Toonbots -- random thoughts, December, 2000

Thanks, Joe! You join a select cadre of individuals weird enough to emulate Toonbots, consisting thus far of exactly one individual! Everybody, give a round of applause to Joe! And of course now I'm free to start implementing features for my characters. I'm thinking eyes for the Toonbot. What do you think?

(Dec 7, 2000) (the toon)
Wow. Six days hiatus. I'll really try not to let things slide that far again. Not that I care what you think, you're not my customers anyway. And the mark of the true artiste is disdain for the fanbase (I know this to be true because Lee Herold says so.) So be off, curs!

Well, as you can guess, I'm still on the talking heads kick because I haven't written any more neat features yet (although my planning has progressed rather nicely.) So the least I can do is collect some more interesting heads. I think my next feature will actually be a better way of organizing character definitions. It won't affect what I can do, but it will affect how I continue to implement rendering of variant aspects of a character. The unfortunate side effect is that it will mean that the full definition of a given toon won't be in the master XML specification, but will instead result from the interaction of that specification with a local context (the character definitions.) So I may want to start rethinking the structure of my archives to allow the display of multiple files instead of a single monolithic definition. We'll see.

(Dec 17, 2000) (the toon)
OK, OK! Don't shoot me yet! Here's a new installment, and the Toon-o-Matic has a lot more features than it did. I now have the ability to define a character once, refer to it by name in a cartoon, and let the Toon-o-Matic find the definition and use the parts of it which are salient to the current toon.

Note that Al and Dubya can change their expressions now, without the earlier dodge of defining separate characters with single pictures. I have three pictures of Bush and two of Gore, and I can select them by number.

I've also made a lot of progress in coming closer to actually drawing cartoon figures. It's going to be pretty darned cool. So all is not lost, loyal fans! Please don't forsake me! (As if advance toon addiction would ever allow any of you to leave, heh, heh.)

(Dec 20, 2000) (the toon)
Wow. I'm almost feeling caught up with work. Well, not caught up, just more ... more like it might be humanly possible to get caught up. Yeah. Like that. I have nothing intelligent to say about the toon today, except it's silly enough that my core fanbase will probably love it. I wish I had more work done on the Toon-o-Matic. Some of what I'm planning for regions and drawing commands is pretty close to fruition, and that's going to enable a quantum leap in character design. Ah well. Soon enough.

(Dec 23, 2000)
Like the new dropdown? Take that, you elitist Keen bastards! Well, after nearly a month of mulling over character drawing, and feeling like I'm close to having something to show for it ... I still feel close to having something to show for it. All I have to say right now is, drawing is hard for for a poor Perl script.

(Dec 29, 2000) (the toon)
Woo-hoo, I'm havin' fun!

Go on. Keep reading into January, don't let me stop you.