talking orang-utan called Charles. Originally, there was more of an idea of a story, in which Charles is kidnapped by the evil pixies. Immediately after this conversation, I rushed home and drew the first two Timmy pictures: "And the bleach made him smile" and the title page. It is "a cautionary tale" because it warns of the terrors that await in the bleach worlds.
4) Any experiences of your own involving bleach you'd like to share?
Well, not really. There was this one time when I attempted to wash my hands in a sink full of stuff my mum was bleaching but she stopped me before I did so it doesn't really make for an interesting story.
5) Talk a little bit about the process you go through to make a typical page of your web comic.
Well, I start off looking around or thinking of an object or character Timmy could be drawn with. Once I have something, I go straight to paper using a permanent marker and draw Timmy's face. Sometimes I have the expressions and what I'm going to write all figured out. Sometimes it just comes to me at the moment. If I don't know what I'm going to write yet, I draw Timmy first - picking a random expression on his face; then I draw the object/character/s where he is looking. Then I come up with the text and write that in. Next I colour it, often just putting random colours and shapes across the page however I like. I take a photo of it (I don't have a scanner �), upload it onto the computer, resize it (apart from that no editing) and put it on Drunkduck, ready to go live the following day. The whole process generally takes about 10-20 minutes.
6) Heard any good onion prophecies lately?
Well… [face/shiftyeyes] You didn't hear it from me, but don't drink coke from the 20th of April onwards…
7) To colour or not to colour: that is the question. Your comic has a unique colour style to it. Why have you chosen this particular way to colour your comic?
Honestly? The first page I made I had no idea how to colour it or which colour to use. So I just used them all! I was just going through a draw of old pencil crayons and shading in the page with whatever I found that didn't need sharpening. I thought it looked good, my friends agreed with me and it just stuck.
8) Many of the pages in your comic seem random, but I bet they have a story behind them. I'm personally curious about the pomposity of the duck or your first terrifying Hoover experience. Any real-life stories to share about some of the subject matter on your pages?
Don't you think that ducks look incredibly pompous? I do.
The only three comics that are related to real life are (in order) Lady, Literature, and Display. They were all drawn in English lessons. The fat Lady is my old teacher, the Literature is the book we had to read for that year and the Display is based on an incident when the tiniest corner had gone missing off of a display in the classroom and she was shouting at us that we had wrecked it. She was a nutter.
9) Many people are inspired by movies, video games, and other writers or artists. Other people are distracted by some of these things. What are some of your inspirations for the comic? What are some things that distract you?
There aren't really a lot of real-life things that inspire me. I read lots of old books, so I suppose that's where I get all of the long, fancy, old-fashioned words that appear in my pages. I enjoy listening to music as I create my pages: The Beatles, The Raconteurs, Muse, The White Stripes… That kind of stuff. There isn't really anything that distracts me. Apart from writers block.
10) Describe a time when your x-mas tree thought that he was a lawn mower, or when you got lost and had to quest for the door.
It was a dark night, the moon was full, shedding its beams earthward to light up the barren, lifeless landscape I stood upon. I had been walking all night, through bramble and thicket; through streams and woods and through knee-deep, sticking mud. I climbed to the top of the hill, startling in its moonlit prominence against the black night sky. I clambered over the ridge, barely hoping to see a glimpse of what it was I sought, what it was I had sought for five years. The door. Then I saw it. Shining in the vale below - a gleaming portal beckoning me forward, promising an end to the quest that had brought me such pain and suffering. It promised a release, and an escape from the bonds of my destiny. I could be free. I hastened forward - not noticing the pothole that lay at my feet. I tripped and fell onto my knees and proceeded to slip down the hill, crunching against rocks and boulders that lay in my way. The wet grass offered no purchase for my desperately scrabbling hands and the speed of my descent quickened. I tumbled down, down ,down unable to stop myself until I finally landed on my front, bruised and bleeding in front of the door. I was there. It was over. I had done it!
There you go �
11) In your comic, Timmy struggles with his addiction to lemonade. How long as Timmy be suffering from his addiction, and can you explain some about your own addictions?
What you and the readers must understand is that addiction is a terrible, long-lasting condition that will likely stay with poor Timmy for the rest of his life. They don't have lemonade rehabs you know!
12) I think everyone here would agree that probably the most important question that anyone could ever possibly ask in the history of interviews is this: When exactly is the time for custard?
If I knew that don't you think I'd be accepting my Nobel prize now? Foolish person! Get out of my way! I have research to do!
13) Have you ever been accosted by a frog dressed as a bird who stuck you up with a gun that fired breath mints? Any personal run-ins with outlaws?
Haven't you? Personally, I've lost count!
14) Any other comics on DD you enjoy reading / would recommend? Perhaps something with a good-looking bald man and his damp Asian roommate…? ;P
A good-looking bald man and his damp Asian roommate? I'm not sure if I've ever come across anything like that! But it does sound like a terribly bad idea for a web comic! ;P I think that most of my favourites are on my recommended list but I'll just check… There. I've changed all the regularly updating comics I read to recommended, so check them out!
15) Any future adventures of Timmy and the Bleach that you'd like to make readers aware of?
Alright then!
[spoiler=Are you sure you want to know?]
Now now, that would be telling!
[/spoiler]
Seriously though, there are no plans or anything like that for Timmy at all. Although I might do something special for number fifty…
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Interviews
QWTD: trevoramueller interviews spiritmonkey!
This was such a fun interview to conduct, and spiritmonkey was such a sport when I wrote him and said, "Okay, we could do this a couple of ways…but I think we should make it funny, and do call-outs to some of your comic pages that will get readers interested and have them check out your stuff."
The guy was like, "Sure, whatever dude," and so we did it.
Here's hoping we get you more well-deserved traffic, and some new readers. I know I had never heard of the comic before this interview pairing, and now I've faved it. Great stuff, and the concept was just simply awesome! And I hope that spiritmonkey had fun doing the interview (it sounds like he did, as some of the answers made me laugh out loud!). I like to think that he did. :D
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