Rough Sketch From “Hamdemic”
[Originally Posted On 5/3/09]

Check out the finished comic HERE.

Early Art and Script Ideas for “I’m Your DNSity. I Mean… Your Destiny.”
[Originally Published 4/14/09]

The weekend that I normally would have been writing and drawing this comic, I ended up overseeing the migration of all HE sites to a new server. I ended up creating this comic monday evening and posting it late that night. Needless to say I felt rushed. After sketching the first two panels I thought, “what is this shit? I can draw better than this!” I guess I was just tired from the server situation having eating up my entire weekend (mostly due to the slowness and unpredictability of my old host).

The art was just clunky and lifeless. [image 1 above]

So I scrapped it and started over. A big hurdle artwork-wise for me is allowing my art to be loose, less rigid and contain more mistakes. Imperfections and mistakes are often what breath life into comic art. I usually go back with the eraser and fix every “mistake” I see and thus remove most of the character from my work.

I think the characters in the second draft came out much better. [image 2 above]

This is also the first time I had experimented with using the “mitten hands” that so many cartoonists use. Maybe it’s for speed or laziness, but I think they look kind of cool.

The final comic is HERE.

Here are my original notes from the writing process for this comic:

At first I just jotted down some ideas and references that might spawn a comic about moving to a new server and the “server limbo” aspect of being on two servers at once.

LOST plane back to the island
fading like marty mcfly
After Dark screen saver dog eating through the comic
piece of the site falls and kills josh
ghosted characters like data in that one episode of TNG
ghosts period
enterprise explodes at the end for no reason
time loop like on (every scifi show)
like blacking out for 3 days (eli gets drunk)
we can do anything we want (like daylight savings time)

Here are a few early script ideas that were immediately abandoned or rewritten:

eli: doc, this is heavy. [eli’s hand fading away]
joel: i told you, while the site is moving to a new server you may experience technical… things.
eli: such as?
——

eli: doc, this is heavy.
joel: while the site is moving to a new server we are going to be in “internet limbo.”

——

note: if the two eli’s met they would…. ron silver (like from Time Cop), party so hard the universe would simply give up

note: if josh met an older file version of himself (the way I used to draw josh) he would be turned on:

“well, hello short, bald and _____.”

——

Working On Character Design Revisions
[Originally Posted 3/25/09]

From time to time I like to reevaluate how I draw the three main characters. Im always tring to simplify them so I can draw them more consistently. Here’s a recent sketch page of my attempts to streamline their heads.

[UPDATE 5/8/13: Considering I have always changed the way my characters look whenever I get tired of them, forget how I used to draw them, learn a new technique, get better at drawing or just whenever it suits me, the idea that I was trying to do “character design” back in 2009 seems silly. If Joel, Josh and Eli EVER looked like the images above, it was for maybe 3 comics total.]

The First HijiNKS ENSUE Business Card
[Originally Posted 3/13/09]

I sent these off to the printer over the weekend and hope to get them back in time for Webcomics Weekend.

I had a really hard time trying to boil HE down into something that would make sense on a 3.5″ x 2″ card. After a day messing with it, I finally decided to let the characters speak for themselves.

Writing Process For “Extinction Level Event” 
[Originally Posted 3/7/09]

When I set out to write and draw a comic, I usually decide if the gag is going to rely on mostly the verbiage, the images or a combination. When I don’t have a lot of time to draw I usually rely on option one and let the words carry the comic. In these cases I put a little more infasis on getting the writing tight, which usually means lots or revisions.

You can see the final comic here: Extinction Level Event

This is my first draft of the comic:

Panel 1

Josh: oh hey, eli. look man, you had a nice run. no hard feelings, ok?
Eli: have you been ____in the _____? (i use this “madlibs” technique when i know the joke structure I want but haven’t decided on the specifics)
Josh: the earth was almost destroyed by an asteroid this week. that was a warning shot, dude. when ever they bring out the big guns, it’s all over for you guys.
Eli: who’s “they” and who’s “you guys?”

