I’m still waiting for my check.

This is exactly why those who have taken a vow of poverty are moving on to Io.

(psssst… wanna buy some classes? Howabout some modules you can include in your own classes and pretend like they’re your own?)

Why,

How do you make these excellent comics (and the Least Surprised videos from OSCON )? Do you use Plasq’s ComicLife or some other tool? This is such good propaganda, I want to make my own!

All aboard the Rails Gravy Train!! CHOO CHOO !

Sean: My educated guess: he uses a bitmapped graphics editor of some type—Photoshop in this case (you can tell from the metadata). Font looks like Myriad something, which would suggest OS X .

Probably one character/group on each layer; positioned and tinted to taste. Then text, then balloons. Or maybe he does the text first and positions the characters around that. I don’t know.

I suspect he normally uses a mouse, but this one looks like the balloons were done with a lower-resolution input device; possibly a laptop trackpad.

why: How’d I do?

You’re a modern miracle, kid. Right down to the trackpad on this one.

one of these days, I am sure to get these koans…

The font, best as I can tell, is Trebuchet MS, which points to Windows. I pulled the image down and loaded it into a hex editor, and the metadata stated it was produced with Adobe ImageReady.

Aside: the way Adobe implemented DEFLATE compression in Photoshop and ImageReady sucks ass. You can usually squeeze another 15-25% out of them using something like PngOptimizer.

Nope, it’s Myriad, and ImageReady is most often used on the output path from Photoshop. Trust me, I was trained as a graphic designer. :)

Among other things, MS Trebuchet has a larger x-height, a tiny serif on the lower-case i, the bottom of its lower-case e curls upwards more, and the loops on letters like d and p are less completely rounded.

Type “The Least Surprised” in Trebuchet MS Bold (the most similar variant to Myriad Headline) and compare for yourself.