The announcer smiled his fake smile into the camera as the man just outside of camera range held up three fingers, then two, and finally motioned to him as the “On Air” light flared to life with a brilliant red glow. He cleared his throat once and began the routine he’d practiced so many times before.

“Hello, and welcome back to Interview Live! I’m Gene Houser and I’ll be hosting the show this evening. I’ve got two guests with me tonight, so let’s give them both a warm welcome.”

Gene turned and walked back to his seat as the camera panned back enough to show both of his guests. In the large leather chair sat a rather large monkey, nearly four feet in height and wearing a bright orange set of shorts and boots. On the couch beside the chair sat a child with rather large ears that looked to be no older than about twelve or so in age.

Gene sat down and held up his hands to quieten the applause. “Thank you, all of you. Now, to my right, first we have Keon Brown from Angry D. Monkey comics, located at http://angrymonkey.keenspace.com. Beside him we have Daniel VanderWerff from School Spirit, which can be found at http://schoolspirit.keenspace.com. I’d like to thank you both for coming.”

Keon nodded. “Glad to be here, Gene.”

Daniel smiled and waved at the camera. “No worries, mate!”

Gene chuckled. “Viewers at home might notice immediately that Daniel has an accent. That’s because he’s from Southeastern Victoria, Australia, so he’s come quite a distance to be on our show tonight. Keon’s also traveling to us from Toronto, Ontario, which wasn’t quite as long of a trip. However, I don’t want to waste their chances to visit our wonderful New York so I’ll get right to the questions.”

He paused and pulled out a few cue cards from his desk. “Ok, our first question goes out to both of you. How long have you been creating comics? Have you stayed with a particular style of artwork, or have you evolved it over time, such as switching from pens to digital, anime to realistic, or something similar to that? Keon, you answer first please.”

Keon nodded. “I've been creating comics since I was in the third grade, so I was about 8 years old when I started. I started doing online comics since 1999. My style was pretty much Dragonball Z type anime. As the years went on, I was able to move away from that style slowly but surely… now, I think my style isn't nearly as influenced by it anymore. It’s more my own style now.”

Gene looked over at Daniel. “And you, Daniel?”

Daniel grinned. “I remember drawing a few comics in old exercise books years ago when I was about eight. I remember one about a bloke robbing a bank. He stopped holding the bank up and it fell down when he left. I don’t know what happened to it though… Through the middle years of high school I drew quick little comics about the people in the school on loose-leaf paper in my folders. I’ve got a little collection of them hidden away somewhere, but I really didn’t draw comics all that much for about eight to ten years until School Spirit came along.

“I don’t really know if my style has evolved because it’s been so long between drinks. I know just in the last year and a half the design of School Spirit has shifted a fair bit in the consistency of the characters and so forth. I have the three original pencil drawn and written School Spirit strips in a folder somewhere, but a week or so later they had been redone twice and turned into what is put up for display now. I might dig them out and put them up as little points of interest on the site later on, maybe when School Spirit reaches a year on Keenspace in June.”

Gene smiled. “It’d be interesting to see those.” He flipped to the next card. “Next question, and we’ll start with Daniel this time. What is the basic process behind the creation of your comic? Going from start to finish, approximately how many steps does a page take to completion and what time is usually involved?”

Daniel thought for a moment. “Originally School Spirit was a primary school musical play I was writing for the kids at the school where I teach. The entire concept evolved as a script. A friend suggested I start a webcomic with him, but I’d never really read any before at that point and I told him I had no time. An hour later, I sent him the first few sketches of Casper and, Bob’s your uncle, School Spirit went from there. That was about mid 2003.

“For the individual strips, I’ve found I’ve developed my own process. I try to include larger, coloured comics on important dates of the year; being Australian, these include Christmas in summer, Easter in autumn, the Olympics, Remembrance Day, Australia Day and Anzac Day and so on. I’ll have a glance to see which update they will fall on, and then count how many strips I have in between. That gives me an idea of how many I have to play with when compiling the next storyline.

“If all goes well, I can get two done on a weekend day, and one during the week after work and it’s all go. I tend to make good use of the first week of my school holidays though and try to build up a buffer to see me through most of the next term. Gives me a lot of breathing space and lets me write reports for the kids without having to worry about the comic. The reports are more important.”

Gene nodded. “Yes, it’s always important to remember to let your real life concerns come before the comic, especially since you deal with kids on a daily basis. And by the way, you have my utmost respect for being a teacher; I can barely handle the one child I have, let alone a whole classroom of them.” He chuckled and turned to Keon. “Keon, same question.”

Keon held up his paws and began to count the steps off with each finger. “First, I draw out quick rough drawings of the comic I'm going to do. I do this on any type of paper I can find with anything from a pencil to a crayon. Next, I draw out the rough copy onto the finest quality printer paper I can afford with my awesome lead pencil. The printer paper is scanned into my computer and then loaded up into Photoshop. In Photoshop, I make a layer on top of the scanned picture and then use the brush tool to digitally ink over all the lines. After I finish inking, I delete the scanned picture leaving just the new layer. I then add some more layers and proceed to colour. After colouring, I resize the drawing to what it will be saved for the web at, I then add all the text. After all this I save for web and make it a png file. Finally, I upload the comic onto Keenspace!

“Combined, all eight steps take between five to six hours. Steps three through eight usually only take about three to four hours, while steps one through two vary from forty-five minutes to two hours depending on if I am stumped for what to do next or not.”

