This should answer most of the questions ya'll may have for me. I of course use the word "frequently" loosely.
If there's something else you're just dying to know, feel free to email me.
Q: Why'd you make a web comic?
A: I spent almost three years working at a movie theatre, at which point I bore witness to a lot of stupid customers. Occasionally, when such an event struck me as particularly amusing, I wrote it down, and soon, I discovered that I had the foundation of a web comic. Honestly... I'm not sure how I reached that conclusion.
Q: So are customers really that stupid?
A: Oooooh yes. What you've seen isn't even the half of it. They can be so pigheaded and annoying that it really stops being funny after a while.
Q: Why furries?
A: Cause I really suck at drawing humans.
It's just the style I decided on. Humans bore the crap out of me, artistically speaking.
Q: How'd you come up with your characters? Are they based off of real people?
A: Yes. And no.
Some of the characters, I'll admit, are loosely inspired by real people I know. Primarily, Joel is partially based on myself (he originally was a vessel for everything I wanted to say to customers but couldn't). In time, though, all the characters grew into their own personalities, rather independent of their origins.
A few characters, though, are based on absolutely no one, like Matt, who seems to have come out of no where.
Q: Well... Was she?
A: LOL NEXT QUESTION
Q: What do you do, anyways? Aside from the comic, I mean.
A: I go to college for Graphic Design. I'm barely employed, really, but I hope to someday get a job in graphic art - making logos and such.
Q: What's an Immelmann?
A: This is a question I get from people who know me from the real world... Immelmann, a wolf/rabbit hybrid, is the alias I take, as the author of this comic. I felt it would help to normalize things if, in this comic of furries, I was furry too. Additionally, I use Immelmann as my "fursona". If you don't know what that is all ready, please, don't ask.
The name "Immelmann" has a bit of a story to it. A good friend of mine gave me that name a couple years ago as we were watching the anime Last Exile. In that anime, one character named another character Immelmann after he pulled off an aerial maneuver known as the "Immelmann Turn" (pulling up so that you flip your plane upside down, then turning it upright - very useful in dogfights), named after its creator, WWII German pilot Max Immelmann. Thus, my name is a reference to an anime, which refers to a German fighter.
Q: What's with the pikachu?
A: I've been asking myself that same question for a while now. Really, though, I usually feel that my fursona needs a familiar or side-kick of sorts - I've almost always had one, in one form or another.
In researching Max Immelmann, there was one source that talked about his dog, Tyras. I liked the name, so I stole it. But why a pikachu? Well, I tried to think of the most inappropriate creature to pick... And thus was born Tyras.
Q: Are those characters really "randomly generated"?
A: They sure are. Someday I'll go into deeper detail about my technique for this, but essentially, I have an excel spread sheet with a system showing every possible combination of gender, species, sexuality, and religion. I generate 8 random numbers and plug them in, and crapped out is a one-of-a-kind character. I only do this for customers and unimportant extras that only appear once.
Q: Pirates or ninjas?
A: ARR, MATEY! I be keelhauling any scurvy ninja that be showin’ their filthy land-lubber faces around my ship!
Q: What goes into making a comic? What programs do you use?
A: It's actually an absurdly complicated process. I first have the ideas roughly sketched out in horrible, sprawling handwriting, usually in one of two battered, dirty little notebooks. When it's time to make the comic - I try hard to get as far ahead as possible, and usually finish making a comic about two weeks before it's posted - I draw it in pencil in 10cm2 boxes. I then use a light box to trace it onto another piece of paper, which is then scanned into the computer at a bit more than twice the size of the final product.
The line work is then brought into Adobe Photoshop, where I arduously color it with far, far too many layers for my own good. Once that's finally done, I shrink it and bring it into Macromedia Flash to make the speech bubbles. It's the only vector program I like.
After that, I bring it back into Photoshop for final compression. The coloring itself usually takes about two days, three for the really long ones. The pencil work, since I work on it in little bits, takes perhaps three or four days.
Someday, I plan to upgrade myself to using a tablet, which will make the entire process digital. I'm positive that not only will this up the quality of the entire thing, but I'd estimate that the comics will take far less time to complete.
I use a tablet now ^_^
Q: George W. Bush: Great president? Or greatest president?
A: I don't know, but I can tell you this: George Bush doesn't care about furries.
Q: Your comic is great - I'm going to put it on Wikipedia!
A: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOOOOOO.
This almost happened to be, and although it was flattering, let me explain why this MUST NOT HAPPEN. I love Wikipedia, am a member, and am familiar with it's deletion policy. A web comic needs to have not only been around for a long time (at least 100 comics, they say), but it needs to have either made a major impact, or become really popular. Concession is not any of these things, not by a long shot. If you make a Wikipedia article about Concession, it will be deleted. If I see it, I myself will vote to delete it.
If an article gets deleted, then it's usually really hard to give it an article later one, even when it normally would have deserved one. So, please, don't. There are plenty of other places to do this, though. If you have the dire need to do such a thing concider taking a look at Concessin's WikiFur article...
Q: Mac or PC?
A: I honestly, truly, completely, and totally hate Macs with every fiber of my being. I really love their use of minimalism, but I can barely function when using the damn things. I literally almost had a seizure while on one.
Q: How do you get a coon out of a cheese box?
A: 42.