Panel 2

Josh: “they” are the intergalactic _____ trying to gently nudge earth into oblivion with ____. “you guys” are the old regime that will die in the first wave. you know, the straight people. 
(Im kind of writing stream of consciousness at this point, so I put this next gag in both panels and figured I would decide where it fit best later)
Eli: know i locked up the _______. have you been _______ing the  ________?

Panel 3

Josh: after the sun is blacked out by dust and debris, humanity will be driven underground. those of us in the “bearish” persuasion are better suited to survival due to our low metabolism, high body mass index and furry winter coats. it’s evolution.
Eli: you think a race of subterranean mole-gays is all that will be left after the apocalypse?
Josh: we’ll keep some of you alive to dig tunnels and such.
Eli: i’m just as hairy as you and about the same size. why will i die? (I didnt know where I was going with this last line so it got cut)

Original Script for “Dr. Manhattan And The Electric Mayhem”
[Originally Published 3/1/09]

My original idea for this “Watchmen” themed comic was to play off the idea that I hadn’t read the comics yet. The problem was, I had already written the final panel and I couldnt merge the two ideas.

Panel 1

Joel: the internet is suggestively thrusting “watchmen” reviews at my face hole!
Eli: they can’t really spoil it for you. i mean you’ve read the comics, right?
Eli: right?!

Panel 2

joel: i’ve read the wikipedia article…
Eli: i’m going to slap you in the head now. i’ll understand if you need to cry.

Joel: josh has already lectured me on how the “watchmen” comics were a seminal geek milestone. i don’t need it from you to.

Panel 3

(this is where we would do the experiment to turn Josh into Dr. Manhattan but so far I didn’t have a segue)

panel 4

josh: did it work? did his junk turn blue?
Joel: oh, it turned blue…
joel: right before it fell off.

—–

When I’m writing and I get stuck like this (with two conflicting gags), it usually works out best if I pick the stronger of the two, toss the rest and start the writing process over with just he one gag in mind. If I didnt do that, my comics would each be 4 or 5 pages.

Preview Rough Comic for 2/20/09
[Originally Posted On 2/20/09]

Here’s the text and rough sketch for today’s comic.

Original Script For Dragonball Comic
[Originally Posted 2/18/09]

My comics rarely get posted with the first script that I come up with. They almost always have to be edited for panel space or just to make the comic flow better. I always write too much because I like excessive, almost rambling dialog with multi-layered jokes. That just tends to cramp up the panels and leave no room for art. “Writing is re-writing” right?

So check out the comic as it appeared online and then read the original script below.

————————-

Josh: don’t tell me. you’re starting a warrant cover band? no! ratt! it’s ratt, right?
Eli: we were training at 100 times gravity and this just sort of happened.
Joel: i think we went super saiyjin(sp?) like on dragonball z.
Josh: was there grunting and flashing lights?
Joel: it went on for like 20 minutes!
——————–
Josh: yeah, you got dragonball’d. you’re anime super heroes now. if you collect all 7 dragon balls the magic dragon will grant you one wish.
Eli: dude, we could wish for an infinite taco cannon!
Joel: or a 4th season of arrested development!
Eli: or 2 infinite taco cannons!
——————–
Josh: i’m going too.
——————–
[transformation]
——-
did it work?
[beard is huge]
————————————

New HE Banner: “Faneurysm”
[Originally Published 2/17/09]

This will be used to link to HE on a gaming site that is going to syndicate HE’s gaming themed comics (there aren’t that many).

The warning sign might make a good shirt.

[Update 5/6/13: There REALLY weren’t that many. I think they ended up reposting maybe 10 comics total and that was about how many visitors I saw from their site. They wanted me to produce an original gaming comic strip or them, for pay, but that was about when I realized I had nothing unique or interesting to say about video games.]

Rough Sketches For New Banner
[Originally Published 2/14/09]

I’m working on a new leaderboard banner for use on another site and I wanted to share my progress.

[UPDATE 5/6/13: This banner never actually happened. You can see from the image of Josh that I was still trying to appeal to the video game crowd back then.]