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Interview: Ask Illiad Anything 68

Posted by Roblimo from the unmasking-the-masked-cartoonist- dept.
You've probably read Illiad's User Friendly cartoons more than a few times. But who is Illiad? How did the strip develop? Why would anyone bother to spend so much time drawing a comic strip so geek-oriented that it'll never be as popular as, say, Family Circus or Mary Worth? Hey, don't ask me. Ask Illiad. Please post your questions below. The usual horde of Slashdot moderators and semi-trained mammals will pick 10 or 12 and forward them to Illiad. Answers will appear Friday.
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Ask Illiad Anything More

Ask Illiad Anything

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  • Posted by Dante_Aliegri:

    it has to do with the fact when he tilts, he is so light, the air pushes him back, thus he gets a pendilum effect with a Minumum of movement.
    Personally, I can't wiggle right with a mouse...
    so I got a trackball.

    I'm wondering if Dust Puppy plays any mods...

    DanteAliegri [ it was dantealiegri@dustpuppy.org....but nooo... rit can't fix dustpuppy.org, so its danteSP@Magnus.net]
    --Your wit is as sharp as you make it
  • have you ever considered Koosh Dust Puppies? That's one thing I'd love to have on my desk :) Of course, it'd probably be something that the company that makes Koosh would turn down but if any were ever made I'd buy a whole case of 'em! Maybe if there's enough interest... Oh well, keep up the good work, I never miss a strip.
  • How good are you at q3test? Can Dust Puppy kick your ass?

    When you came up with the design document for 'Pac Man', how many of your co-workers laughed at you, saying it would never work? How many of them are dead now?

    Relate to us the tale of how you prevented the Nazi's from gaining control of our atomic weapons at the end of World War II.

    When you were lost in the deserts of Turkey, dying of thirst, did you, even once, wish you were back in Seattle in a bubblebath with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates?


  • Is Miranda as hot as I think she is?

  • UFPFH (Score:3)

    by Squeamish Ossifrage ( 3451 ) on Tuesday August 03, 1999 @02:32AM (#1768869) Homepage Journal
    Is the User Friendly Project For Humanity getting anywhere?
  • What are you using, Gimp, Photosop, or?
  • I need a stuffed Dust Puppy to sit next to my stuffed penguin at home. I also need a stuffed Crud Puppy to sit on my work machine.

  • Why does this hour only have 22 minutes?
  • This will probably be moderated down as unrelated, but it fits this thread

    I've submitted stories about it, here at slashdot, and they haven't put them up. Babylon5 has been getting the bad end of the stick in relation to TNT.. aparently TNT wants more sex, violence, and other wrestling/cowboy related stuff.

    The first episode was horrible but half of that is TNT's fault.

    I kinda compare crusade to the first season of B5, kinda crappy but can see it as a build up to something good.

    Check out The lurker's guide [midwinter.com] for more info.

    Have fun
  • Just a few questions for the great maker of daily laughs:
    1. How do you come up with fresh ideas for a strip every day?
    2. Are any of the characters based on real life characters?
    3. Will there be more songs? I love the Dustpuppy and Erwin duo. :)
    Thapada, thapada, thapada, thats all folks!
  • Illiad, do you leave your Num Lock:

    a.) On?
    b.) Off?
    c.) Don't Care?
    d.) This poll sucks?

    ./brm
  • Well, I and many of the others have been badgering him to finally do "OS Wizard" (you may have noticed it on Segfault a few months ago) but he has not succumbed yet... we know of his secret though and will spread word of his llama shagging ways... oh dammit! Ok..ok... just badger him until he does it.
  • As an amature artist/cartoonist, i'd like to know what tools you use...do you sketch it out on a huge piece of paper (like some cartoonists do) and then scan it and shrink it down or just maybe have great mouse hands and do it with Gimp...?

  • Would you consider a bowling trip?

  • Nth Post! (and a correct URL) (Score:4)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Tuesday August 03, 1999 @01:20AM (#1768880)
    The correct URL for today's strip is of course, this [userfriendly.org].

    My question: What is the capital of Burkina Faso, and why does it have so many vowels?
  • How did you feel about your own appearance in "After Y2K" [geekculture.com] ? Planning on returning the favour ?

  • The commercials are for ESPN's own shows (I believe especially the ESPN-2 shows). The dust-puppy there is supposed to be the viewer's "knowledge", which grows as he (I haven't seen one yet for a femaile viewer) watches more shows like NHL2Nite or RPM2Nite.

    The viewer then takes his "knowledge" out to the local sports bar or something to impress the other loser^H^H^H^H^Hpatrons there.

