Q. How often is the comic updated?
A. Once weekly, Wednesday at noon.
Q. What is Sticknia?
A. Sticknia is the world that all the Sticks live on. It is also the name of the universe that they reside in. This includes all the various places in time that they live. The original Sticknia was a modern earth like setting with super heroes. It has since grown to encompass an RPG based fantasy setting and a modern zombie apocalypse setting. Lastly, Sticknia Comics is the name of the company.
Q. Where are the Super Hero and Zombie Apocalypse Comics?
A. In development. Watch the main page for updates.
Q. Why do you draw the comics with stick figures?
A. It’s all I can draw! No, really, it is! Actually, I felt that illustrating in this style would be an interesting experiment. Because it lacks a lot of the detail of more traditional illustration I thought it would be interesting to see if I could make it “work”. What I mean by work is, can I make a comic that is visually clear and interesting to look at and inject emotion, a sense of space and time, while keeping the style simple, the lines clean, and the forms concise. Also, it’s pretty much all I can draw and I’ve been doing it forever.
Q. What’s with the D&D references in Path of the Necromancer?
A. Path of the Necromancer is a storyline based on a D&D 2nd/3.0/3.5 campaign that I played in for ten years. Many aspects of the story are heavily based on D&D rules. Though unlike several other RPG comics on the Internet, I won’t be making very heavy use of the terms and often things that happen won’t correlate to the rules. You won’t see characters displaying hit point losses over their heads, rolling difficulty checks, or several of the other devices you see elsewhere. What you will see are some feats in use, spells being cast (For sake of clarity) and special abilities activating.
Q. Ok, but then why don’t the spells and abilities add up when I compare them to the D20 SRD?
A. Often they will. Other times they will make sense when in context to details the reader might not be aware of yet. Lastly, several of the rules are house rules, some of them predating the “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” (1977) version of the game. (Yes, I’m old.) Ultimately however, if the story requires strict deviation from the rules, I’ll do it.
Q. How do you build a comic?
A. I start with penciled thumbnails then flesh it out on 11 x 17 drawing paper. After that I scan the image in to PS and alter and ink the work digitally. I then convert the finished comic to .jpg, downsize and publish. In rare instances I’ll do the whole comic in PS without pre-sketching. Usually this is done in really elementary comics with little detail.
Q. This comic isn’t very funny. WTH?
A. This isn’t a humor strip or a gag a day strip. It’s an adventure tale. Sometimes it will be funny. Sometimes it will be exciting. Sometimes it will be shocking or sad. I’m not a one trick writer and hopefully you aren’t a one trick reader. I hope that the gaps in the funny are filled with enough excitement and drama that you can appreciate the diversity and continue reading.
Q. These aren’t your typical stick men. Where did you come up with the style?
A. Back in middle school a friend of mine and I started drawing stick figures navigating various deadly obstacle courses. One of us would draw the course and then the other would complete the course with a stick man to whom we assigned various super powers. Over time we moved to drawing comics of these stickmen battling it out, to the death! (dun dun dunnn). Our cast quickly grew to fifteen or twenty distinct characters with ongoing story lines and episodic style content in the style of our favorite published comic titles. After middle school another friend of mine who was in the comics industry became interested in what we were doing and did a small series of super hero comics and had them printed for our group of friends. Soon all three of us were drawing a weekly series of original comics to share among out new fans. It was a blast. Once real life and adulthood intervened we all went our separate ways and quit drawing. Years later I went home to visit family and found a trunk with a lot of my old stuff in it. Among the artifacts was a folder full of old comics. After looking through them all I decided that I’d really like to try my hand at it again. So I fired up Photoshop, grabbed a hand full of mechanical pencils, some drawing paper and started fresh. It’s even more fun now than it was then. You can go HERE to view some of the stuff I did back then. Who knows, as awful as it is, you may find something you like. I’m far too nostalgic to judge myself.