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I love doing smilies. As with a lot of artists, my foray into the pixel-art world happened because I wanted specific smilies for my website, but couldn’t find them on the web. So, opening my trusted Paint Shop Pro, I began doing them myself. I loved it, and still do. I love the challenge. It’s amazing to be able to convey so much in such a tiny space. It’s not quite on the level of painting on the head of a pin, but that’s the kind of mentality involved. I’ve always admired the artwork of “smiley artists”, one of the most prominent being Mazeguy (who incidentally was very gracious to let us use some of his work in this comic); I began following in their footsteps. So, for the past few years, I’ve been creating dozens of original icons for my various sites. Ravenswood has always been my biggest fan, and he has always encouraged me in this artistic diversion. So, in some ways it’s kinda odd that it took us so long to come up with the idea of using them to do a webcomic.

Using smilies was never intended as a “cheat” on artwork. It was an original concept–no one else has done anything like it. It’s the idea that these smilies, which we use all the time on the Internet, are actually real and living inside a computer. It could be any computer, even yours! Their world is a miniature version of ours, with a decidedly techno twist. So, in the spirit of Tron and Reboot, we ran with it. The 8-bit art is an integral part of the strip, the core of the premise. If we jazzed it all up using traditionally drawn graphics, not only would part of the charm be gone, but the original idea would be lost. Though, it should be acknowledged there is quite a challenge having to tell a story with the limitations of smilies and pixel art.

So, to sum it up, Bitmap World is a “smiley comic.” It’s a comic done with smilies, about smilies. It’s a comic that is family-friendly, but is not dumbed-down. It may even force you to check a dictionary–or Google, or Wikipedia–once in a while. While we have developed this comic for all readers (children included), we hope to particularly entertain those in the tech field. We are computer geeks ourselves, and its with that love that we do Bitmap World. It’s a comic that’s supposed to be funny, that’s done for fun. So, keep that in mind, keep reading, and SMILE!