(Just a reminder: I’m taking Thursdays off this month, so this is the last no-comic Thursday until next December. And now, a special message for cartoonists & graphic designers…)

Want a quality font for your comic? One that isn’t used by every other comic? This weekend, Comicraft is holding their annual New Year’s Day sale where all their fonts, including ones that normally cost more than $300, are sold for $20 and some change. The price is always based on the year, so this weekend, you can get a font for $20.11. I used this sale a few years ago for the font I currently use on Kenny Chronicles. It was a $99 font(International version), so I got 79.7% off during New Year’s Day 2009! Yay! If you need a great font for either a comic, logo, commercial illustration, or whatever, I highly recommend taking advantage of this one-day-only sale. Find it at www.comicbookfonts.com.

And because I’m not benefiting in any way from the link, I’ll also point you to Blambot. They’re the most-used font source for webcomics(as far as I know), because of their wide selection of free fonts. The pay fonts cost $20 every day. If you need international characters, be sure to check the font’s info, because not all of them have the necessary accent marks. Believe me, adding accent marks & upside-down punctuation is too much work if you don’t have an international font. I was mixing 3 different fonts on the Spanish version before I bought “¡Los Vampiros!” on Comicraft’s sale, and even then I had to draw accent marks manually on some letters.

Whatever you do, DON’T USE COMIC SANS.

…okay, maybe not that many plans, but still too many.
Being a few days into the new year, I figure I’ll let you in on a few plans I have for this year. The first thing I want to point out is the One True Fan toolbar at the bottom of the website. It shares with the world who visits the site the most and shares links to the website the most. Every page viewed, every link shared, gives you points. The visitor with the most points is featured in the toolbar as the One True Fan. This recognition(and feeling of competition) will hopefully encourage people to share the site with others. Points expire after 2 weeks, so nobody’s going to hog the spot forever. If you hate extra site toolbars, you can hover over the right-hand side of it then hover over the X for hiding options(permanently or just for now). You sign into the toolbar with your Twitter or Facebook account, so no extra password-rememberin’ is needed. For more information, visit www.OneTrueFan.com.

Now for my plans for the rest of this year:

• Well, I don’t write checks, so getting used to writing 2011 isn’t high on the list. At the moment, the typo I’m making is typing 2001. Year change; no prob. Decade change; still have issues a full year in(depending on your definition of when a decade starts). I HAVE typed 2010 a few times, even though I was thinking 2011 each time. My fingers just need to get used to hitting the 1 instead. Really, it helps that I was thinking “2011” in the last few months of 2010. I’m already thinking of 2012 quite a bit. I have major plot points planned all the way into that year, and scattered ideas past that.
• New theme parks on Second Life. I’m actively working on a replacement for Kennyland(in a new location), which will likely be called Kenny World. It’s currently larger than Walt Disney World, although most of it will be water(at first), and that includes the water that extends past the usable area’s boundaries(scenery area). I also have 3 other theme parks in the planning stages, which are still in the “I ain’t talkin'” stage. I seriously hope I can get them up soon, because I already have the land for them. The Halloween attraction and the Christmas tree are still in those spots, and I don’t want to give those areas up because I know exactly what I want there. I just need to find the time to work on them, and Kenny World is higher priority because it’s freakin’ Kenny World!
• I have a game in the planning stages, and it’s not comic-related, although Kenny will be in it. The game will be on Second Life(surprise surprise) and is going to require a LOT of programming. My goal is for summer, but realistically I’m not even sure it’ll be finished by the end of the year. Beta, at least? Since I expect this game to be a big deal, I’m not divulging any other details. I haven’t even bought land for it because it’s so far down the timeline.
• Animated cartoons! I have a few ideas I’m eager to get started on, and one’s in the storyboarding stages. None will be Kenny-related. At all.
• Time management! I’m quite sure at least one of the mentioned plans will not get done this year. I’m keeping the comic schedule at twice-weekly so that I at least have some hope of getting other projects done. I’m also hoping that by mentioning these plans, however vague they are, I will feel a stronger need to finish them. I figure at least one 1-minute cartoon will be made, and the other plans have a strong chance of being finished. Especially the parks, because I’m renting land for them. I’m making more money than ever on Second Life, thankfully, but it’s still less than a quarter of what I’m spending. I’m debating giving up 1/4 of my land and setting up one of the parks at Kenny World or somewhere above another park. The Halloween attraction, surprisingly, is still getting a few visitors a day. The problem with giving up a parcel of land is that the land I have is in a high-traffic area that catches a lot of walk-through traffic, so each park should be ground-level.

So there you have it. Stuff to look forward to this fine year, or at least to place bets on.

Last Saturday I went to see the hilarious play “Julie Bunny Must Die”, about a cartoonist who’s getting pulled in all directions by his job, his girlfriend, and his comic about a bunny who happens to be an international spy. There are lots of pop culture, internet culture, and furry culture jokes in it. Chef Albertson attacks Julie Bunny with a Slap Chop! Now THAT’S comedy.

