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[Doc]

I'm still kind of wondering where Onstad is going with this, last time Beef got freaked out in a vehicle he ended up going over a cliff so anything's possible. My money is on paying a visit to Molly though.

Are you writing the strip now?

~Paul

Apparently so.

You ever get the feeling that Onstad just puts out something crazy, then trawls the forum for where we think he'll go with it and picks something he likes? I'm sure there are other examples of this...

[Bobby Isosceles]

I'm still kind of wondering where Onstad is going with this, last time Beef got freaked out in a vehicle he ended up going over a cliff so anything's possible. My money is on paying a visit to Molly though.

Are you writing the strip now?

~Paul

Apparently so.

You ever get the feeling that Onstad just puts out something crazy, then trawls the forum for where we think he'll go with it and picks something he likes? I'm sure there are other examples of this...

He'd be wise not to, actually. Many people who do any form of saleable art tend to avoid fan forums (and more extreme things like speculation and rumor sites, fanfiction, etc.) because of the following scenario:

Onstad trolls the forums for some ideas. Let's say CortJstr decides that he wants Roast Beef to go to a rennaisance fair and get inadvertantly fellated by a plump woman in a harlequin outfit. Now if Onstad were to do that as a strip, CortJstr would be able to make the claim that it was his idea and Onstad were plagiarizing it. There are two ways out:

1) Credit the original author of the idea
2) Make it plausible that the idea was total coincidence.

I suppose Onstad could credit people for ideas, but larger companies (such as Disney) find it easier, especially given the dicey topic of royalties, to just ensure that their story writers never get anywhere near these kind of speculation/extrapolation forums. You'll notice whenever an idea for Williams Street (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim) gets pulled from the forums, it's always credited.

I'm still waiting on my credit for the Isosceles Lock and the character blogs damnit.

[Doc]

God, I'd almost managed to forget the Isosceles lock....

[Bobby Isosceles]

Bobby makes good points, this time, but I prefer to think of us as the chimps at the typewriter to 'stads Wm.

It's easier for Onstad to take our ideas since, at this point, there aren't "royalties" per se. Onstad isn't a multimedia empire like AOL Time Warner or Disney. That said, it's kind of sad because we are for the most part reasonable people -- despite our eccentricities -- and yet it only takes one litigous asshole to ruin collaborative media for everyone.

[Doc]

I was, obviously I hope, just joking when I suggested that is how Mr. 'stad gets his ideas, but Bobby makes good points I wonder how long it will take for something like that to happen to a webcomic.

That said I feel the chimp analogy is probably rather appropriate.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I was, obviously I hope, just joking when I suggested that is how Mr. 'stad gets his ideas, but Bobby makes good points I wonder how long it will take for something like that to happen to a webcomic.

Sadly the first Webcomic it's most likely to happen to WOULD be Achewood, for several reasons:

1) Most Webcomic authors are so obsessed with people liking them that they will bend over backwards at the slightest hint of discontent from the audience. This is why most Webcomics are crap (you can't please everyone). Onstad is not obsessed with people liking him, or even people liking all of his work all of the time. At the core of it he is a businessman and wants to make a solid product that stands on its own merits for most people most of the time.

2) Most Webcomics are either here-today, gone-tomorrow, or have little if any readership. Achewood has enough market penetration that it's verging on the mainstream (Dave Barry likes Achewood, for example), and while it may never be a multimedia empire, it's still going to attract more attention than "Squirtz N' Kat" (a perky webcomic about a lesbian fox and a gamer geek living in Brooklyn, hosted on Keenspot, that I just made up)

3) Onstad pushes some people's buttons very well and those people would have a personal vendetta against him.

4) The concept of "fair use" and the extent of copyright isn't as well defined for Internet media as it is for paper media. This really isn't a reason why Achewood would be a target over other Webcomics per se, but it is something to consider especially given that the free product (Web comic) is repackaged, value added and sold as a hard product (Achewood compilations, for example.) Other Web comics that do that (the insufferably unfunny User Friendly, for example) tend to have large publishers backing them (in the case of User Friendly, O'Reilly), whereas I am led to understand that Achewood is more of a home grown thing.


I think about these things a bit too much.

[robot_roll_call]

I think Onstad does look at the forums sometimes, especially when he writes blogs. For example, when we were wondering why Roast Beef's greek family was hardcore catholic, the next day there was an entry explaining it. There were some other examples, too.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I think Onstad does look at the forums sometimes, especially when he writes blogs. For example, when we were wondering why Roast Beef's greek family was hardcore catholic, the next day there was an entry explaining it. There were some other examples, too.

I think Liz looks at the forums and provides a 'clean room implementation' of the ideas in the forum to Onstad.

[AugustWest]

I think that Teador reads the forums and tells Chris about what we say.

[CortJstr]

I feel a little dirty, like I'm in  alt.tv.simpsons and they're always trying to prove the writers secretly lurk. Anyway.

My impression of Onstad is that he's more likely to change an existing storyline that one of us happens to guess correctly. From our contact with him on Dumbrella and briefly here that's just the vibe I get.

[bdeth dot com]

I think Philipe writes the stories with crayons and gives them to Teodor. Teodor then puts them up high on the refrigerator at people eye-level, Chris walks by, sees the stories, vectorizes and cleans-up the graphics in Illustrator, saves them as GIFs and posts them. In return, he gives Philipe a nickel for every story. Plus Chris is always on these forums laughing about how much people wonder about his story lines. Also he has a whole lot more easy life than any ordinary graphic designer and he makes a good profit from stories that an alive stuffed-animal writes for him.

I read way too much Achewood comics. WAY TOO TOO TOO MUCH.

Goodnight.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I think Philipe writes the stories with crayons and gives them to Teodor. Teodor then puts them up high on the refrigerator at people eye-level, Chris walks by, sees the stories, vectorizes and cleans-up the graphics in Illustrator, saves them as GIFs and posts them. In return, he gives Philipe a nickel for every story. Plus Chris is always on these forums laughing about how much people wonder about his story lines. Also he has a whole lot more easy life than any ordinary graphic designer and he makes a good profit from stories that an alive stuffed-animal writes for him.

I read way too much Achewood comics. WAY TOO TOO TOO MUCH.

Goodnight.

Way too "many" comics.

[bdeth dot com]

WAY too much.

[St_Zartan]

Delicious.

[Mantonio]

In return, he gives Philipe a nickel for every story.

And sometimes a grape!