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Monday, February 23, 2009

Minions #152 - Working Overtime


Stand by, following the necessary jibber-jabber for a time-out from your Minion Master!

Your visit is important to us. Please ignore the mind-controlling nan0-spiders crawling up the back of your neck.

NEW! SUPPORT "MINIONS AT WORK" BY BUYING STUFF YOU WERE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY!
We're now Amazon.com affiliates, which means that if you click on the Amazon link in our sidebar and make purchases from Amazon, a tiny little sliver of what you spend goes to support these fine (maybe even near-mint!) cartoons!

Later, we'll be adding a selection of Minion-recommended merchandise, but until then, use your imagination. Books, videos, electronics, games, maybe even ACTION FIGURES!

Minions at work is inadequately supported during this financial crisis by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Feed the economy and help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.

While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great souvenir of your visit to the Lair:
THE MINION'S LAIR OF MERCHANDISE
"Satisfaction guaranteed or we'll make make you buy something else!"

and

NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY
(For very small values of naughty.)

Join the Minions Reminder Email List. It's free, it's easy, and you'll never miss a Minions at Work cartoon (or if you do, it won't be our fault!)

Greetings, Part Timers!

Back to shooting some new stuff this week. Kind of pleased how this came out.

Usually I try to keep the photo editing in these cartoons to a minimum. Really, there's no reason for that but my own false pride.

I set a lot of rules for myself in doing "Minions at Work" cartoons, and I rarely break them. Single panel, sometimes with a caption over the photo, and a bit of single-character dialogue below. No attribution of the dialogue (you've got to be able to figure it out from the photo or from the speech patterns) and no word balloons.

Why the arbitrary rules? Well, for one thing, it defines the form we're doing here. My model here is the classic "Far Side" cartoons of Gary Larson. Not that I'm comparing "Minions at Work" to that brilliant, classic, and sorely missed daily cartoon panel. It's just the ideal to which I weekly aspire. Aim high and do the best you can, that's what I say.

But the photo-editing rule is something else, and I do break it in big ways on rare occasions (like one of my all-time favorite panels you can see here), or in small ways on a regular basis (adding signs, adding liquid, fire, or energy effects, and brightening or darkening selective areas of photos). But with exceptions like the exploding silo cartoon, I try to do as much as I can "live," with real sets, props, and action figures, all photographed in one shot.

Two reasons here. Well, three actually, because the first one is that I enjoy doing it this way. Making my little bench-top lair come alive it part of the enjoyment and challenge of doing this thing. Almost everything you see here is photographed on a corner of a work-bench just a little more than two feet square, and it gets even smaller by the time I incorporate the various set pieces and background panels. I hope it looks bigger, that it feels like a more extensive world, but that only you guys can say.

Next reason is that I think it makes us a lot different than most of the other photo-based web-comics out there. Some of these started out shooting "live," but most have evolved into completely, or almost completely Photoshopped art. Take for example "Alien Loves Predator." (No slight on "Alien Loves Predator," which I really enjoy and follow religiously.)

Finally, one of my visual touchstones for these strips are the classic sci-fi puppet TV shows of Century 21 Productions, like "Thunderbirds," "Stingray" and even his live-action shows like "UFO" Done in the 60s and 70s, long before fancy video effects or CGI, when even fancy camera matt-work was beyond TV budgets, these shows made ingenious use of minature sets, puppets, and models filmed suspended on wires. They remain great cheesy fun for young and old.

All this comes round to is, I did edit a bit this week, though it intentionally isn't obvious. I don't actually have three copies each of the figures for Number 9 and Number 2. (I DO actually have a back-up Number 2 finally, but he wasn't used in making this week's panel.) But even though there's some heavy photo editing here, I did it "honest." It was shot with a carefully locked-down camera, and repositionaing and redressing the characters and shooting them three times on the same set, then combining all three images into one.

This pushes my rules to the limit, but stays inside them. Which makes me happy.

Now, go scratch your heads and try to figure out why I care about these things. I just do.

And hey, keep those comments coming! Considering all the money we don't make off this site, it's usually the only reward we get!

And if you'd like to support Minions at Work, consider clicking through these links to Amazon to pick up some Gerry Anderson DVDs (or anything else for that matter). Thank!







See you next week!

- Your Operated Remotely by Strings Minion Master, Steve

Monday, February 16, 2009

Minions #151 - Hard to Swallow



Stand by, following some new commercial jibber-jabber for a time-out from your Minion Master!

Your visit is important to us. For your convenience, please put us in your will, then walk off the nearest cliff. Try to land on your head. Thank you.

NEW! SUPPORT "MINIONS AT WORK" BY BUYING STUFF YOU WERE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY!

We're now Amazon.com affiliates, which means that if you click on the Amazon link in our sidebar and make purchases from Amazon, a tiny little sliver of what you spend goes to support these fine (maybe even near-mint!) cartoons!

Later, we'll be adding a selection of Minion-recommended merchandise, but until then, use your imagination. Books, videos, electronics, games, maybe even ACTION FIGURES!
Minions at work is inadequately supported during this financial crisis by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Feed the economy and help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.

While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great souvenir of your visit to the Lair:
THE MINION'S LAIR OF MERCHANDISE
"Satisfaction guaranteed or we'll make make you buy something else!"

and

NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY
(Naughty is as naughty does!)

