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Announcement

by admin on July 31, 2019 at 2:30 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

My wife’s been working on a side project and after nine months that project has finally come to fruition so I’m very happy to announce the birth of my second son and third child, Quillan Dwight. His name was easy. It was literally a five minute search after my wife asked me to look for a good name. I looked up Irish names, noticed that I’d never looked at the Q’s for my first son, looked at them skeptically and then my eyebrows raised and I asked what she thought of Quillan. She liked it. I liked it. We were done.

My daughter Eloise’s name was much more difficult. Why? Because of Dodge the Bullet. She wanted to name our daughter Adelaide. I didn’t. She really wanted to. I thought we were tempting fate. I thought if we named her Adelaide then she’d turn out to be a beautiful blonde haired, blue-eyed, hooligan, who stretched the rules past the breaking point and I didn’t want to risk that and tempt fate. So we went with Eloise.

And ended up with a beautiful blonde hair, blue-eyed, hooligan who stretches the rules past the breaking point. But! With the name Eloise.

Totally different.

Thanks for reading,

Steve

1 Comment

God, George Strait, and Country Music

by admin on May 17, 2019 at 5:01 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

George Strait is back with a new album and a great new song and I couldn’t be more happy about it. Partly because it’s awesome on its own merits but also because of his singular ability to keep country music station programmers honest.

You’ve got George Strait as the anchor of country, with gravity, he centers your programming as in you can’t get too far away from the tone of George Strait or else the programming doesn’t flow right. It clashes. Like listening to a mix tape with all of your favorite songs and going from Eminem to Randy Travis. It’s interesting but it’s hard to get your brain from one mindset to the other.

Right now there are songs on country music stations that are good songs, that are hits, but are not country songs. Not talking about bro country (usually they include enough accents, violins, and country trappings that they can fit in even if they stand out a bit), but how do you go from a Not country song to a George Strait song? Difficult, tricky, and can really hurt the listening experience for the listener. The net effect is keeping the programmers on track and keeping the music on country stations Country.

Or at least that’s my hope, that’s what seemed to happen in the nineties when Pop Country was getting big, they still kept it country because George Strait was so huge. Maybe he’s not that anymore. Maybe he won’t have that effect now. But I have hope. And if not? I still got to hear another great George Strait album so it’s a huge win already.

Also, a cute story with my son: I was driving with my kids and playing George Strait while my wife and I chatted about our week. My son interrupts by telling us to shut up because he can’t hear the song.

Normally we would’ve told him some things (like whose car it is, who gets to control the music volume, who gets to tell who to shut up) but since it was George Strait we allowed it.

And shut up.

And turned it up.

Thanks for reading,

Steve

└ Tags: Country Music, George Strait
 Comment 

Kermit lived

by admin on May 10, 2019 at 4:35 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

When I was a kid I remember adults making a big deal over something that made no sense to me: Kermit riding a bicycle in the Muppet Movie. Apparently it was astonishing and all of us kids were astonished by this astonishment.

But we weren’t. As far as I remember not one of us even cared that much. Not because it wasn’t technically impressive but because we didn’t care about that at all. Kermit wasn’t a puppet. Kermit was Kermit. Of course Kermit could ride a bike. Now, we knew Kermit actually was a puppet but what I mean is we didn’t care about any of that stuff. He was real to us.

The adults focused on the wrong thing, the technical accomplishment, and were impressed by it but we were impressed by Kermit. The character. The soul of the character. That’s what we gravitated towards. Not the impressiveness.

Which is how it should be. If you’re watching a movie for the first time and you have the thought ‘How’d they do that?’ you’re thinking of the movie makers (even if only for a moment) and not the characters. Not the story on the screen.

Now that impressiveness is gone, we assume as the audience that anything is possible and it’s up to the filmmakers to take advantage of that. They no longer have to worry about distracting from the story and characters with cool tricks. We expect cool tricks, they no longer break immersion.

Yet still many filmmakers film as if we’re supposed to be shocked by what we’re seeing. Impressed into appreciation of mediocrity in terms of story and character. But that can’t last long.

Why? Because we’ve been able to see Anything for nearly twenty years. That means there are twenty-year olds that have never known a world where an effect was impressive in and of itself. They take it for granted. They will soon be the ones making movies, and television.

What kind of films will we get when we can no longer be bulled by bafflegab? Flummoxed by Film-falmery? I think we’ll see these amazing tools put to good use.

Or, judging by the toy aisle I just walked down the other day, really elaborate poop jokes.

Either way I’m looking forward to it.

Thanks for reading,

Steve

1 Comment

State of The Dodge

by admin on March 18, 2019 at 9:46 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

Hi Everyone,

First I want to say I’m Canadian.

Then I want to say I’m sorry.

Not that I’m the kind of Canadian that says sorry very often, but in this case I feel I have to. At Christmas I decided I needed a break, get ahead on the deadlines and stop working past twelve to finish a strip when I have to get up at 5:40 am. I didn’t want to tell you guys because I’ve seen webcomic guys make a fuss and do the woe is me thing and I hated it as a reader and as a creator.

Two weeks, no big deal. But it wasn’t the relief I was expecting. Without a deadline I wasn’t able to concentrate. Could still think of strips but couldn’t think of jokes. So I let another week slip. Then another. Then I was embarrassed about it. I’ve never tripped up like that before, whether it was writing novels, drawing whatever, or working on the strip. Just couldn’t focus. Couldn’t get the jokes into my head.

Every week I’d say next week would be the week. Then it wasn’t. But now? Now it is. I hope. I’ve got all the strips done for this week. And in struggling with them I’ve gotten ideas for next week’s strips again.

No, that’s wrong, that’s not how this strip works. Essentially I know what the strip is, and I know what the payoff is, but I never know what the punchline is until halfway through the drawing phase. Then I see it. Often I change it to something better, but it’s roughly the same joke.

These last three months I’d think of a strip and then I’d think of the panels and then I’d think of the punchline but I’d never laugh. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s narcissistic to laugh at your own jokes but I justify that by calling them improv jokes. Which they are and are not. They’re following a structure but the structural setup leads to a structured punchline but what I do is twist that punchline subconsciously, like there’s a little man in the back of my head rewriting me on the fly. And when he makes me laugh, I know it’s right.

So he made me laugh last week and that’s given me the confidence to get back in the saddle. We’ll see how it goes.

As for those asking if I’m okay; I’m great. Truly. Lovely wife, two great kids, decent job, decent house. It’s all good. Just rocked by a lowering of creativity I’ve never felt before.

Oh! And I’ve got news: We’re expecting our third child in a few months.

Thank you for your concerns,

But most of all, and as always,

Thank you for reading,

Steve

3 Comments
jen rose

The ‘Real’ Jen Rose

by admin on November 15, 2018 at 4:41 am
Posted In: Uncategorized

Cartooning was difficult for me when I first started drawing this strip, partly because I was out of practice but mainly because when I did draw I would use a completely different, more realistic, more comic book rather than comic strip style. Keeping the odd proportions consistent proved impossible for me so I soon went with the more realistic/heroic proportions I was used to and out of that compromise came the look of Dodge the Bullet.

I think the cartoonish faces with the simplified bodies looks cool. But every now and then I wonder what the cast would look like were they done in my more realistic style. There was nothing stopping me from doing that but it was just an idle thought. Until now.

I’ve done up a version of Jen Rose (because of course I would) and I figured I’d tell you guys about it so you could check it out. And if you’d like you can go to my DeviantArt page and see more examples of my other style.

https://www.deviantart.com/saintswan

 

1 Comment
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