New Cartoon - Doctor Fun
David Farley
own contribution to the network pot.
Doctor Fun is a continuing cartoon that I will be "syndicating" via
the alt.binaries.pictures.misc newsgroup each weekday. Doctor Fun is
a single-panel strip in the same spirit of The Far Side, Mister Boffo,
Herman, etc., although I make no comparisons to any of those wonderful
cartoons. I've been cartooning on the side semi-professionally for a
couple years. I've had stuff published in "Spy," "Campus Life," and
King Feature's "New Breed" cartoon. I'm doing Doctor Fun a) for fun
b) because I can do what I want with the subject matter c) I can draw
cartoons solely for viewing on video, which allows me more latitude in
color and texture than "reality" d) to encourage other people to do
the same.
Doctor Fun is also available via World Wide Web. The URL is:
http://neuromancer.lib.uchicago.edu/david/drfun.html
This is an experimental server. You may download previous Doctor Funs
via this server (although there aren't any previous Doctor Funs at the
moment.) I may make some other stuff available on here, like things
that have been published other places, but I'm still working on that.
At some point soon there will be an ftp site for downloading old
Doctor Funs and other stuff. Unfortunately, the ftp server cannot at
the moment be the same site as the web server. I'm still working on
that, too.
Doctor Fun will be presented only in a 640x480 24-bit JPEG format. I
have lowered the JPEG compression to make up for the lossy degradation
caused by the sharp black and white transistions and white space in
the unfortunately necessary border around the images, but found that
even so, the compression is much more efficient than converting the
images to 8-bit GIF files. Those of you decoding these images for
viewing on a 24-bit, or hi-color display, will get an image virtually
identical in appearance to the original for viewing purposes. I've
kept the images at 640 x 480 because I figure even the cheapest super
vga cards sold today generally have a 640x480 24-bit mode. Those of
you decoding Doctor Fun to a 256 color display will have generally
good results, although, due to the lossy compression and limited 8-bit
palette, you may notice a little weirdness around the black and white
transitions. I've tested these with LVIEW (ms-windows), XV (x) and
been told by beta testers (ha!) that they could view them on Macs and
Amigas, too. In my own testing, LVIEW did a better color translation
than XV, but I'm not sure why. If possible, I recommend viewing
Doctor Fun at a resolution of higher than 640x480, which will make
them look sharper and kill some of the JPEG noise. I got ok results
decoding some images to 16 colors with djpeg, but I can't guarantee
you'll get consistent results. People decoding these to grayscale
displays may have to fool around with the contrast and brightness a
little. I don't know what you'll get on a black and white display.
I'd prefer to just send out the TIFF files, but they are big, and not
a universally accepted file format across platforms (at least on
Usenet.)
I won't put a rating on Doctor Fun, but will only say that it will
hopefully not always be what you might see in the Sunday comics, and
the subject matter is not generally aimed at children. On the other
hand, I'm not going to draw it so it belongs with the wackers on
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica or the endless repost of the man eating
a turd on alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless. Other than that, I won't
provide my own criticism, although I welcome your reactions, pro or
con.
Doctor Fun is copyrighted. I am not concerned with how it propagates
through Usenet - (spool, tape, cd-rom, jungle drums, etc.) You are
welcome to do anything you need to do for your personal viewing. You
are not welcome to re-publish it for any other purpose without my
permission. Please do not re-post Doctor Fun, or make it available in
other formats or altered in any other way than the original JPEG
images. This is not an attempt to start another endless discussion
about Usenet copyrights; this is simply my attempt to come up with a
simple, equitable solution for this particular purpose. It is my belief
that all postings to Usenet are copyrighted to their original posters,
whether or not they choose to acknowledge the fact.
Enjoy. David Farley, dg...@midway.uchicago.edu
These postings do not express the views or opinions of the University
of Chicago.