Well, I've been wanting to do a page like this for a while. So, here's the story of StickLife.
While StickLife officially started on November 10th, 2008, it owes its beginnings to a night in October of the same year when I was bored out of my mind, and the U.S Presidential election. I was watching a Presidential debate, as I recall, and I was completely sick of hearing about these people. All the news had been about for the past year was the presidential cantidates. I wanted to express how I was feeling about all that. I had been toying around with some images in Seashore, and decided to make a very simple comic. Essentially, it was two very crude (Well, even more crude then they are now) stick figures, one slightly different in height from the other, ranting and arguing about the coverage of the election. I showed it to Tom, and we had a good laugh. He made one too, and showed it to me. Laughs were had again. But that was the end of that. (I had that comic saved away for a while. I couldn't tell you where it is now, or even if it exists anymore. I'll show you if I ever find it.)
Or so I thought. On that day, the 10th of November, 2008, I was at school and once again, bored out of my mind. I was taking notes in science class, and then I wasn't anymore. For some reason, my mind wandered back to that day in October, and I began to doodle. The doodle soon turned into a very rough draft of the first ever StickLife comic. (#1 "Autobiography", for clarification.) I went home that day, got on MS Paint, and drew it up. I showed it to Tom again. He enjoyed it. As I recall, he made a comment resembling, "You know, you could make your own webcomic if you wanted to." And of course,it got me thinking. "Yeah, maybe I could..."
So, I decided to test it out. I made a free website on Webs.com and uploaded it. (It's still there, http://sticklifecomic.webs.com if you're interested.) The next day, I drew 6 comics and uploaded them all, something I couldn't do today. (At the time, doing six comics took less then five minute, and today one comic takes 30-50 minutes.) In any case, I updated nearly everyday for a week. It slowed down a bit after that, but it was still quite often. Eventually, I figured I could be doing more for the comic. I decided to color it. I meant for the 20th comic to be the first one with color, but somehow the numbering get messed up and it ended up being the 19th.
Over time, I transistioned from random comics with a loosely tied together theme, to comics with actual storylines. For a while, these storylines could take 5-10 comics to finish, as I let my mind roam wherever I let it. But after two or three of these nonsensical escapades, I realized they weren't as good as I had envisioned them to be, and werein all actuality, probably my worst ever. (The only saving grace for comics of this period, is that the've spawned a couple of mini storylines and a few references in later comics.)
I changed the format slightly, into what I call "mini storylines." They're closely related to comics of the early days, but a bit more connected in their theme and progression. I felt this was the best way to do them, as they offer the depth of a storyline, but allowed me to change to another subject without having to make an ending for it, and feeling like I cut it off too early.
In ear April of 2009, we began to have issues with the Webs.com hosting. It wasn't allowing me to upload comics, and had issues displaying some of them. Tom and I had been discussing getting a different site anyway, one with an actual system for viewing comics, instead of a photo gallery, so we figured it was a good time to begin looking. We tried a number of different comic hosting sites in a week, but none of them satisfied our wants. Then, we found ComicFury. They offered everything we wanted, and so I began the tedious process of transferring all of the 65 or so comics from the old site to the new one. It took nearly the whole month of April to get them all in order, named and numbered. As a result, there wasn't much time for actually working on the comic, and there's a gap for that month and some of May. (Which some have questioned me about.)
(Note: Even though this next part is recent, I'm going to refer to it as though it was a while ago, so I just have to delete this note when the time comes, instead of completely re-writing the paragraph.) In June of 2009, I felt like I had hit a dry spell in the writing of the comic. I didn't think they were funny anymore, and that they needed some outside writing to spruce them up a bit. So, I requested that Tom take over the writing for a while. He'd always been there with the comic, providing support in hosting the comics and designing of the site, and all that. Starting with comic 81, and with few exceptions, he's been writing it to the present day. As a result, I had more time on my hands. And I decided to work on the actial art. So, I redrew almost everything. Every peice of furniture, every character, I even created a lot of new backgrounds. I added details, refined the lines, and gave everything a facelift. I wanted to give the comic a new look, attract new readers, and give me more motivation to continue drawing, and eventually, write the comic for years to come.
So, there you have it. The complete, unabridged story of how StickLife began, and everything up until the present day. If you actually read all of that and made it this far, I applaud your concentration and willpower abilities. (For anyone who cares, this whole thing was written between the hours of 2 and 4 AM in the morning, so please excuse some mistakes I'm bound to have made, and am too lazy to reread and correct thanks.)