  • Man you must be a lucky stiff:-)
    take that any way you please
  • I just want to know who is on Illiad's payroll at my ISP.... It seems that everytime we are having situations or crises that there just "happens" to be a UF out around that time that mirrors or is an exact rendition of what is happening to us. Perhaps it's due to the fact that we have roughly the same amount of staff as Columbia Internet???
    But my question is WHERE'S MIRANDA...... We don't have a Miranda!!!!!!
    Thanks for the humour Illiad.. It helps me and the other techies "sane" in an otherwise insane world. :-)
  • Don't you mean the B5 shaped hole in your mind?
  • As I love the RotoRouter, the ICan'tInternet, and other fake box labels, will you have other made-up or joke names on those cartons? I just gotta get me a RotoRouter 8000 for the home LAN, after all, and want some neat-o accessories to go with it.
  • Occasionally there's a stack of boxes labelled "BeOS 4.5" or something similar, often with the Dust Puppy sitting on top. What makes you decide what names to put on the boxes? Is it your favourite stuff, advertising/product placement, or what?

    Chris
  • Bloom County Characters have appeared [userfriendly.org] in UF. Fairly recently too.
  • That has happened. Here is the comic: http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99ju l/19990714.html. This is Illiad's comment about the comic:

    A WISH FOR THINGS THAT WORK
    00:01 PDT 15 JUL 1999
    I got quite a bit of mail from people who really enjoyed the salute to
    Bloom County in yesterday's strip, and I thank everyone for their words
    of praise. It should be obvious by now that Berke Breathed's Bloom
    County has been by far the greatest influence on my cartooning. I only
    felt it was fitting to offer a tip of the hat to my two favourite characters
    in that venerable strip, Opus and Oliver. And to answer a few of the
    letters, no, I probably won't bring the Bloom County characters back,
    aside from the legal issues, I just don't think it'd be right if I laid it on
    that thick. :)
  • Is that the new thing? i saw maybe five minutes of one of the episodes the other day and it was boring as hell..
    now i just watch The Sopranos on hbo during that time-slot.. oh well, i got bab5 season 1-5 on video.
  • Did you get sunburned at the beach on Monday?

    From what you saw there, does Iambe have a 'Q' tatoo as seen in This Picture [home.com]?

    Does Arcterex really look like his picture on the UFie page? If so, did his family get a good settlement from the malpractice suit? :)

  • Probably because except for the celebrities (ESR, Gates, etc) everyone in UF is based on local people and there were no minorities in the office. (Not suprising, Vancouver has a moderately large Asian population, but other than that, is mainly European.)

    I wouldn't imagine it's at all deliberate.
  • Adobe Illustrator and a Wacom tablet I believe.

    (You can tell the Wacom tablets from the texture of the lines.)
  • I know it's the Quake symbol, I was there while the drawing was made and we were all talking about it, not to mention that I am a rabid Quake fan and all.

    I just want to know what if Illiad was looking for the tatoo or not.. :)
  • Actually, I believe it was "This hour has 7 days". It was a weekly hour long news program that went over the previous week's news.

    The 22 Minutes crew are paying homage to that old CBC anchor program. (Of course their way to pay homage is to have a joke at their expense).
  • I hate to be morally insensitive (actually, I don't, but no need to be rude...) but has anyone considered that it might just be very hard to draw different skin tones in a black and white comic strip?

    Not EVERYTHING has some deep, sinister, overtone, unless it comes out of Microsoft.


  • Ougadougou.

    Why so may vowels? Well, try s/ou/br/g... I think Brgadbrgbr wouldn't be much better ;)
  • Aieeee!

    So, because the thought that "minorities" weren't represented in User Friendly never crossed my mind, am I a racist white pig? Thought so. Is it just me or does anyone else out there think that adding "minority" characters to comics, TV shows, and movies just to "keep things equal" is just as discriminatory as leaving them out? If there's a useful purpose for a "minority" character, then by all means add the character. But the plain and simple fact is, "minorities" don't always fit into certain situations, just as us whitefolk don't always fit into others.

    I, being a middle-class white male American, watch predominantly "black" sitcoms (ie, "Family Ties", "Cosby", "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", that sort of rerun stuff) from time to time without even giving the slightest thought to the fact that there are very rarely any white people on these shows. It doesn't occur to me that there should be; the shows are about black families. Why should there be white people? So you have to ask yourself...why doesn't this work the other way around? TV shows with a mostly-white cast get called racist or discriminatory. Hmmm.

