Update 03-18-08

Hello all.

First order of business, two threads are up for What We Learned. The first one is on Popeye the Sailor and the second will be part 1 of a series that will have a number of installments, the Challenge of the Superfriends. Even with the extra time I had to do these sets, it doesn’t appear I was batting 1.000 with the jokes. I think I’m just at a low ebb right now, hoping every day that I break from it.

You’ll also notice that a good bit of the humor of these posters aren’t exactly resembling true ‘motivational posters’, i.e., portraying some deep, philosophical adage, even if the message is satire. Most of the posters so far have actually been created by first finding or creating the picture, then making a witty observation about the picture. This actually is pretty much the only productive way to work with the “What We Learned” series, since each one carries a theme, limiting where the images will come from. I think as a little change of pace, next week, I’ll work the other way around in creating some sets. I’ll come up with the idea, be it a moral or quirky saying, then finding a picture that mirrors the situation. This would seem to more fit in with the traditional ‘motivational posters’ that many are used to seeing. This may mean that the theme will be a little more general (and thus less restrictive), but the posters will be more universal. You’ll notice with these two series today, most of the jokes are relating to the image or are even inside jokes in which you would have had to seen Popeye and/or the Superfriends before to get them. (I also apologize about the quality of some of the Superfriends posters—the scene jumps and cuts on the show were so breakneck that it was almost impossible to get clean screenshots of all of the characters.)

Anyways, on to other news. Last week, I had mentioned putting around the idea of going into other areas of what is known as ‘photo-manipulation’, which, according to deviantART and other sources, is the correct terminology for projects such as found on this blog. I have a template for another one of these ‘p-m’ styles, faux trading cards, that I was hoping to eventually work into a weekly segment, much like “What We Learned”. However, in doing about 3 or 4 cards, I quickly realized that there was MUCH more involved in making a presentable finished product. It took me about an hour just to do one, where with the template in place for these posters, a picture can be done and refined in just a manner of minutes. I still like the idea a lot of doing trading cards for basically anything, but I will really have to have a good idea and be willing to spend some time on making it look good. If I were to make it a regular thing, say weekly, the quality would almost instantly drop. What I’ll probably do then is make it an irregular update, adding in the cards when I get them. I would like to get some feedback from everyone once they start coming up to let me know whether or not you all like them. Actually, feedback in general would be nice—lately, all I’ve been getting is spam. I guess if spammers are reading the blog, that would be considered feedback… All in all, if I decide to go forward with the trading card idea (or any other ideas of ‘p-m’), I’ll set up individual blogs for each and simply have links to each page. Keep checking back with me for more details on this as it unfolds.

Finally, I received an email some weeks back suggesting I start a newsletter, or some sort of email correspondence to regular readers. This struck me immediately as an awesome idea. However, I want to make sure I GET a regular reader base first of all. If you, therefore, would like to receive a regular (monthly, bi-weekly, etc) newsletters, either send me an email or comment to this thread, as a way of letting me know how many individuals would be interested. After all, it would take a good bit of time and effort to do so, and if there would be no one interested, I could better spend my time making more posters.

Again, thank you all for the page hits and the positive feedback…… looking at you, dear readers. :)