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 Born 1978
Location Chicago, Illinois
School Columbia College (not the university, sorry) class of 2000
I like: Dogs*, cats, A Christmas Story, baseball, your 2008 World Champion New York Mets, your 2008 fourth-place-finishing Chicago White Sox, Amelie, weird movies in general, documentaries, Rescue Me, 24, Lost, Arrested Development, cartoons (obviously), Muse, Johnny Cash, Pigeon John, Sinatra and tons and tons of other music, free video games and DVDs in my mailbox, high-carb and Italian foods, cereal (especially Zoe O's), water and exercise, Boba Fett, IG-88, Finding Forrester, Bulworth, stop-mo, clay, arena football, the Bears, the Bills, the NFL, the Chicago Wolves, Special K with Red Berries, Ponette, Babe the pig, candy, the Roe Conn Show, Letterman, Conan, Stewart, Colbert, Honey Bunches of Oats, the Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Galaxy, Max Payne, Calvin & Hobbes, Pearls Before Swine, Mr. Boffo, old Peanuts, the Far Side, Paul, Mutts, Steve [last name withheld] and the rest of the 2003 Florida Marlins, air hockey, ultimate frisbee, dodgeball, Whirleyball, public transportation, Pez, quarters, the South Loop, the rest of the Loop, downtown Chicago, Wicker Park, the rest of Chicago, Wrigleyville in October (it's nice and quiet), Hold Em, board games, OS X, Xbox Live.
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Q: How do you do everything on the site?
A: Very nicely. That's the short answer. Here's the long one:
Drawing the cartoons: To draw all of the cartoons and other illustrations you see on this site, I sketch with pencils (nothing special, just #2s; I bought a box of, like, 400 of them 10 years ago for maybe $10) and ink with Micron drawing pens (.08 width; slightly more expensive) and Pilot precise pens (not as expensive but moreso than your common pencil). I draw on plain old white paper that you can either find in OfficeMax or steal from your workplace's printer (recommended). Not too fancy, but anyone who tells you you need fancy equipment to draw something nice is probably just trying to sell you some. Don't fall for it!
I don't use templates or any kind of create-a-cartoon or clip art software of any kind; it's all original work. I do sometimes draw cartoons on the computer using a Wacom tablet, though I have the small one and it's better for coloring than actual drawing.
Digitizing the Cartoons: I use a Mac Pro with lots of RAM (recommended required). The scanner's by Epson, the system is Mac OS X Leopard, and Photoshop is the program of choice if I need to darken the lines or something. I also add text to the strips with Photoshop, because life is too short to write that dialogue and ink it in by hand and make it fit.
Coloring the Cartoons: Sometimes I use a color pencil, but more often, I use Flash or Photoshop, and a tiny Wacom graphics tablet for shading and depth.
Graphic Design: Generally I use Photoshop, and incorporate freehand whenever I possibly can. I use Adobe Illustrator when needed too, but I'm not really a fan.
Web Design and Maintenance: For web design, I use BBEdit (text editor) for HTML, PHP, ASP, Javascript and whatever else suits it. To transfer files to and from my site, I use a little program called Transmit, which is Mac-exclusive I believe. To test pages, I use various browsers for Mac and PC, but my favorite is the Firefox 3 Browser for Mac. Shame it's still in beta and can't (for me, anyway) download files.
The Web Site: Bluehost.com has hosted mrbilly.com since the mid-2005, and it's my favorite host so far. Previously I used iPowerWeb (terrible), your-site.com (okay but archaic) and Hypermart (good until they got too big). Back in the olden times, I used to be on Geocities (yuck) and also America Online's membership pages. Good old days they were not.
Online Greetings: The animated ones were made around 2003 in Flash MX, while the static ones are drawn like any other cartoon. The sound in animated greetings comes courtesy of public domain files and stuff I've made either via MIDI or two-dollar microphone. All CGI scripts are hosted internally. I don't really support this section anymore, but it still works for those who wish to use it.
Bottom-notch Animation: Some of the better, more interactive animation and games (as well as animated greetings) are created in Flash MX. The artwork is hand-drawn and scanned in like usual (except on some earlier Flash projects, when I drew directly within the program, since I didn't know how to scan it into Flash).
Page design: Done in Quarks 4 through 6.5 up until 2006, and Adobe Indesign CS 2-3 ever since. Most of the graphics seen on the pages were optimized and compiled in Photoshop.
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I dislike: Your 1908 World Champion Chicago Cubs, the Yankees, the rest of the AL Central, seafood,, coffee, cigarettes, loud people, daytime TV, Windows Vista, the low-carb craze, most vegetables, Wal-Mart, politicians, bad CGI films I have to review, bad live-action films I have to review, snobs, college sports, the NHL, right-wing fanatics ("Abortions for no one!"), left-wing fanatics ("Abortions for all!"), jingoism ("Abortions for some, little American flags for others!"), high school, a ton of comics strips that I'm too smart to list by name, the way other people drive.
Favorite Dogs: the Sheltie consortium of Molly, Crystal, Nina, Bunni and Angel; Lucy the beagle; Tina, Buddy and Bopper, Benni (sp?), South Loop Buddy the Puggle, MeLe, Molly the rottweiller; Clio, Baily and all the other crazy labs I've come across; Uma and Hamlet; Bonnie and Clyde; the Park Ridge Puppy Kindergarten Class of Spring 2001; Sarge the all-American pug; Shamus the all-world Sheltie; Talcott's own Maddie (or Maddy, maybe, or just Madeline); all those dogs on Animal Planet; Stewart, the big white dog with the cranky owner.
Everything ©1997-2008 Billy O'Keefe. Every drop of pretty much every thing you see, and every word you read, was created completely from scratch by one boy and three dogs. May not be reproduced for commercial purposes without permission. Don't take my stuff without paying for it, but feel free to pay me without taking my stuff.
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