I was a very shy boy when I was 15. I was a shy little boy with no friends, even though I had lived in the town for two years by then. I joined the youth group at my church, but I was still really shy, and I was having some trouble fitting in... until they saw that I could draw. I was just doodling SpongeBob Squarepants characters and everyone was really impressed with them. It was then that I decided to start a comic series about the youth group. It was a great success for a few months, and I grew closer to the other kids from my church. The comics included the characters Sam, Jessica, Dan, Bailey (then spelled "Baily"), Kenzie, Rachel, Sam (female), Heather, Lindsey, David, Joy, Mark, and Miles. The comics were a huge hit within the group, but if I showed them to other people, it was more or less a flop. After a few months, I stopped making the comics as often because I was running out of ideas and I was spending more time actually hanging out with the people who inspired the characters.
Various events that don't advance the story of the comics happened and I will not take the time to explain those events (it's still a painful subject for me). The point was, because of these events, I fell out of contact with most of my friends. I went almost an entire year without seeing any of them, but one day out of the blue, three of them showed up at my house to surprise me. They saw some comics that I hadn't shown anyone else before, and they loved them. They encouraged me to keep up with them, and I started the series back up a second time. By this time, I think I understood why people outside the group didn't like the comics as much: there were too many people. It was bad for character development. When I started the series back up, over half the people in the first season got dropped, and I added a few new characters to the mix, including Ian, Ryan, and Molly. This is when the comics reached the height of their popularity, because I began to upload them to my facebook and more people were reading them.
Season 2 ended with a bang: the infamous "Harry Potter and the Wait for July 2009" sub-series. I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan, and when Warner Brothers moved the release date for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from November 2008 to July 2009, I was furious. The best I could do was to make a parody series within my comic series, so I did. Harry Potter and his friends get so angry with Warner Bros that they decide to protest by renting out a comic strip for several months until the movie comes out. Featuring the popular Potter characters such as Harry, Ron, Hermione, Snape, Ginny, Trelawney, Kreacher, and Lord Voldemort, this was probably the most successful the comics ever got. The mini-series last for 60 comics (more if you count the ones I didn't upload.) and after that, I decided to take a break.
August of 2010, I decided the time was right for a new season. I had also decided it was time to update the look of the comics. I gave Sam, Bailey, and Kenzie new hairstyles, and gave Ryan a wardrobe change. Also, I added Nick, Joel, and Megan to the comics. Season 3 was shorter than the others, and it got less laughs than before. I started thinking that maybe it was time to do something big again. I had three ideas: 1) A battle of the bands competition between a band started by Ryan, a band started by Bailey, and a band stated by Sam (who started his own band when no one lets him join their band). 2) A series where movies come to life through a freak-accident involving a broken 3D Television. 3) A parody of a full-blown action comic. This lead into one of the biggest projects I ever did in my entire life.
Sam's Comics took to the big time. I mean big. Movies big. I was in college at this point in time, and I was a member of the campus film club, and as I was planning out the action series for the comics, I kept thinking "this would make a better movie than a comic." I had two scripts I was presenting to the film club, and when they asked if I had anything else I told them about the comics. They picked up the idea even though a script was not written (and it was their second choice since the first one didn't work out). The movie was written as a comedy, but it ended up being a drama. I spent nearly all of 2011 working on the movie, planning it for two months, writing/rewriting/editing the script for two more months, shooting it for five months, and editing for two months simultaneously with filming. The movie was a success, and can be viewed on youtube. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NhlZbo5ZIM&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL3F899CFA07A9B307
Season IV came out in January of 2012. The comics reached all
new heights of popularity during this season, with the popular addition
of Shannon, Sarah, Gabri, Frank, and Elino. I was also beginning to
expand the universe of the comics, adding new locations and awesome
storylines in-series. Also during this season, I started my blog, where
the comics became open to the public (admittedly, they have to find them
first...) Season five followed not long after Season IV ended, and the comics delved into deeper waters still, starting with a reader-input series of camp comics, where the readers decided which team would win in a set of contests. It also ended with the "without Sam" subset, which crossed the bridge between comics and memes.
Season Six brings even more heights, with the introduction of colored comics. Creativity however hit a wall, and production slowed waaaaaay down. Comics were released every other week as opposed to weekly like before. While shorter than the previous seasons, Season Six will end with the "When Movies Become Reality" sub set, a series I have been planning as far back as 2011.
I plan on having a big long break in between Season Six and Season 7.
- Sam Shenberger
No comments:
Post a Comment