Fill your eyes with sugary goodness! Creator Scott Warren invites us to the breakfast table to talk about his webcomic
Crunchy Bunches!
1. For the poor souls not already reading, please give a brief synopsis of your comic.
Crunchy Bunches is a kid's breakfast cereal, and like any good cereal it has a mascot. That mascot is Munchy, the enthusiastic and slightly obsessive yellow guy with one big tooth. The comic follows him and his friends as they travel the world searching for new flavors or marshmallow shapes, or just defending their headquarters, The Crunch House, from the nefarious Growlies who only want to spread hunger at the breakfast table.
2. What materials and/or software do you use?
I make everything digitally using mainly Flash, and sometimes Painter (for the occasional painted background). I know Flash is an unusual choice for a comic, but I'm familiar with it, and I like the way it's brush tool works. I have recently been contemplating using Manga Studio, however.
3. Are there any books, movies, toys, artists, or authors that have inspired or continue to inspire your comic?
Duck Tales, Calvin and Hobbes, Pogo, Adventure Time, older Simpsons, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Scott Pilgrim, Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, Mario games, Powerpuff Girls, Transformers toys, Scott Morse, Kazu Kibuishi, Katie Rice, Chris Sanders, Ben Caldwell, Brad Bird, Michel Gagné, Bruce Timm, Tex Avery, Stephen Silver, and of course lots of old animated cereal commercials.
4. Are any of your characters based on real people in your life?
For the most part, no, but I do have specific friends that I’ll think of when I can’t otherwise figure out how a particular character might act. I often keep the personalities of my characters very simple at first and let them evolve during the story. So it’s not that I based those characters on people, but that the characters ended up reminding me of those friends after awhile, and I just go with it from there.
5. Are there any actors you know you would want to play or voice certain characters in a movie of your comic?
I would definitely want Crunchy Bunches to be an animated movie, and Billy West could do a great Munchy.
6. What songs would you like in a soundtrack of your comic?
You know, I haven’t really thought about that before. I’ve always like the soundtracks to the Peanuts movies, so maybe some classy piano jazz. Maybe some chiptunes too. Maybe even some piano-jazz-chiptune-fusion? I don’t even know if that would work, though…
7. What is your overall goal for your comic?
Not much really, I just want to create something that my brain imagined. It’s just really fun and satisfying to do that, and I get kind of antsy when I don’t for a long time.
8. How has managing a comic impacted your life?
I think I’ve had to learn time management better than before! I still work a full-time job in addition to this, so I have to find time after work and weekends to make a new comic each week. But beyond that, I feel like it gives me a better outlet for creativity then most projects I’ve done, and keeps me thirsty for inspiration and motivated to keep drawing.
9. What do you do to advertise your work?
I’ve used Project Wonderful, which is great. They should call it Project Great, it’s so great. It’s wonderful how great it is. Uh, but other than that, I’ll often post a link to /r/comics on Reddit or tweet something out on Twitter. Tumblr is nice too, it’s always great to have a comic of mine reblogged. I also keep a Facebook page for the comic updated regularly.
10. Web comics can be very time consuming and sometimes expensive to keep up. Often there is little reward in regards to money and sometimes public attention. Why do you do it?
I guess I just really enjoy it. I love drawing, designing characters and worlds, telling stories with those characters, everything involved in making a comic. It is hard to keep up sometimes, but I’ve honestly surprised myself with how much I still look forward to making Crunchy Bunches, even after a year of doing it.
11. Got any other projects we should know about?
I sometimes dabble in game design. I love video games, especially indie games and I’ve had a lot of fun messing around in Game Maker 7. I put up the games I’ve made at
www.flipskip.com , most of which are pretty short and unpolished.
12. What advice would you give to aspiring creators?
Dive right in and start making stuff. Know that it’ll probably be bad at first if you’re new to it, that’s okay, you will get better. Remember K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid). Have fun.
Thanks for taking the time Scott! I love making games too! Mostly
music and
sprite animation. Programming... not so much. I'm going to try my hand at
GameSalad.
Perhaps a colab...?
If you dig Crunchy Bunches you can show your love by up-voting the submission for this interview at
Reddit Webcomics. Up-voting keeps Crunchy Bunches on the front page of the webcomic category longer which means more people get to see it!
Thanks for reading folks. Drop us a comment to let us know what you think. Then pour yourself a heaping helping of
Crunchy Bunches!
-Mat
evanyeti.com
If you would like to be interviewed about your web-comic send an email to
evanyeti@yahoo.com titled "interview" with a link to your comic.
