By Prax
“A soul in tension
that's learning to fly
Condition grounded
but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes
from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and
twisted just an earth-bound misfit.”
-- Learning to Fly, Pink Floyd
Great song. If you’ve never heard it before, spend a few days listening to an 80’s Rock Station. You’ll hear it, and many other songs too that’ll serve you well to have heard when I quote them. Why did I quote Pink Floyd today? Well I’ll let you figure that out. I’m sure you’ll understand by the end of the rant. Walk with me for a bit. I’ll tell you a tale, a tale of the history, of the beginning. It all begins in a deep dark void and then their was a light and . . . Ok wait that’s too far back, so far back it’s not even history. Zoom forward a couple billion years too the spring of 2000. This is when VRPG began, where it began was a place known to some as the San Francisco Bay Area. A place I hope to one day return too from the Central Valley where I have entered voluntary hermitage for the next four years.
Anyways, this is not the first time VRPG has appeared on the web. It had a previous incarnation, Spring of 2000 and ran for about 4 weeks, daily, hosted by Xoom. In those days I used a more traditional 4 Panel format and a lesser cartooning style, (scanning in un-inked pencil drawings.) We had some nice Sluggy Freelance style Sunday’s going. In those days Pete Abrams was my main inspiration. I think I was just starting to realize there were other good online comics out there. Those were the days, so for a brief period of about a month, Ford_Rivers, Threnody, Orige and Rhea appeared for the beginning of what was planned to be a long and hopefully popular carreer. The comic in those days was entirely based online and the real lives of the characters were going to most likely be ignored. Same general premise as it is today though.
“What happened?” you’re probably asking.
Well to put it simply, we wrote ourselves into a corner storyline wise and got too hung up on it to try and write ourselves out. So VRPG just kinda stopped and my writer gave up. Yes in those days I didn’t actually write the comics myself, I had a partner, boy those were the days. When they gave up it fell to me to actually write for the strip and I was, at the time, not up to the job. I had no confidence in my writing abilities, I’d get to a point and then just not know where to go from there. That lasted for a long time. I was determined to do another comic eventually though. So over that summer and most of the rest of the year I did doodles and wrote down some scripts. I realized at one point that I wasn’t suited for the gag a day style of writing around that point I also found Darkbolt my first experience with the online, once a week Manga style comics. That gave me a few ideas and I pondered doing one of those for awhile based on a game called Moofs. Moofs is an exhaustive essay in itself so leave it at that right now. None of it ever really went anywhere though. I wanted to do a comic, I got lots of suggestions, I had lots of ideas. None of them bore any fruit really. When Keenspace actually came along it set my wheels in motion though, that was where I was gonna setup once I figured this all out.
Then came Megatokyo. I don’t think I can explain the phenomenon any better than Piro or Largo can. I know I like it though, it has a very human element to the entire thing. It’s not just the comic, it’s Piro and Largo too. Reading Piro’s rants and looking at what he was doing and had done, (definitely check out Fredart if you have some time) made me really want to get VRPG going again. Thus I began taking all the notes and sketches and drawings I had made for everything else and really synthesizing my ideas. I knew what I wanted (or at least thought I did) I wanted a comic that would give me artistic freedom, a comic I could write, with storylines, character development and RPGs. This brought me back to VRPG so I revived it, with some changes. It would now have a wider scope, focus on the real lives of the characters and have room for interludes where I could just do some random stuff. I would sign up for Keenspace, I would get this to work!
That was in December. Real life intervened, and no not the comic. I procrastinated, put off doing the comic, put off signing up for Keenspace, put off doing sketches and drawings. So by the time New Year’s day rolled around when I planned to do the comic, nothing was happening. Things just kinda slid to the wayside at that point again until March. Dunno exactly what happened this time, I think it was Megatokyo again, not sure though but, I got my act together signed up for Keenspace and started drawing . . . some. My laziness struck again so that by the time that we premiered I had only a week’s worth of comics done and Spring Break was next week, eeek! Mad rush to get more comics done, which failed miserably as well as the plan to do the comics while I was at home on Break. When I got back I got hit with a double whammy, my FTP wasn’t working anymore and I had a ton of school work to do. Ugh . . . I can only deal with so much at once. Between trying to solve my FTP problems, school work and my Storytelling, school work and Storytelling won out. FTP fell to the wayside and thus the comic for awhile. I am really sorry about that again.
So far the story up till now seems to be on a happier note though. I realized during the intermission Daily was a mistake for me. I am not a Daily person. If I did Daily the comic’s quality would inevitably decline. I take about 6 hours to do a comic and in reality a whole day. Double this number if the comic is big and/or in color. I could do it faster but the quality goes way down. One maxim I try and live by is that if your gonna do something, do it right, so came the decision to do VRPG three days a week. Everyone wins, I do a quality comic that I’m happy with, have time for my numerous other projects and you get to benefit for free. Since the first time I began VRPG I have learned a lot of things about doing these comics and myself. I’m only just now realizing how far I can take these things and all the cool things I can do, especially with the new time I have to explore. Expect a lot of changes in the future with format and interesting things on Sunday’s when I cut loose and just do whatever I feel like. I’m going places and hopefully you’ll enjoy coming with me.
--Prax