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The Stupiders is a comic staring cute, furry animals with human characteristics and often an acute lack of commonsense; hilarity ensues. The content is suitable for all audiences: with the exception of people who don't like furry animals.
Sunday, November 10th, 2019
Unforuntaely, I have been very sick for a number of years and unable to work (and make new pages). But on the bright side, the constant pain part is over, yay!
But if you're inclinded to worry, don't - this too shall pass. :D
Saturday, July 4th, 2015
Happy Independence day! As promised, the Stupiders continues today, starting with a special, extra page. It's an animated page, so it might take a little while longer to load if you have a very slow connection, but if you have a fast connection, you probably won't notice!
It took a lot of work making today's page come out well and a reasonable size. The original version has more detailed fireworks and is much harder to spot the loop, however, you'd have to torrent the darn thing to get it to load! I also made a version with sound, but it ended up being, not so much cool as realy, realy, annoying. And nobody's going to put up with annoying on the 4th of July: they'd celebrate their freedom and independence from annoying, instead!
To celebrate the occasion, a bunch of extras have been added to the “extras” page: four new pages and 10 (!!!) new avatars. I have also changed the image links so that, if you want to use the code provided there, it will host the images straight from this website! However, this does use our bandwidth, so if the new system is abused, we will have to disable direct linking. If you would like to help us save bandwidth, you can still save the images to your own computer and upload them to your website/forum for use.
Last time we saw our heros, it was at the end of issue 9, having just bashed the law over the head with a brick-filled purse - by accident, of course! And so, it is my pleasure to continue the story, that we may find out what will become of our dear friends, as -
- The Stupiders Continue!
Friday, May 22th, 2015
I have saved up enough money from a variety of jobs to repair and replace my art equipment – this means it's inking time! I can't wait to get the rest of this plot arch up and I want to thank everyone who showed their support for the Stupiders!
This means that, not only is there a new page today, but, starting July 4th, the Stupiders will have a special edition update and then will update as usual! I also have a bunch of goodies that I will be posting in the “extras” section at that time, so stay tune!
July & August, 2012
I figured being on hiatus was the perfect time to do some real maintenance on my work area and art equipment. It was also the prefect time for disaster.
I’ll admit, my electric equipment is a little on the old side; one of the early model Motion Computing tablet PCs. But despite that, it has shown minimal signs of wear, performing almost like the day I got it - a fact I’ve been pretty happy with. This time I was having some difficulty reinstalling Windows correctly. Frustrating, sure - but I'm pretty good with computers - I can even program a few languages - I'd figure it out, eventually. But to cut to the chase: I had gotten sick of spending so much time trying to get things to work the right way. I wanted to paint a little picture - yah, and do a bit of inking on the next Stupiders page! Time was on my side - so why not? I'd relax, make some art and then reformat again, if I had to. I had a pretty good idea of what I had to tweak to fix everything, anyways (just a patch I forgot to install). So, I started installing Photoshop and Illustrator - a longer process then most programs. Everything was going well until the computer stopped reading my external USB CD drive. Not surprising - the only thing physically "wrong" with the computer was a sticky button and two somewhat finicky USB ports. So I played around with the connection a bit - but wait a second : the computer was reporting the CD drive connected and unconnected at the same time... how could that - oh, I'll just have it repaired. WHOA, WHOA, WHOA - I pulled and held the power switch: the monitor was on the fritz. No response. The monitor died - something began to grind loudly. Still, no response. Hastily, I ripped the battery out of the back.
The only thing missing was a dark plume of smoke. My tablet PC had gone from excellent condition with a finicky USB port to wreak in 3 seconds flat. And despite my frustrations, I still can't help but be impressed - it held in there, fighting condition until the moment it went out in a spontaneous fireball of glory.
Knowing that my tablet PC wasn't going to last forever, I started saving up for a new digital art setup last year. So far, I've only been able to purchase roughly half of the setup, so it will probably be another year before I can purchase the rest and start updating again.
Of course, now I can't do any of my digital painting; or for that matter, ink and finish any of the Stupiders pages I have penciled. I considered inking the Stupiders by hand, but that would lead to a complete style change that would not be complementary to the story. And the pencils are often too rough in some areas to post directly to the website. I was looking forward to reaching the end of the current plot arch around December... oh well. At least I’ll have plenty of time to improve my pencil work and writing.
For those of you wondering : yes, I will continue to draw the Stupiders in pencil, while I am saving up to digitally ink and finish them. Until I can complete more pages, there won't be any updates.
Thank you for your understanding and for reading the Stupiders!
June, 2012
After much debate and thought, the Stupiders will be on hiatus for the summer. I really didn't want to put it on hold, but it's best option I would come up with. The Stupiders will update on the last week of June, the first week of July and then resume it's normal schedule the last week of September (right after my birthday). In the mean time, I have a bunch of “real life” things to work on, but will also be stepping back to re-evaluate the direction of the Stupiders.
Thank you for your understanding and I look forward to posting the conclusion to this plot arch soon (don't worry – I'm not going to just leave the comic on a cliff hanger)!
May, 2012
Did anything cool happen in Maine this month? You bet – the Portland comic convention on the water at Ocean's Gate! I had some trouble getting there, as Ocean's Gate seems to have taken a page out of the Blues Brother's book: they listed the wrong address on their official website and I ended up standing between the convention center and Hadlock field (I wasn't the only one who ran into this problem, either)! Lucky for me, it's such a unique looking building on the water that I was able to remember the general location I had seen it in, many years ago. And with the help of two gentlemen attendants at Hadlock field, I was able to pinpoint it and arrive in time!