The play will continue through Jan. 16th, and is showing at the Vandivort theater in Springfield, MO. Go see it if you’re in the area, or even if you’re not, like me. I really hope this play makes it big. For tickets and info, visit http://www.vctheatre.com.
They encouraged photos and video, and I happened to have an iPhone 3GS on hand, so here are some videos of my favorite songs from the play…

If no videos are visible, click the title of this post to go to the webpage.

If video doesn’t show, click the title of this post.

This is a European hamster, or a common hamster, as they call them in Europe. Thanks to @stephenfry on Twitter for mentioning this. Yes, THE Stephen Fry.

Pixar’s Twitter account re-tweeted about this, and I’m amazed with how well this was put together. UP could have been made in the 1960’s for sure.

Oh hey! Didj’a know that Doug TenNapel, the creator of Earthworm Jim, had a new webcomic? If you couldn’t tell from the title of this post, the comic is called Ratfist, and I can tell that it’s from the same mind that created such characters as Bob the Killer Goldfish, Flamin’ Yawn, and Princess What’s-Her-Name. Don’t be a chump, check it out!

www.RatFist.com
“The plot thickens. So does gravy when you add flour.” -Doug TenNapel
“Ga-ROO-vy!” -Jim

We’re stuck in the grill of a blizzard, and today people are asking the groundhogs if we’ll have 6 more weeks of winter. Kinda looks like it’ll take 6 weeks to melt all this snow.

This was taken in Kennyland‘s back yard in Second Life. I still haven’t taken that Christmas tree down because I don’t have anything to replace it with yet. I figured I might as well bury it in fake snow. The ground hog will stay around for just one day.

I’m going to try to post my favorite YouTube videos on most Fridays, to provide a little more content and to make more use of my favorites list.
First, I have for you a fox playing in the snow. This guy has a LOT of videos of his pet fox. I need to use these as reference to make Kenny even more fox-like.

And second, here’s Jim Carrey imitating Vanilla Ice. That boy can dance.

Chip and Dale actually had 2 sets of actors voice them in the short “Two Chips And A Miss”. The singing voices were done by two ladies, I guess so they don’t have to distort the voices as much. Or maybe the speaking actors weren’t good singers? Here’s the two chipmunks singing at their non-sped-up speed:

Here’s a longer recording of later in the short, mostly featuring a third chipmunk, a lady singing on stage. Here, you can hear the male speaking voices at their pre-sped-up speed. Basically sounds normal, considering how fast those two characters speak.

At the end, the two try to kiss the girl, to which she ducks, and I just had to make an icon of this comedic shot which you can use wherever you want:
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I recently found a great collection of Star Trek ship models for the Blender 3D modeling program, and started playing around with the Voyager one. Then I decided to see if I could cast a shadow on the ship and the monkey head included with Blender fit the need perfectly. After all, it WAS designed to test shading and reflection settings, just like the teapot in other programs, since it can cast a shadow and reflection on itself.

I’m nowhere near being well-versed in Blender(I didn’t design either object in the scene), but this recent bit of play has helped. Before this, the only things I’ve made in Blender were a snow man and a very simple scene that was meant to get perspective right on one comic(simpler to just draw it). I had intended on using Blender for the backgrounds in the comics, but then I got on Second Life and it was at least 10x easier. Been building the backgrounds in Second Life ever since. I need to switch to a higher-quality program, though, since Second Life has lots of building limitations, is slowed by cheap broadband, and is intended to be a SOCIAL  environment. People will talk to you even if you’re in Busy mode, which I normally am.

I plan on having some 3D backgrounds set on land, and Second Life is best for flat, non-natural surfaces, so I ‘m testing out Blender and Unity3(game development program) for those. Not sure what I’ll end up using, but Blender seems more versatile, since I can render high-quality videos with that as well. On the other hand, Unity3 has a tree-making function and is designed for easy landscaping. I don’t know.

Whee!

Kennyland is still going strong(as is the Halloween attraction for some reason), but it turns out Kenny World is more space than I can currently fill, so I’ll focus on some other Second Life theme park projects while I do some more planning. I was building a 256×256 meter theme park in Second Life, and besides the roller coaster that I haven’t started building, I wound up with some spacious gaps in the design. This was a good start, though, and gave me some new sets for the comic. In fact, the comic where Kenny ran into the railing with his flying shoes used part of Kenny World for the set, as well as when Kenny tried to get Death in the pool a couple months ago. Lots of useful building done in the time I had that land.
…but the main reason was funding. I was sharing the region with some other people(I had all of a certain elevation so I wouldn’t interfere with other builds) and there were financial issues beyond the group’s control. Hopefully we can get restarted on the project later this year(maybe with a business plan?), but at the moment I’m planning on just incorporating elements from Kenny World into Kennyland because really, besides the floors, I haven’t made any more things than can already fit into Kennyland.