I struck me earlier today as I was working on comics that the strips I have running right now eat ideas for breakfast. They literally suck them in, chew them into a meaty pulp and crap them out a little later, in a form that is no longer usable. It’s quite an ideas mill we have going here.

This presents a bit of a problem from my point of view. On the one hand, I have to get a new strip out every day, Monday to Friday. On the other hand, there are only so many jokes I can make with the characters I have available. What, then, is a person to do?

Well it’s simple really. Either I revisit old topics and try to put a new spin on them, or I bring in a new character to change up the dynamics. Alternatively, I can move the story to a new setting and bring in difference that way.

At no point should “just stop the comic, you’re done” be something that is considered. Rest the comic, perhaps, if you really feel you need time away from it, but don’t drop it altogether because I guarantee you’ll start thinking up new ideas for it; probably right away.

Over the last few weeks I’ve tried all three of my options to bring life back into the comics. The Life of Nob T. Mouse got a new character recently in the form of Speckleton Q Speckworth, the Journalistic Reporter of Newsworthy News. He has let me make fun of traditional print media and the way newspapers were a vital part of frontier life when towns were just being formed in the Old West.

Not that you’ll see that in what has happened with him so far, of course, since I now plan storylines out in full before they get released. I learned that the hard way after the last storyline, with the Abstract causing all kinds of trouble for Nob Mouse. That was supposed to be a three week long story but it went on for so long that I went house hunting, arranged a mortgage and actually moved house during the time it was running. Never again am I getting into that trap. Never again!

The other two techniques came up on All over the house. Firstly I have been revisiting old topics for a while over there because it’s part of life that some things repeat but play out differently, so going back to the ideas well makes for a more realistic strip. I repeated a topic within the first fortnight of the strip running, in fact, (episodes one and three are both about “interactive telephones”) and I’ve no problem doing it again.

Lately Emily moved jobs, getting her own government department to run. This introduced a whole new dynamic for the character and opened up far more joke and storyline potential. It is part of a long-running plan for Emily’s character development so it’s not like I did it on a whim because we ran out of ideas but it does serve to demonstrate how a bit of a change of scenery lets us do more with the character than we otherwise probably could.

Today is episode 335 of All over the house. The strip has now run to more episodes than Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation combined. If we add to that the 300 or so episodes of The Life of Nob T. Mouse, you can imagine that I might be thinking about the possibility of running out of ideas for these strips a lot and it’s true, I do worry about it.

Nevertheless, as long as Jenny and I can keep coming up with new jokes, we’ll keep running the comics. It’s just too much fun to be stopping now.

'Fibre optic cactus', by me, via Flickr

So although I’ve already posted once today I thought I would round up everything that has been going on instead of just talking about one thought in particular.

It really does feel good to have everything coming back together again, work wise. I have been quite stressed (and probably horrible to live with to boot) over the last few weeks because of not being able to get a load of work done due to having to revise, plus a load of other things that seem to come up out of nowhere just to take up all my time. I define myself by my ability to get work done and it hurts when I can’t live up to my own expectations.

I’m happy to say I’m getting back on my feet now, though. It is hard work, as everything that is worth doing always will be, but it feels good to have it all running together again.

So what have I been doing lately? Well it’s simple. I’ve got the writing back up to speed, I have both of the main video channels running again, and I have two of the three comics running again. The third comic, Ink Proof Cannon, isn’t due to come back online until the 1st of November but I have plans in place for what will be going on with that and they look good.

Overall, things are looking pretty snazzy and I’m pleased about it.

Speaking of videos, here is today’s episode of Nobmouse, in which I discuss the different kinds of constitution a country can have.

This may not be up everyone’s street but I like to have a varied output for the Nobmouse channel. It runs something like this:

• Legal Mondays, in which I discuss a legal topic such as constitutions;
• The News of Tues, in which I discuss the news but with a focus on legal topics from the last week;
• Strange Laws, in which I pick a strange law from around the world, talk about whether it is a real law or a fake one someone made up on the Internet;
• The Wheel of Thursday, in which I pick a topic and make a comedy routine about it; and
• Casual Friday, in which I do whatever I want. Might include sketches, might be some comedy, might be me talking about comics, whatever comes to mind.