It was a perfect day on the ocean and the turn out was good – but the best part was being able to talk to so many talented, hard working artists! Unfortunately, I can't mention them all here (you don't want to read that much text, do you?) but a few of the people I spoke with were:
Ben Bishop – Watching how quickly he could draw the human body – and how much joy he took in creating – was a real treat. And, for those of you who are interested in books about Maine, you might want to check out the book he illustrated: “Lost Trail”. It's a true story about a 12 year old Boy Scout from New York who becomes lost on Mt. Katahdin.
Dayoung Jung – from dayoungjung.com, she creates cute pictures of delicious foods... mmmmmm. They looks so yummy - but alas! They are not but paper and ink!
Dirk Tiede – the creator of Paradigm Shift, a comic with a werewolf cop! It was great learning how he created the beautiful, moody art for his card game, whose name I have, unfortunately, forgot... I can't seem to find it on the internet, either. Oh dear...
It was realy great speaking with so many dedicated working artists – I should do this more often!
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Wow, it's a brand new year already! I hope you all enjoyed the extra page posted on Christmas day, commemorating our online anniversary - one year! Doesn't seem like it, does it? Oh, well maybe it does - it's too darn nippy outside to ignore that it's winter again. But don't worry: the Stupiders will help you forget the chill for another winter - as long as you are willing to visit us now and again!
For those of you who don't want to type out the links on special page #59, (I don't blame you!) here are the links:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/248298/sopa_and_pipa_just_the_facts.html
The bills:
SOPA
PROTECT IP
This isn't a political comic, so why am I posting about these bills? Well, I didn't want to join Wikipedia's "blackout" and take the whole site offline, but I wanted to do something that lasted a little longer then Google's (temporary) special logo (which I, unfortunately, missed). So I opted to help raise awareness by making a special comic.
These bills are about censoring the internet - one home of the Stupiders. They would put a lot of stress on websites to constantly monitor all of their user content, making sure to remove all links to "bad", censored places, least their website become a censored site as well!
For those of you who want even more info, Penny Arcade has a few things to say (though they focus a little bit more on the gaming industries' side of this) and some links that lead to... even more links!
As for the incandescent light bulb being banned by the federal government... yeah, you might want to stock up! Unless your state has overruled this, of course (that's why we have local governments!).
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Yesterday, I finished a new page in the "Extras" section called " Freebies and Goodies". There you can find a bunch of avatars and banners, hosted by Xs.to, to use on your favorite forums or websites!
Of course, all good things must come to an end - or so I discovered this morning when I checked on the website and found that all the images on my Xs.to account had been deleted by someone yesterday around midnight. Hot linking isn't against the Xs.to TOS (that's what Xs.to is all about!) and I didn't get any notices from them regarding the deletion. I've contacted them and hopefully the matter will be sorted through soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to use some of the beautiful new avatars and banners, just right click on them and save them to your computer, then upload them to your forum, website or favorite image host. In fact, even if the images hadn't been deleted, I'd still recommend you host them on the site where you plan to use them: they'll probably load faster, and you don't have to worry as much about the image 'breaking'!
In other news, I think I'm going to remove Facebook's "like" button - it keeps breaking and I'm getting tired of fixing it. But we'll see.
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
They said it couldn't be done! They said "No, never in a million years!". But today, it has happened: the Stupiders have finally navigated the convoluted tubes of the "interwebzs" and made a "fazebook" page! How could it have come to this, you may ask? And what does this mean for all living creatures that are, in fact, smarter than a brick? Is this a sign of the End of Days? Has the Apocalypse finally arrived? Or is this instead the Golden Age of Funnies? There's only one way to find out - venture to their page today and discover the truth for yourself!
You may have also noticed that the "Extras" page has been redesigned to hold multiple categories - including a "Links" category! So if you'd like to vote for the Stupiders at the Top Web Comics list, you'll find the link there!
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Everyone has been very understanding about the caching issue. So, as a "Thank you" and to make up for any frustrations it may have caused, I have made an "Extras" page, filled with goodies!
If you'd like to take a peak behind-the-scenes, see some details that were just too small for the webcomic, or even images that can't be found in the comic, then you'll want to check out this new page!
Wednesday, May 11, 2010
I normally use the Chrome internet browser, but a couple day ago I was poking around the web with Internet Explorer and decided to check up on the Stupiders. So I clicked the "comic" button and to my surprise what I saw was the previous week's comic page. This was puzzling because Chrome always displayed the most recent page - so why wasn't IE? I pressed the refresh button and the correct image was displayed this time.
The problem was that the "comic" page was being cached, which caused the browser to think that the page didn't need to be updated, even though there was a new comic page up (unless you specificly told it to check by pressing the "refresh" button). So I wrote up some new code so that you don't have to press that annoying refresh button when trying to view the most recent comic page in IE! Of course, if you visited every Wednesday, you probably didn't notice (since cached pages "expire" rather quickly - but not quickly enough for frequent visitors!). :)
It makes me unhappy to think that, although my comic was updating on time, some browsers weren't showing the newest pages properly - and so I hate to think of how this may have perturbed and inconvenienced some of my readers. Sorry about that.
Saturday, December 25th, 2010
Merry Christmas! To celebrate, the first page of the Stupiders has been uploaded. You can expect the rest to be posted online every Thursday. As for the book edition, issue #2 will go to print next week and should be available the first week of the new year!
I sincerely hope that you are having a joyous Christmas, where ever you may be!
Friday, November 19th, 2010
After months of hard work, planning, programing, writing, and drawing, today, the website goes live - hurray!! The first issue will be printed and distributed
through out the L/A area of Maine during the first week of December (for free!). The online version will be updated every Thursday, starting Christmas (although Christmas doesn't start on a Thursday), when I will upload the cover!
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