Interviews Conducted by Robert J. Beck

I try to spell check as I go but it doesn't catch the difference
between roll and role. Though people think they are helping, it
frays the nerves when you get 8 e-mails for every tps report you
forget to send- er, I mean, spelling mistake. For the printed
books I do have an editor that goes over the pages several
times. But the online strips go up so fast and often, I don't have
time for someone to review them. Running it through word
perfect catches the big mistakes, but things do slip threw.

What is the process of actually making a strip?

Coffee, lots of coffee.
When something happens that I find ironic or unique I'll record
the idea on the tape recorder application on my phone. Later I'll
pencil four boxes onto a piece of high quality 28lb printer paper
and figure out where the dialogue will go. I have to condense
the idea into four lines. Figure out how to set up the location and
present the joke in one or two panels. That's why I sometimes
condense separate events into one story arch. Not everything
that happens in the comic happened at one single convention
or club. Something funny does not always, in fact, happen on the way to or from an event. I'll pencil the strip with a mechanical pencil and then use a sharpie for the lettering, word balloons, and panels. I'll use a dip nib and higgins ink for the figures and micron for the background. I've got a kneaded eraser to get rid of the pencils (waiting a half hour for the ink to dry) then scan it in using photoshop and 1200dpi bw. I save one file as tiff 600dpi grayscale for printing and one 72dpi jpg for the website. There's a video on youtube of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S320Euw12Ls
 
Do you have a favourite strip that you've done?

A few people liked the strip where I get stuck on a pole while Punting in Oxford. The more I think about that strip the more I see it as an allegory for life. I'm so preoccupied with trying not to lose the pole that the boat ends up sliding out from under me and I'm stranded. In reality, I didn't get stranded but when I asked the punting rental guy what happened if I lost the pole he said "don't lose the pole." and I was convinced that I would. You can see it here:
http://devilspanties.keenspot.com/d/20070703.html

Do you ever find it hard to come up with a new idea for a story/joke?

All the time. I just draw anything and everything and hope that someone finds something funny.