Back in the Arcade Ages Sopes and I used to play doubles on X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Because the game had team assist (you’re really playing as two characters and can switch between them) he would play one character and I would play as the other. Switching between characters was a little dangerous, because the exchange wasn’t always so graceful. “Hey Sopes, SOPES. SOOOOOPES! PUT ME IN BROOOO!” Sometimes our opponents saw the switch coming.
It was fun though, being invested in the game in a different way. Sopes would often take over and save our team, being the much stronger player of the two of us. We would often go to the arcade after school or if we had the same lunch, but other times we would “train” separately.
Going to Sega’s large arcade, Playdium, we would never play doubles. Playdium had a larger variety of players and skill levels than our local arcade so it was a chance to see how we matched up individually against other players. I remember watching Sopes play against the Wolverine-Magneto teams there one night. Sopes had picked Dhalsim and another character. His bewildered opponents were furious that a joke character like Dhalsim dared to touch their precious Magneto with his Yoga Fire.
At first I thought Sopes was crazy to pick Dhalsim, but it was obvious watching how his opponents reacted how brilliant his strategy was. You don’t expect a skilled player to pick a joke character. No one does. Few know how to react to a joke character’s moves or combos. My whole life I’ve marveled at Sopes’s strategy. Preached to others the wisdom of using all characters instead of just one. So I asked him this morning for clarification on his fighting creedo. About the true meaning behind using the joke character. He said, “You always get a kick out of winning with joke characters … it never gets old.”
This interview is part of Up Up Down Down’s Associates series. There are a lot of awesome webcomics out there and these are some of the ones we love. You’ve probably seen their banners on our site. Check out the full list of comics in our Associates tab. The next webcomic in our series is Formal Sweatpants by Josh Mecouch.
I see Josh as the future of webcomics. In the webcomic world you find yourself “checking out the competition” on Reddit a given post day. That’s how I found Formal Sweatpants. The comic I read explains Reddit culture in a way people can understand, while humanizing himself and making a very, very funny comic all at the same time. Formal Sweatpants has a few recurring characters like Trolley the Procrastination Troll, variations of Josh the creator, God, Roger the Inner Critic Troll, and a guy I call “dude with the yellow ‘stash,” but largely the comic is focused on funny rather than a particular genre or theme. He sells t-shirts like the Downvote Rancor here and a fucking impressive Joe Rogan Experience posterhere. Also, if you aren’t following him on Twitter you should. He gets it.
Click any of the thumbnails above for some of my favourite Formal Sweatpants comics.
How do you draw your comics? Tell us a bit about the process and what tools you use to create.
I do most of the rough drafts in a sketchbook, sometimes even drawing them as far to compilation as possible before coloring them using Flash. I have a hard time scaling drawings on a computer screen with a Wacom tablet so I almost always have at least a small sketch done by hand to form the comic around. I’ve been meaning to start using Photoshop or Illustrator but I started using Flash in college when I was doing some short animations and just stuck with it.
Where did you get the idea for Formal Sweatpants? How did you develop the ideas and characters?
Initially I was trying to make a single panel comic like The Far Side for possible syndication in newspapers. I quickly realized that newspapers were the worst possible route a cartoonist can take now so I put it online and started to experiment with length and style. I was thinking about changing the name of my comic awhile back because so many people came to my site thinking I was selling pants.
As for the characters and ideas I keep a sketchbook filled with dozens of awful ideas and try to pull the least awful ones out. I wish there was a formula for creating comics but mostly it’s just working on an idea till something comes from it. One strategy I’ve used a few times is to draw the most ridiculous character I can then form a joke around that. I’m always interested to find out how other cartoonists/comedians/writers come up with ideas because there seems be a mystical element to creativity. But what I’ve found is that writing/drawing as much as possible is the only way to get to good material.
A number of your comics posit you (or the comic version of you) actually drawing/conceiving the comic. What is your creation process like for these scripts? Are the comics about comic writing more or less difficult?
I’m not sure if they’re more difficult then the other comics. Once I have an idea for a strip whether it be about comic writing or anything else it’s just fun to work on finding the joke and the timing of the panels. What I find incredibly hard is sitting down to make a comic when I have zero ideas. Sometimes drawing that struggle or turning it into a comic is more cathartic than anything else.
The endless ways there are to tell a story through comics. Sometimes I think I’m limited by the amount of space I have to get a joke or idea across but if you look at just a single page from that book it’s incredible how creative Scott McCloud is when it comes to telling a story.
I think there’s certain books worth having to come back to when you need inspiration, help or just to learn from and Understanding Comics is definitely one of them.
Your art is unique. It never shies from body hair, mucous, pimples and seldom use “classically attractive” characters. Yet the art remains compelling. How did you find/decide upon your style?
Gary Larson’s style was innately funny and that’s what I strive for. Even if the joke doesn’t work I want characters or drawings to be entertaining or interesting on their own. It’s bit a of a loop hole too. Drawing a “classically attractive character” is much more difficult than drawing an unsymmetrical beast covered in back hair.
I’m always trying to improve my style so if I find another cartoonist or artists whose work I like I’ll try to incorporate bits of it into my own illustrations. I tend to get stuck drawing very similar looking characters over and over so I give myself mini art lessons by looking at artists who are better. Larson, R. Crumb and Dan Piraro are a few of the artists I’m influenced by.
How do you silence your own Trolley (procrastination) and Roger (inner critic)?