    I know this isn't the time or the place, but in light of recent events I had to say something. :)

    --
    Wonko the Sane

  • Cream stouts were invented as a health drink. Brewed with milk sugar (lactose), also known as milk stouts. Like guiness, but with more of a malty sweetness. Thick as mud. The head is practically as dark as the beer, and you can chew on a good cream stout. Or at least, that's what a cream stout is supposed to be. Yet another reason why Sam Adams is just not the beer it's cracked up to be. If you like the guiness that gets imported to the US, you'd probably like a good cream stout. Mackeson's Triple Stout is a good one, even though it doesn't say anything about being a cream stout on the label, iirc. And to think, I got college credit learning this...

    Itachi
  • I was watching ESPN the other day, and there was a commercial on and I swear that I saw a 4-foot tall dust-puppy in it! Yep, a big, fuzzy ball with big feet. I cannot remember what the commercial was for.

    Does this ring a bell with anyone else?

    99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
    fix one bug, compile it again...

  • The correct three questions are:

    1. Who are you?
    2. What do you want?
    3. Got something to eat with you?

    This is the standard, when someone rings at my door and I do not expect anyone to come by.
  • (raises hand)

    Because a half-hour show, such as the ludicrously funny (to Canadians) This Hour Has 22 Minutes runs for 22 minutes, the other 8 are commercials.

    Oh yeah, and the 'loonie' ($CDN) is worth significantly less than the $US to investors around the world for no apparent reason (who eliminated their budget deficit first, hmmm?)

  • And these questions are answered in it.

  • Actually, I think that 'This hour', like all CBC shows runs for twenty-four minutes with six minutes. I think their name is about American shows, which last twenty-two minutes out of every half hour.

    but that's just what I heard... Maybe I'll time it some time.
  • Who do you serve? And who do you trust?

    I miss it too, Crusade just doesn't fit the B5 shaped hole in my life.
    Cheers,

    Rick Kirkland
  • Remember those Koosh Ball things? They used to have them that had faces on them. Now they could easily use that same process to replicate our favorite little ball of dust. Make it Gray with 2 big eyes and 2 feet, be pretty simple to do. :)
  • Yea, I saw a commercial with a big dust-puppy in it to. I think it was a honeycomb comercial.
  • There is no place in Turkey which can scientifically be categorized as desert. But of course, relatively speaking, you can say even the coldest regions of Turkey are deserts compared to Canada.

    Nice sense of humor, though.
  • ...by characters from other strips (eg Opus/Mac from Bloom County)? Seems your (Iliad's) style/format would lend itself to the same sarcastic humor that made Bloom County so enjoyable.

    Pardon me if this has happened before (I'm new to UF and Linux and may have missed a bit of history). Love the strip.
  • ...and thanks to you and Bishop282 for the link!
  • These are probably semi-newbie questions, but
    here goes . . .

    When did you first come up with the idea for User Friendly?

    Was it a spark of inspiration or something you've been waiting to do for awhile?

    Will User Friendly continue to be a comic strip, or might it move to animation?

    There seems to be an unspoken connection between various geek comics on the web.(ie After Y2K etc.) Is this by accident? How many other online comic artists do you know?

    Is User Friendly an exclusive solo effort? Do you have an assistance with any drawing,inking, coloring etc.? Or is it all just done on computer?

    And Finally

    Do you folks out there like Murphy's Irish Cream Stout as well as Guiness?



    AgentSmith

    Disconnect a human and he'll swear he's the center of The Matrix.
  • I only know of 1, National Post (Canadian)
  • Who are you? What do you want?

    (Okay, lame Babylon 5 reference... I miss that show.)
  • Most techs here in Vancouver are either Caucasian or Chinese. While it's common to find one or two Asians in an otherwise white tech group, I guess they just don't have any out at Para^h^h^h^hColumbia.

    It's actually more common here to find all-Chinese shops, so I wouldn't get too bent about it.
  • Do you have any little decorations around your computer (like beanie babies, stress balls shaped like a globe or a computer, penguin stickers, and/or your favorite Dilbert/User Friendly cartoons) and if so, what are they?

  • Dust Puppy (Score:3)

    by Simon Hibbs ( 74836 ) on Tuesday August 03, 1999 @01:35AM (#1768917)
    Whan the Dust Puppy plays Quake, how _does_ it
    do that *wiggle* thing?......

    I just can't get the hang of it


    Simon
  • Dear Illiad,

    I extremely enjoy looking at your funny comic strip. In fact, it's what i have setup as my 'homepage' on my browser. I've gone through all the archives and have laughed my head off at some of the jokes. The only thing that strikes me as odd is that how come I havent seen 1 black, hispanic, asian, native american, etc. in the whole strip ever? What's up with that?

    Sincerely,
    Frank, a.k.a. i244
  • That is a Quake symbol. Or for the more communistically inclined, a hammer and scicle.

    My real question is: How do *I* get the dust in *my* computer to become sentient ?

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