As you can see, it is a fairly legal-based weekly setup but this is on purpose. Anyone can rant about their opinions of what is in the news and make a show about it but let’s face it, that format has been done to death. Philip DeFranco is king of the news rant and I don’t want to step on his toes; so I went with a format that works for what I am interested in but has enough variety to keep it fresh each time.

Besides, the vlog channel allows me to rant about anything I want at any time, so it’s not like I’m unable to vent my spleen if I so desire. Speaking of which, here is today’s episode of ZJKR.

What else is going on? Well I’ve been mostly writing and drawing comics. I’ve drawn three comics today and I’ll be doing a fourth before I go to bed so I can get The Life of Nob T. Mouse updated moderately on time.

This will then let me get Wednesday’s comics drawn when I get up tomorrow, so I will be updating on time again despite the fact that I missed out on my drawing time over the weekend. I’ll be happy about that, I can tell you! Having a bit of breathing space, even if it is only a few hours worth, is a very good thing in this game of daily updates.

In addition to the comics, I have been working on some book covers for people doing NaNoWriMo this year. I put up a message on the NaNo Artisans forum on the NaNoWriMo website saying I was looking to do some book covers to expand my portfolio and a few people took up my offer to create them. I have started uploading the covers to my Flickr account now but for ease of clicking, I will link you to the two I have finished so far:

• Vesper’s Call, by Traci Ferrance; and
• I Sucked as a Guardian Angel, by A. S. Michaels

Finally, there is the video embedding thing I have been toying with. I wanted to see whether I could get my own videos embedded on my website without using YouTube. This isn’t because I think YouTube is bad, or that I think it will disappear any time soon because it’s clear that it won’t. It’s just that I want the option to give people little bonus videos every now and then, directly from the website. Consider it a thank you to those of you who actually read this blog.

So I have installed FLV Embed on the website and downloaded DVD Video Soft’s Free Video to Flash Converter on my PC. To test that I have everything working properly, I made this short embedded video as a test. It’s simply the intro sequence from Nobmouse but it works well as an example of the video and audio quality you can expect from these bonus videos.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Well that’s all for today. I’ll see you tomorrow!

'Eyestalk clock', by me, via Flickr

The biggest problem with being bipolar is the inevitable down time, when you can’t do anything because you are so lacking in ability. With me it often comes in the form of either wanting to hibernate until it goes away, or worrying incessantly over things to the point where I can’t possibly do anything to overcome them.

That’s how the last few weeks have been for me. I hadn’t been able to get through as much work as I wanted to because of assignments, having a friend stay for a while, family visiting, and a caravan trip to Wales that we had been planning for ages. As a result, I was terrified of not being able to pay bills, and ended up unable to do any work because of this terror.

The fact is, there was never anything to worry about. Okay so my savings went down a little because I hadn’t worked as much but that’s what savings are for. We are fine, we were always going to be fine, and there was nothing to worry about. Yet I worried nevertheless.

Then when I woke up today, everything was fine. I felt happy, I felt accomplished, I felt like I could do anything. The downward cycle is over. I’m back to being me. Huzzah!

The final law exam for my degree is on Wednesday. I’m going to be busy preparing for that for the next few days but I’ll try to continue to write my articles and also keep my vlogging going, because I don’t want to get back out of that habit. I’ve found that if I take a break from things, it is hard to get back going with them so it’s probably for the best if I keep up ZJKR at least.

Speaking of which, here is today’s episode:

The comics have had to take a break however. I can’t put aside four to six hours a day for the next few days to draw comics when I have an exam to revise for. Still, I put up an apology video. You can see it on both comics.

Speaking of comics, Ink Proof Cannon is coming back! It will begin again in November and I am currently using my Tumblr account to publish the redesign sketches I’ve been making for the characters. So far I’ve done the main characters for Bounty Bunny and Dave Wetherby and the Devil’s Accountants but the rest will be coming up over the next couple of weeks. Those of you who are interested in that kind of thing can find the sketches here.