FAQ

Why do we have to pay to see your cartoons now?
The cartoon archives have been freely available for nearly 10 years, over which time they've bloated out to contain thousands of cartoons and 100,000+ punchlines. Bandwidth has been an increasing problem for years even with the generous help of mirror servers. In April 2005, I was informed by my webhost that our server load was so high (eg - the number of database queries), they would close down my website. To keep the site going, I decided to make the larger portion of the cartoon archives viewable only for paid subscribers (for AUD$15/year, hardly a huge sum). Subscription effectively solved the ongoing bandwidth/server load issues indefinitely (which I was very happy about). More significantly, before April I was considering whether to continue cartooning or not. Sev is a demanding mistress but I do have a family to feed which has forced me to spend more time web programming and less time on sev. Subscription may be the key (the jury's still out) to spending more time on sev again.

My goal isn't to make the site just for paid subscribers. The caption contests and last month of cartoons are still free so sevilians can still catch all the regular cartoons. I've been spending a lot of time developing the website - making sure I spend as much time on the 'free features' as on the 'paid features'. So ultimately the introduction of subscription should benefit everyone (from a certain point of view).

Can I put your cartoons in my newsletter/website?
My cartoons are now represented by Auspac Media which means the cartoons aren't available for free syndication anymore (those good ol' days are over). This applies to translated cartoons also. Apologies but syndication is what allows me to continue cartooning. To enquire about publishing my cartoons, you can contact Auspac directly.

What happened to that other feature that used to be on your site?
I've removed a lot of stuff from my site (hey, it was a pretty big beasty). I'm in the process of converting all my features into the new format, as time and bandwidth allows. A lot of it will be database driven from now on, making it much more maintainable and portable. New stuff is added daily so watch the News Page and subscribe to a particular mailing list (there's a subscribe form in the left margin). Note however, I don't post to my mailing lists that often yet. News is your best way to stay current.

Ratsy judges suck!
Hey, that's not a question! When people complain about the punchline ratings, they're usually complaining that THEIR punchlines aren't rating well. Humour is a very subjective thing and I can only respond by saying don't complain about the problem. Become PART of the problem. Register as a Ratsy judge! :-)

Can you link to me?
If you have a sci-fi themed website, yes! I now have a link database Ensevlopedia which is a dramatic improvement on my previous links pages. These days, I approve link submissions within a day - much quicker than my usual 6 month waiting period! :-)

Can I link to you?
You bet, bring it on!

How do you draw/digitise your cartoons?
I draw my comic strips at 277mm x 82mm (I'd draw bigger but my scanner is only A4) and ink them with a post office nib and Indian Ink. I scan the artwork at 1200dpi and use Coreltrace to convert the scan into vectors (or curves). Next, I colour the cartoon in Coreldraw. I export it from Coreldraw as a TIFF, open it in Photoshop, resize it to 500 x 150 pixels with anti-aliashing turned on to give nice smooth edges then save as a JPEG. But a warning for budding cartoonists - probably 95% of cartoonists would use a paint program like Photoshop to colour their artwork. Coreldraw is harder to use and probably more time consuming. I just prefer the flexibility, higher line quality and smaller file sizes. Sevnote - I used to have several more detailed articles on the cartooning process. As I rebuild the site, I'll gradually put these back online. Stay tuned!

How do you letter your cartoons?
It's a font called Gabster. Basically, what I did was draw all the letters of the alphabet a bunch of times. I scanned them all in at as high a resolution as I could (something like 1200 or 2400 dpi), picked the best version of each letter (when you're inking letters with a pen nib, you get a lot of width variation - if you're hopeless like me), then used Coreldraw to convert the scans into vectors and then into a font. Wendy used fontographer to work out all the kerning (the space between letters) to make it easier to work with.

My original font Rutiger (used in all my earlier strips - compare the lettering), also done the same way, didn't have the line spacing worked out so I had to manually rearrange the letters in every sentence - a real pain.

What does sev mean?
Wouldn't you like to know? :-)