Imagining my urge to procrastinate or harshly criticize myself as filthy, naked, mischievous trolls helps me to detach from it. It’s easy to let emotions take you over so making yourself aware of them is a good start to defeating them. At least that’s what one of my self-improvement audio books said. I think the next step is to embrace those emotions but I’m not there yet.
Also finding motivation on a daily basis is important. I bathe regularly but find that I’m dirty the following day and have to repeat the process. Similarly, I’ll find inspiration through a book or another comic and feel motivated but a day later I’m wallowing in another pool of self-pity. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a great book to help break you of this cycle.
You’ve been featured on a variety of places: g4tv.com, Joe Rogen’s twitter, even RT’d by a subsidiary of Playboy. Where would you like to been seen next?
Maybe Lady Gaga’s twitter feed to get some of those followers. I’m excited to find my work posted anywhere because it means people are enjoying it. Marc Maron recently retweeted a comic I made which made me very happy.
Were you an artist or writer first? What about now?
I’ve been drawing most of my life but I’m very interested in writing. When I made the comic “The Watch” I had initially wanted to turn it into a short story but wasn’t sure how to do it. Now I’d say I’m a cartoonist.
We’ve spoken before about your love for this song. What is the appeal of and how on Earth did you find it?
I wish I could take credit for finding this but I think a friend showed it to me years ago. The performer’s commitment to the ridiculous dance is fantastic and reminds me of a Christopher Guest movie. One can’t help but appreciate how limber the lead dancer is. A lesser man might tear an ACL attempting this high level choreography yet he contorts his knees repeatedly all while dressed like a flamboyant Rasputin. I’m not sure what they’re singing about but they seem to be quite enthusiastic about Moscow.
Outside of webcomics, what media are you currently enjoying (titles)?
I try to avoid watching TV shows as much as possible because of how addicting they can be but Breaking Bad and Mad Men sucked me in. Those shows are so good you actually feel like you’re being productive while you watch them.
I saw in a tweet you cited Bill Watterson / Gary Larson / Nicholas Gurewitch as titans of comics. How do these creators inspire your work, and what other comics inspire you currently?
I think with comics if the writing is strong the way the artwork looks doesn’t always matter. But if the writing doesn’t work it won’t matter how impressive or detailed the art is, the comic will ultimately fall flat. I believe it’s one of the reasons there’s so many successful comics with stick-figures (although simple art can incredibly funny). For me personally I love comics that combine great writing with great art and Watterson, Larson and Gurewitch’s work I think are all examples of that. My goal with my own comic and how those comics inspire me is to always be improving both the artwork and the writing.
Largely webcomics are free, but at some point life, healthy eating, appropriate amounts of exercise, significant others, children, bills, taxes, friends, eight hours of sleep, volunteer work, free time, and society as a whole will realistically require some kind of income to justify the amount of time spent on making webcomics. They can be tricky to monetize.
One of my favourite webcomics is Space Avalanche. It is written and drawn by a guy named Eoin Ryan. One of the things that struck me was how well he could storyboard a comic to fascilitate a joke. His style directly inspired this comic and probably this one as well. Whenever someone one Twitter says they could use a laugh, I send one these:
Recently Eoin added a donation hat above his site. If he makes enough he will make one comic a week (currently new comics appear sporadically, but they are always awesome). I’ve seen similar models where once a donation level is received, the webcomic creator will do a bonus comic in addition to the schedule. Eoin’s plan is more like “founding his dreams.”
I put my money in the hat and will continue to do so. More Space Avalanche comics are worth it.
Regular internal combustion cars are the devil, and hybrid vehicles are guilt-free driving. This is the message the auto industry is telling us right now. Oddly though, there was a plethora of regular gasoline engines which got better gas mileage than even the best hybrid vehicles (thanks to Fark for the inspiration) available today, and they cost less. For example:
1980s Honda Civic CRX
V.S.
2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid
The Camry has the best gas mileage out of the hybrid cars at 41mpg (5.7L/100km) combined. Sounds pretty good. The 1989 Honda Civic CRX has a gas mileage of 44mpg (5.3L/100km) combined. What the fuck?
Why would the auto industry spend billions of dollars over the last 10 years to develop “gas efficient” (hybrid) cars, when they already had cars that were more gas efficient in the 80s? I’ll tell you why:
1. Weight. Over the years, cars have increased in weight. One reason for this is that the safety regulations over the years have changed, and it requires better and heavier safety equipment to meet. However, if the auto industry was willing to spend billions into developing an entire and very complicated new engine type, why were they not willing to spend the money into weight reduction?
2. Manual Transmission. Manual transmissions were more popular in the past, and manual allows drivers to be far more gas conscious. If you’re accelerating towards a red light, you’re doing it wrong.
3. Consumer Greed. Let’s be serious here, power windows, DVD players for your offspring, and sunroofs are not necessary in a car. While I’m sure the auto industry could put effort into making this items weigh less, the real problem is that the consumer became greedy.
4. Auto Industry Greed. This is the biggest one. The original price of the 1989 Honda Civic was $6,385. Price adjusted to 2010, this would be $11,082. Why would the auto industry want you to pay such a low price for high gas mileage, when instead they they can charge a lot more for a hybrid?
We have gone backwards with cars, and yet the industry calls it progression. How embarassing.
Woman 1: This yoga instructor is intense!
Woman 2: I hear he doesn't take any shit!
2.
Dhalsim: Now raise your arms as high as you can.
2.5
Dhalsim: Higher! I said Yoga Higher!