Gene took a sip from his coffee cup. “Definitely a time dedication from the both of you. It’s a lot of time, but it shows in your work. Now Keon, next question. Most comics have fans. What is some of the weirdest fanart or fanfiction that you've ever received? Got any specific pieces/fans that you might like to rave about for their talent?”

Keon laughed. “It would have to be the Tongry Love Shrine at http://www.geocities.com/tongrylove/. I have a character that in the Keenspace chatroom has a big following. So much so, he has a site dedicated to his origin. This character is believed to be the love child of my two characters, Ton and Angry; so because of it I get tons of yaoi requests. It's quite flattering to have a site dedicated to one of your fans. Also quite humbling.”

Gene chuckled. “I’ve seen the site, and been in the chat when it’s been discussed. Quite amusing indeed. Daniel, same question.”

Daniel pulled a few pieces of paper out of a nearby school bag. “I’ve picked up a few pieces of fanart over the last year; some expected, others not. The first piece I received still makes me laugh. It’s a picture of Casper and Cody looking a little apprehensive while Mavis the bus driver is standing behind them, arms outstretched to grab them. Matt Johnson of Cortland (http://cortland.keenspace.com/) sent me that one. The expressions he managed to put on the kids’ faces is priceless, at least to me.

“Possibly the most well-thought piece I received though came from Will Ritter of Thatguy (http://thatguy.keenspace.com/). It’s a full strip in its own right, with Casper giving Lesson three about Australia. He explains how Australians evolved from seedy criminals in England to little comic characters. Anyone who’s read School Spirit though will have noticed the large ears I’ve given the kids. He’s noticed that and made good use of it, explaining how the kids evolved such round ears. He put it down to koalas in the family tree. A very clever contribution, I thought. They’re both up on the site and I actually go and have repeat viewings every now and then!”

Gene glanced at his card. “Ok, this next question is a split question, because each of you have a different style of comic. Keon, we’ll start with you. Being a serial comic, how difficult is it to convey the story one page at a time? Approximately how much of a written story do you typically fit within a page of your comic?”

Keon absently played with the end of his tail as he spoke. “I feel it's very difficult to do the story a page at a time. If I could, I’d rather update with ten comics each time, but I don't have the time to do such a thing. I was contemplating doing that when I first started Angry D. Monkey, but had enough sense to realize I couldn't do that. I update three times a week and I still don't think that's enough to convey the story how I feel and at the pace I wish I could. I've had a couple storylines already where I decided to shorten it as I felt anyone reading would get bored.“

He shrugged. “I don't ever really plan how much of the story should be in each page. I just have things I need to bring up in each chapter and I make sure I do.”

Gene nodded. “Thank you, Keon. Ok, Daniel, your question is different because you have a gag comic. How difficult is it to come up with something funny on a routine basis? Are there any particular things that you find helpful to pull from such as real life situations, other comics, news and the like?”

Daniel smiled. “School Spirit is about Australian primary school kids and their unique perspective on their world. I teach in a primary school, so there’s plenty of inspiration right there, eh? That helps me with the way the characters talk, phrases they might use, motions I might draw them doing. I also get a few ideas for situations to put Casper, Cody and the rest into, although I haven’t had a need to do that much yet.

“As for coming up with humorous outcomes regularly, I guess I sort of answered that already. I brainstorm a few ideas and think of a few amusing twists that could arise from them, and write a few sentences about each. Usually that will give me enough for a storyline that usually lasts between ten and twenty strips. After that, it means I have up to seven weeks to develop the next storyline with its own jokes and giggles. And some of the stuff the kids at school do couldn’t go into the strip. The readers just wouldn’t believe it!”

Gene smirked. “I bet. Ok, last question, and then we’ll let you both go hit the town. We’re providing your ride and entertainment, of course.” He winked at the camera before he continued, “What is the most frustrating thing about webcomics these days? Where do you see webcomics going in the future?”

Daniel shrugged. “I really couldn’t answer this question, to be honest. Before I began School Spirit I knew next to nothing about the webcomic genre, and to be honest, I know very little more now, really. I was brought up on the funnies in the newspaper and in particular a New Zealand comic called Footrot Flats, which unfortunately didn’t get the attention it deserved in America.

“I guess webcomics will go about their business much the same as they have, but I don’t know if they’re going to be the next big thing everybody seems to be hoping. Good luck to them if they are, but I’ll just keep plodding along here and see where the kids in School Spirit can take me. Hopefully onto a lot of readers’ computer screens for now, but no worries if it doesn’t, eh?”

Keon shook his head. “I’m the opposite of Daniel there, since I’ve been around a long while. Honestly, what bugs me the most is just all the fighting; I really don't understand why so many people have so many problems with each other. Even with all the fighting I still see webcomics being pretty big in the future. When I first got into Keenspace I remember reading people calculated there were only two thousand or so online comics at most. This was back in the year 2000 so, when compared to now, this number has probably tripled or quadrupled. Although a lot of these comics are not very great, I still see the medium eventually being utilized by even syndicated artists.”

Gene put the cue cards into a small stack beside his desk. “And that’s all the time we have for today, folks. Let’s give Keon and Daniel a hand to thank them for their time and for coming all this way here tonight.”

Daniel hopped out of his chair with a grin. "Right! Now where's this Big Apple hiding? 'Cos I bet it's not as big as the one in Queensland."

As Keon shook his head, amused, Gene turned to the camera again. "Remember, folks, to stop by Keon's site at http://angrymonkey.keenspace.com/ and Daniel's site at http://schoolspirit.keenspace.com. Good night, folks!"

He stood and moved past his desk to shake both of their hands as the camera panned away and the end credits began to roll past.

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