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News |
Wednesday, December 2-, 2005 at 14: 1
Coffee Achievers shirts, round one!
Holy crap, we've never had merch before! This is totally sweet. Ladies and gentlemen, may we present the VERY FIRST EVER Coffee Achievers shirt!
I'll take two! |
Thursday, September 9-, 2005 at 15: 0
Meet Joe Black! (...I mean "Dunn")
TCA's very own Joe Dunn is going to have a booth at this weekend's Baltimore Comic Con! So go meet the man, tell him about how badly you want to have his babies, maybe pick up one of his shirts or other comics... Yeah, you know, con stuff.
More information can be found at the Digital Pimp Forums. |
Monday, August 8-, 2005 at 29: 0
OH SNAP
That's right you jive turkeys, we're BACK! Keep coming back for new comics every Monday through Friday. Or, if you're a LiveJournal user, you can add tCA to your friends list HERE.
Thanks for waiting, everyone! You can already tell by that preview pic that it is gonna be well worth your while! |
Wednesday, August 8-, 2005 at 10: 0
Hey look, new strips! Well, old strips with new art. You always knew this day would come. We're approaching the end. I mean the beginning. Either way.
So we have a forum now, if you're interested. It lives over at the Boxcar Comics Forums, and you are welcome to join so long as you know how to act in a society. I'll try and get a link on the nav bar on this page soon.
In the mean time, bask in the glory that is the art of Joe Dunn. More new comics to come. Thanks for being patient, you guys! It is much appreciated. |
Monday, August 8-, 2005 at 08: 0
Joe Dunn Explains it All
Yo.
This is Joe. And THIS is the first drawing I ever did for the Coffee Achievers.
I did it on a Friday afternoon in my office. Got an e-mail from Mitch explaining the current situation of the comic, and he offered me the art duties. And of course I was blown away.
What do you even say to that? I mean, I draw comics all the time, every day, but this was a big deal. You’re talking to a guy that draws a weekly about a food critic that like – 4 people read. Mitch is a bona fide web comics sensation. Needless to say it was a huge opportunity to work on a high quality strip with a built in audience. How could I say no. But I did string Mitch along for a while.
I remember pacing for half an hour after getting the e-mail. I knew I shouldn’t just reply and sound crazy. Plus I had a lot of concerns. Could I give the material the justice it deserves? Could I keep up with the schedule and still produce my other comics? How would the fans react? I know you guys. You love Mitch. I love Mitch. I didn’t want all hell to break loose. I wanted you an Mitch to be content with the quality. Eventually Mitch would assure me none of these concerns would be a problem, but I paced a hole in the carpet that day.
After a while I sat down and reread chapter 1 of CA. It was as good as I remembered so I knew the material was there. I grabbed a pencil and sketched out the characters. Just to see if I could. I knew that I had to make them my own. If Mitch wanted a carbon copy of his style he wouldn’t have asked me. So they had to be recognizable as the characters, but also recognizable as “Joe Dunn’s art” . Not that I’m that well known but, well, you know what I mean.
So in 20 minutes I had this sketch fully inked and I felt good about it. I could draw them ok. But I still didn’t e-mail Mitch.
Went out that night to see the Upright Citizen’s Brigade. Bought a T-shirt. Got drunk off of expensive wine. Went home and slept it off. The next morning I decided to scan in the sketch, and e-mail Mitch. I was honored and concerned, and interested. But I still didn’t accept.
I told him I needed some time to see if it was even possible. He was very open to that idea and gracious with his property. Mitch is a really cool guy. Even at the time we only had a casual acquaintance but he was still very cool.
So I went in to test mode. What could I do and how much could I do in a short period of time? It was still Saturday morning and I buckled in and went to town. Monday night I e-mailed Mitch Chapter 1. I was also able to do Free Lunch, JLCM, and prep work on another strip. It was insane. I was dead tired but I learned that if I really pushed myself I could produce.
And that’s all I needed to finally accept.
Still I wouldn’t let Mitch announce it. I had the undertaking of redrawing the first three chapters, as well as the following ones. At the time it was a huge amount of work with no real end in sight. I’m happy to say now that I’m just about to finish up chapter 6 and things are looking good. Some of you may ask why we’re not updating yet. There are a couple of answers. The easy one is that not everything is lettered yet. I’m knocking out the art and sparingly lettering. I’ll sit down soon and letter a dozen in a day and be done with it. But first and foremost is to make sure the stuff looks good.
The longer answer to why you haven’t seen the relaunch is that we want to make it good. And we want it to update on a regular schedule. Shit happens and sometimes the quality can suffer just to get stuff out on time. If this were an ongoing series, continuing forever, I would say “Eh, what the fuck. Let’s just roll.” But since it is finite, and will at one point be a whole complete story, I wanted to make sure that those bad strips are few and far between.
So, it’s coming. Don’t worry. I hope you guys can enjoy it as much as I’m enjoying working on it. Mitch has put together a really great story. I hope he and you are happy with the finished product.
Thanks, guys.
-Joe
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Thursday, June 6-, 2005 at 16: 2
And We
Oh my, it has been a while, hasn't it? I thought it was finally high time we get the ball rolling once again here at the Coffee Achievers, and what better way than to announce the series' new permanent artist, Mr. Joe Dunn!
