Who is responsible for this madness?!
Well, that's an interesting question... My name is Rik Davnall (aka Tinkerbell - don't ask), and, more or less,
I'm responsible for this madness (I wonder whether the fact that it's madness means I can claim diminished
responsibility?). At about the start of 2005, I discovered my first webcomics, in the form of Order of the Stick,
Misfile, and Mixed Myth.
Buoyed up by this shower of genius (along with a couple dozen other brilliant comics), I started trying to
draw webcomics. There followed an 8-month period of bad ideas badly drawn until, late in August, I scribbled
a couple of strips where a cat-person wakes up, hungover and not knowing where he is, and is greeted by a
white bear who explains about a drink called Prismatic Vodka (I should explain at this point that the Prismatic
Vodka idea was borrowed from a very good friend, Paul Sullivan, who invented it for an RPG campaign), which
has turned them both into the forms they are now in.
A little encouragement from my family kept me at it long enough that I actually felt able to post some pages
up on the web (on September 30th, 2005), and then I didn't feel I could legitimately stop. Then I started
university and, to keep me interested during some painfully boring first-year lectures, I started scribbling
a second comic in biro on my notes; despite a light-hearted start, this quickly developed into the dark tale
that is Zobbo the Gobbo.
The inevitable happened about six months into the course of Prismatic Vodka, when by a flimsy deus ex machina
(more of which later), Zobbo and the PV gang found themselves stranded in hyperspace for the first internal
Drunken Scribblings crossover, for which I bit the bullet and went to a full-page format for both comics. The
full-page format was such a success (at least, from my perspective) that it stuck for Prismatic Vodka, and in
the summer of 2006 I redrew the 70 strip-format updates of PV into the 32 pages which now make up chapters
one and two.
While all this was going on, I was collaborating with my good friend Helen Skelton on a cursed project (CURSED
I SAY!) called Little Heart. Little Heart was my first idea for a webcomic, but I found myself unable to do
it justice at the time and it fell by the wayside. It was only when I discovered how ridiculously cute Helen's
drawing style was that I was reminded. However, logistical difficulties put paid to Little Heart's run not
once but three times. I hope to bring it back eventually, but at the moment both Helen and I are far too busy.
Just after Prismatic Vodka's first birthday, I participated in the first Halloween Cameo Caper, organised by
the very brilliant Hogan of the Webcomic Cameo and Crossover Archive. The three pages I produced for
this event are in the Drunken Scribblings archive as 'Halloween Caper'. From there, things went from strength
to strength; I finished the first volumes of both Prismatic Vodka and Zobbo in March of 2007, and by June I
felt able to move off Comicgenesis' free hosting service to a privately-hosted webspace. I was able to give
some 20 pages of my time to the Crossover Wars in the form of the mini-comic Swimmer in the Abyss, featuring
Zobbo's nemesis Soban.
Summer 2007 brought with it far too much to do and a near-total artistic burn-out, but things now seem to be
back on-track; I celebrated Prismatic Vodka's second birthday with more hints of Mike's dramatic back-story,
and I'm back at the Halloween cameoing work (admittedly, on the late side...). Zobbo is currently on hiatus
due to me being busy as hell, but I'm hoping to change that soon.
So what about me, then? Well, I'm a philosophy student in my third year at the University of Liverpool, England.
Besides webcomics, I'm an anime nerd and videogame junkie (mostly Nintendo stuff, though recently I've been
on a big Sonic kick), I program computers fluently enough to have built this website, and I'm pretty musical -
I play piano, guitar and drums, and I'm the drummer in this band (Check us out!).
Apart from being really random and occasionally obscure, my aim with the Drunken Scribblings (I regard all
the comics on this site as part of one big story) is to tell a meaningful, powerful story about people you
can care about. I make no promises to avoid occasional bouts of complex philosophy and regular bouts of
complex storytelling (or for that matter, grotesque puns), but I hope you enjoy it all the same. If not,
well, no-one's forcing you to read and there are many other good webcomics out there.
A few quick thank-yous:
to my family, without whom this comic wouldn't have got past the third strip
to the good friends who were my first followers
to Hogan, KAM, Wheels, Joff and a few others for welcoming me into the community and sharing characters and stories with me
to all the webcomic artists who've inspired me, challenged me and entertained me for the last three years
to Genevieve Gartenmayer (creator of the very brilliant Fainting Spells) and Becca Clarke for being there when I needed a friend
and of course, to you, for putting up with this cliched crap ^_--
I can be reached at Rik_the_RiffAThotmail.com (you know the drill; replace AT with '@') if you have an overwhelming desire to
tell me how awesome I am or something ^_--