Here I will try to explain more about Troll and Stick and where the idea came from. The idea for the strip started from another comic strip I did on this site. One of the strips I did for What They're Thinking was about Metroid and had two boys talking about beating the game. I liked the idea of the strip so much that I thought about doing a comic strip with two kids talking about video games. But I forgot about it for awhile and it went to the back burner.
Later on, one of the strips from What They're Thinking was featured on Stumble Upon and a ton of people came to the site. As I was checking out the comic strip they were looking at, a Space Invaders one, I started looking at the rest of the strips and saw the Metroid one again. It got me thinking about doing the strip again.
This time, I decided I was going to create a strip. I liked the idea of not showing the boys, only having their word balloons. The first thing I did was decide that they would have different shaped word balloons to differentiate them. I also decided that one kid would be into modern games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo. The other kid would be into classic games like Pacman and Space Invaders. This way they could argue about which games are better and what the other one sees in them.
With these two components in place, I decided to work on names. I tried to come up with names and even enlisted the help of a friend of mine. Some of the names bandied around were Thumbs, D00d, Retro Kid and Pwned. I wanted one name to represent modern games and one to represent classic games. I liked Retro Kid for the classic one, but could not think of a modern one.
Then one day out of the blue, the names hit me. Troll and Stick! Troll was short for Controller and Stick was short for Joystick. It was so simple and it fit so well. Troll also has meaning with newsgroup trolls. So then I went to work on a logo. I wanted to incorporate the two controllers, so I went with the two that best represented their eras. A Playstation controller for the modern games and an Atari joystick for the classic games. Thus, Troll and Stick were born! I started with two comic strips, a modern one and a classic one. They will rotate back and forth between modern and classic games. Enjoy the series and let me know what you think!
Here is a quick bio for each of the main characters.
Troll is the one with the square boxed word balloon. He
loves modern games and thinks games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo are the
pinnacle of video games. Graphics are extremely important to him and he
loves online gaming. He thinks games cannot have enough violence.
His system of choice is whatever the newest system is at the time. He is
the kid who waits in line for the newest systems and has to have the latest
games.
Stick is a throwback to a simpler time. He is
represented by the round word balloons. His father is a video game
collector and he grew up playing the classics. He loves games like Ms.
Pac-Man, Robotron and Q*Bert. He loves trying to get high scores and
putting his name on a machine. While he can play his father's games, he
likes amassing his own collection. Flea markets and garage sales are the
places where he buys most of his games. While he will play newer games, he
does not like the fact that games no longer have high scores and they now have endings.