I am of the opinion that Joe is the absolute best artist in the world of online comics, and I mean that in complete sincerity. He was the very first choice I had when deciding to get one single artist to do all the art themselves, and I proposed the idea to him myself. I was very VERY pleased to hear him, after some discussion, agree.
Joe's art will not only cover the rest of the series up until the ending, but he has already gone back and re-illustrated the first three chapters as well (which we will be posting in the coming weeks). I've seen them, and they are absolutely amazing. He will be bringing a much darker and more complex look to the series, and really bringing the characters and story to life far better than I ever could have.
Now, I know this is going to be an adjustment period for some of you who may prefer to see me continue illustrating this series myself, but I assure you that it was never my intent to draw this series in the first place, and I had only been doing so until a reasonable plan was worked out to have someone else take over. I'm going to continue writing, obviously, but I never intended to draw this myself, and, like I said before, Joe was my first choice for permanent artist. I think his style fits the series perfectly, I love what he has done so far and I eagerly look forward to seeing what he does in the future.
So yeah, I hope you're as excited about Joe joining the team as I am. If you want to see more of his work, you can check out his original comics Free Lunch and Joe Loves Crappy Movies, as well as Matriculated, which he also illustrates. Otherwise we will be posting new pinups every week until we are both caught up and ready enough to begin again with the actual comics.
So stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen, for the triumphant return of the greatest online comic of all time, the Coffee Achievers!
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Thursday, April 4-, 2005 at 21: 1
Okay, I officially have a new artist to take over TCA for me. I'll continue writing, but I won't be doing the art any longer. Don't worry about the quality slipping, either, because the artist I have lined up now is absolutely amazing. They were selected personally by me, and the stuff they've done so far is incredible. It'll be a change of pace for sure, but I'm pretty positive you guys will grow to like it a lot.
I'm not going to reveal who this person is until we have some more stuff to show you, but rest assured that TCA will return soon with a very impressive makeover.
Thanks to everyone who wrote in offering to take over the artistic duties. You guys were great, and it's a shame I can't use everyone. |
Thursday, April 4-, 2005 at 07: 2
There's a chance the Coffee Achievers won't be updated for a little while. This is the end of chapter three, you see, which was supposed to be the last arc illustrated by myself. However, what few artists I had lined up who haven't dropped out yet are not answering their emails, which means the chapter that is supposed to start on Monday is not ready yet. I have a few ideas of how to handle this, and I'm not sure exactly what to do yet. Don't worry, I'm not going to let this series die just yet, I want to complete the story first. Anyhow, like I say, there might be a hiatus here for a little while, but hopefully not for too long. Thanks for your patience and support, guys, you all rock! |
Tuesday, March 3-, 2005 at 22: 2
Sorry for not updating yesterday, but we got linked on Questionable Content, which means we got about a billion hits. As you can see, the art in today's strip is particularly horrible, and I didn't really want a bunch of new readers tuning in for the first time and seeing this. I mean, woof. Well anyhow, we're back, rejoice. |
Monday, March 3-, 2005 at 21: 2
Hey, if you're following the link here from Questionable Content, I should warn you that these strips don't really make any sense out of context, so you should go to the beginning of the story and move forward from there. But hey, welcome! |
Wednesday, March 3-, 2005 at 09: 0
RE: Today
I know what you're all thinking: Mitch wouldn't kill off one of the main characters so early into this comic's existance, would he?
I know what I'm thinking: Who are the main characters? Have we even established any yet? This comic takes place in a different universe then Nothing Nice to Say, remember that, so ANYONE IS FAIR GAME.
Sorry.
:) |
Monday, February 2-, 2005 at 21: 0
LiveJournal Syndicate.
It looks like the Coffee Achievers LiveJournal Syndicate is finally up and functional. If you're a LiveJournal user, click here to add the TCA Syndicate to your friends list, where you can view updates through LJ and comment on the strips with other readers. |
Monday, February 2-, 2005 at 07: 1
M-O-V-E! M-E-N-T!
Well, the story is finally startinng to move along now. It's really odd seeing this series go up at the same time as my new Nothing Nice stuff, because the strips you're reading here on this site were drawn almost a full year ago (possibly more). Then you look at NN2S and see how much the art has improved since I worked on this... I don't know, it's just odd.
So I really hope you guys are liking this so far. Making an ongoing storyline as interestinng as a bunch of stand-alone jokes is really tough, so I appreciate all the readership support I get.
Thanks guys! See you later.
Mitch |
Tuesday, February 2-, 2005 at 01: 0
Willkommen
Oh man, I should have warned you that the first two TCA strips aren't actually real strips... Silly me.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Coffee Achievers! I’ve been working on this project since late 2003 (it originally started out as a Nothing Nice to Say story arc, but it kept going and going and going until I eventually decided to make it its own series). This takes place in a different universe than NN2S does, so don’t worry about crossover continuity or anything like that. Some of the characters look different, some of the characters are missing, some are new, etc. This is certainly not Nothing Nice.
I really am excited about this project, and I hope you all like it as much as I do. The story’s gonna take a while to really start moving (you won't see any actual STRIPS until Thursday), so please bear with me. Drama series are a lot more difficult to make interesting from day to day, so this series is a big challenge. I think I succeed for the most part, you can decide for yourselves.
It helps that this series updates five days a week. So don’t forget to read every day! As a storyline based series, you don’t want to miss anything, as I try to fit a plot movement in every strip.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. Thank you very much for stopping by, keep checking back every day, vote regularly, and enjoy yourselves!
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