Join the Minions Reminder Email List. It's free, it's easy, and you'll never miss a Minions at Work cartoon (or if you do, it won't be our fault!)

Greetings, Taste Testers!

So, I'm a little late this week. It's a holiday. Besides, my clock here shows I still have 38 minutes left of Monday!

It's not that I didn't have anything to post. There are still several cartoons in inventory. It's just some days it's hard to know what's funny. Things sit around in the inventory folder too long, and they just don't seem -- fresh -- any more. It's kind of like this.

Hey, for a four-month-old cartoon, that's pretty funny! Maybe these things don't get stale after all! And maybe that chunky milk is good drinking!

See you next week!

- Don't-Drink-the-Chunky-Milk-Steve

Monday, February 09, 2009

Minions #150 - Sign of the Times


In the event of a water landing, this cartoon can be used as a flotation device. Click on picture to inflate to full size.


Stand by, following some new commercial jibber-jabber for a time-out from your Minion Master!

Your visit is important to us. For your convenience, please put us in your will, then walk off the nearest cliff. Try to land on your head. Thank you.

NEW! SUPPORT "MINIONS AT WORK" BY BUYING STUFF YOU WERE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY!

We're now Amazon.com affiliates, which means that if you click on the Amazon link in our sidebar and make purchases from Amazon, a tiny little sliver of what you spend goes to support these fine (maybe even near-mint!) cartoons!

Later, we'll be adding a selection of Minion-recommended merchandise, but until then, use your imagination. Books, videos, electronics, games, maybe even ACTION FIGURES!
Minions at work is inadequately supported during this financial crisis by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Feed the economy and help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.

While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great souvenir of your visit to the Lair:
THE MINION'S LAIR OF MERCHANDISE
"Satisfaction guaranteed or we'll make make you buy something else!"

and

NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY
(Naughty is as naughty does!)

Join the Minions Reminder Email List. It's free, it's easy, and you'll never miss a Minions at Work cartoon (or if you do, it won't be our fault!)

Greetings, Linesmen!

Hey, look! We're up to #150 already! I suppose I should have done something extra special and cool, but it just didn't fit into the schedule. Hey, it's not that long till #200!

One detail about today's toon I'm going to mention. I love the way the Gorilla is looking up at the Sentinel robot. It's like he's saying, "hey, buddy, you're blocking my cell reception!"

I don't plan to make "Minions at Work" totally about the crappy economy, but it seems to be what's on everyone's mind right now.

At least this is a fresh shoot this week, and not recycled outtakes, though it is a little late. We were sick last week, over the weekend we had house guests, there are looming deadlines, and (you people in the mid-west are gonna laugh, if you can pry your frozen lips open to do so) it snowed here today.

Snow's a big deal here on the Oregon coast. It happens so infrequently, we're just not set up for it. Also, pretty much any way out of here to civilization requires crossing a mountain pass (not a big one, but still, lots more snow up there usually). Fortunately, though it snowed a bunch, it stayed warm and most of it is gone now.

The bad part of it is that, if we ever get some snow that sticks long enough, I'll probably drag out the Minions for an improvised outdoor shoot. It just wasn't happening today though.

- Snowblinding you with science Steve

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Minions #149 - Belt Tightening Makes Me Hungry



In the event of a water landing, this cartoon can be used as a flotation device. Click on picture to inflate to full size.


Stand by, following some new commercial jibber-jabber for a time-out from your Minion Master!

Your visit is important to us. For your convenience, please put us in your will, then walk off the nearest cliff. Try to land on your head. Thank you.

NEW! SUPPORT "MINIONS AT WORK" BY BUYING STUFF YOU WERE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY!

We're now Amazon.com affiliates, which means that if you click on the Amazon link in our sidebar and make purchases from Amazon, a tiny little sliver of what you spend goes to support these fine (maybe even near-mint!) cartoons!

Later, we'll be adding a selection of Minion-recommended merchandise, but until then, use your imagination. Books, videos, electronics, games, maybe even ACTION FIGURES!
Minions at work is inadequately supported during this financial crisis by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Feed the economy and help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.



While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great souvenir of your visit to the Lair:
THE MINION'S LAIR OF MERCHANDISE
"Satisfaction guaranteed or we'll make make you buy something else!"

and

NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY
(Naughty is as naughty does!)

Join the Minions Reminder Email List. It's free, it's easy, and you'll never miss a Minions at Work cartoon (or if you do, it won't be our fault!)

Greetings, Stay-at-homes!

Well, we're back from Florida. Really enjoyed the writer's conference and our four days at the space center (still not enough time!).

The plane trip on United Airlines? Not so much. I tell you, that outfit has some SERIOUS Evil Overlords in charge. But we got home without them killing us (unless this post-travel crud Mrs. Minion Master and I have does us in) so that's something.

I had really planned to shoot a new Minions for this week, but I just wasn't feeling up to it. Fortunately, I laid in some inventory before I left. Actually, I like this one quite a bit, and it is timely.

See you next week. Meanwhile, support the site by clicking through our Amazon link above and buy yourself a book. Maybe something by Chris or I.

Or not.

Actually, it would be better if you clicked through and bought a gigantic plasma TV. Yeah. That would be much better.

What the heck. Go for it. Tell them I sent you.

- Your parasite on the side of a failing economy: Steve