Stuff for the Weekend

A “sketch” I spent way too long on that turned into what you’re looking at right now.

Okay, so I totally meant to post this at the BEGINNING of the weekend (because, of course, that would make more sense, considering there is no comic). Well, straight to it — a couple of things, I’m sure you’re all already aware of the new design and the new-ish forum, where I got bored and decided to start an MS Paint Adventure.

CUEK MS Paint Adventure
You are ZEKE.

If you’ve never heard of Andrew Hussie or MS Paint Adventures, you should educate yourself — granted, if you consider yourself dorky enough to enjoy/participate in such madness. Because it is quite dorky, but that’s what I love about it. It’s a game, and the player is you. The premise of an MSPA is an artist tells a story and the readers contribute commands to advance the plot, whereupon the artist continues the story however way s/he sees fit, but using the readers’ suggestions. Andrew Hussie popularized this (if not being the first person to come up with the concept) with the epic story of Problem Sleuth, which started as a simple detective story and, thanks to the readers, became an incredible, nonsensical journey.

So if you’re bored, you should definitely come join our own homegrown paint adventure, which is in part a tribute to Mr. Hussie.

Another forum user picture request.

Last thing I want to mention was to stay tuned for an animated comic strip coming soon to… the top part of the website, if Enzo doesn’t completely fail at Flash. Have a great week, people.


Fans of the Female Persuasion

I noticed while going through the demographics of all the visitors to CUEK that 52% of all the visitors from the US were female. This was quite intriguing to me!

Mainly because I’ve always felt that, in the majority of the strips — especially the ones before the introduction of Jade (yes, that’s Purple’s real name) in #46 — the females were either the butt of the intended joke, the object of ridicule, or depicted as a bitch or a liar or a slut or something along those lines. Not that I hate women or feel a need for them to be constantly ridiculed (in truth, it’s just one or two specific women, but that’s not the point). I just, you know, thought that I was always relating to a more male audience since that’s my personal perspective.

I mean, I’m not unwelcoming to the female audience as well, it just came as a bit of a surprise!

I suppose I’m that closed-minded that I’ve never taken the time to look at relationships from a female point of view. But since I was 15 I have been in four serious “relationships” (quoted, because only two of them were “official”) and all of them ended terribly. Which doesn’t leave me much of a perspective to go on aside from the stereotypical “THAT BITCH WAS A HO” standpoint.

What’s the plural of “ho”, anyway? Hos? Ho’s? Hoes? This is going to bug me all day.

So if you’re a female, and you’ve wasted the few minutes it took to read this, tell me: Why do you read CUEK?

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Summer Updates

Frank vs RedQuick update: Today’s strip will be up later today because I’m trying something new. I promise you won’t be disappointed! What can you gather from the screenshot above?

Hint: I made THIS for my final project for Flash class (nothing amazing, but I’m still thinking baby steps). And don’t forget THIS.

So as it stands, the school semester just ended and I find myself a bit behind on the comic, so ideally I’m going to try to get caught up with over our two-week break (yes, that short) from school.

Goals up until end of July:

  • Get shit together and establish a comic buffer. No more  waiting until the night before to draw the strip. Have a couple done ahead of time, say, a week or three’s worth.
  • Get out of the house every now and then.
  • Refrain from threatening to ” ___(violent verb)___ a  __(_[group of]_ cute fuzzy baby animal[s]_)__”.
  • MERCHANDISE. Or, at the very least, T-shirts.
  • Put up a Cast Page so people won’t wonder anymore who is Frank and who is Zeke.
  • Explain in said cast page that the characters weren’t originally supposed to have names/distinct personalities, hence initial confusion when reading from the beginning (if you read closely & follow the text colors, you’ll notice that both Frank AND Zeke apparently went out with Red, which makes no sense).
  • Revise the Frequently Asked Questions page to include questions that have actually been asked.
  • Have the script ready for the CUEK Flash game.
  • No more fat jokes for a while. Compensate with dick jokes.

And that’s it from me until later today. Sorry to bump Jade’s article off the front, so go read it now or I’ll start punching puppies.

Wait, fuck


The Status of the Webcomic

Corky, Danielle & Zeke
This absolutely amazing summer school has barely entered its second week and it’s already kicking my ass. In previous semesters I always found time to work around that, even forgoing sleep and sustenance just to bring you my thrice-weekly brain diarrhea.

That formula might not work for me anymore, unfortunately. As we enter our fourth quarter in this intensive design program, the workload has increased accordingly. One of the reasons I maintained a Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday schedule is that I am an incredibly slow worker. I may understand a concept or have a great idea in mind for a comic, but as of late it’s been taking me up to six to eight hours to finish a comic strip. “Six to eight hours?!” you gasp, raising an eyebrow. “But the comic art is so simple. Why does it take so long?” Well, I tend to be a little OCD when it comes to my line art, and the actual majority of that time is spent drawing, erasing, and redrawing.

tl;dr I’m slow to begin with, and being busy makes me slower.

As it stands I may tone down the updates temporarily for the next few weeks, from three updates to two (most likely on Sunday and Thursday).

(To appease a disgruntled reader, the header image will be edited to reflect this change as soon as I get home.)

I really wish I didn’t have to do this, but school is killer and I haven’t been sleeping lately. Well, that’s a lie, I did sleep yesterday — I got home on Tuesday night, passed out, and woke up on Thursday morning. It’s pretty bad. My dad calls me “Sleeping Beauty” now.

The good news is that, while I am working at school right now as I’m writing this, I do have a strip in the works that will be up between tonight and tomorrow morning. And as a little extra for those who haven’t seen it and are willing to wait for me to get my shit together, I’ve put my old webcomic back up. You’ve probably been wondering who the hell those kids at the top of this post are — it’s the cast from the defunct No Spring Chicken webcomic. If you have some time to kill, feel free to browse through about 200 mediocre strips!

It’s nothing amazing and frankly at some points it’s a little embarassing, but I started making those strips when I was fourteen. It was just kind of interesting looking through all my failed projects and seeing how small elements from all of those endeavors seem to have found their way back to CUEK.

And finally, thank you all so much for your infinite patience and continued support, you guys rock :)


This is My Brain Melting

Cubism Poster

Charger Driving into Vancouver

iDrank Poster

Sleep

Some old stuff, some new stuff, just felt like putting ‘em up since most of them haven’t seen the light of day before. School is killer, and it’s destroying my sleep schedule, my appetite, and — this I fear the most — my sense of humor.

But I’m trying my best. Promise.

I mean, I write a comic about failed relationships — how ‘together’ do you think my life is, really?

So much love for the continued, undying support. You guys are awesome.