Now here's some information on the story that you won't find on the character pages.

Joel, Amanda and Stig work together in a webhosting business. Joel is the programmer, Stig is the designer and Amanda is the customer support representative.

Stig is, and there's no other way to say this, filthy stinking rich. He'll spend his money on pretty much anything that grabs his attention at the time, but he also funds the webhosting business and covers almost all costs of the house, utilities, computers and food.

Lisa is a mild-mannered, normal High School Japanese teacher, and, when midnight hits, she turns into a succubus. Not a real one, of course, but she's man-hungry nonetheless. She's earned the nickname "Blue" from her male friends, and not without merit, either.

Sam is a freelance television producer when he's not hunting down and putting together Gundam models. He's a self-proclaimed money-whore, that is, he'll take on almost any job just for the money. He's got a high asking price, though, mainly as a result of having to work with idiots one too many times and for not nearly enough money to put up with them.

About the Artist(s)--

Let me just start off by saying that I had no idea that I'd be drawing a comic strip. Ever. Not even now. I still don't have any idea that I'm drawing a comic, so don't tell me or else I might realize it and stop for the greater good of humanity. By the way, I'm Sam, the guy who normally draws the strip. Now, let me tell you right now, there really ARE people by the names of Sam, Joel, Stig, Lisa and Amanda behind the scenes of this comic. The characters are based on real people. I checked. Now for a little information about the real people. Keep in mind, most of these are tongue-in-cheek.

I, Sam, am a student at Chapman University in Orange, CA, but reside in sunny Irvine, California. For those not familiar with the area, let's just say that I'm about 20 minutes south of Disneyland. I'm a Broadcast Journalism major (read: "Television News") with a possible minor in Television Production. That's all you get to know about me for now. And yes, I really am obsessed with Gundam Wing model kits.

Joel lives the furthest away from the rest of us as any of us. That made no sense, but he usually does. He's the co-creator of the strip with Sam and is, without a doubt, the funnier of the two, however, he is also the less talented of the two. Communicating with Sam all the way from Rhode Island (State Motto: "Smaller than Los Angeles!") using only his cablemodem, Joel dispenses with the funny on a regular basis when he's not in School or listening to Original Soundtracks from Street Fighter games.

Lisa, living her life with her cat in Monterey, CA, constantly reminds us that there's only one "r" in Monterey. Aside from that, she also constantly reminds us that food is better if it's made from scratch, and that it's better to spend 5 hours making pizza than the 45 mintues that it takes someone else to do a better job. Nevermind the fact that you're hungry NOW and that you'll invariably end up eating raw ingredients if you make it from scratch. Aside from THAT, Lisa spends her free time going to classes at Cal State University Monterey Bay and not sleeping. She's gone somewhere around 10 days without sleeping before. Of course, near the tail end of that, she was endlessly singing the theme to the "Small World" ride at Disneyland, but 10 days nonetheless.

Amanda, who resides in the Murietta area of the state of California, aside from having a cool last name (Check the copyright information on the comics), can be found playing Squaresoft RPGs when not in school. She's the only one of us that has an actual "life," as she calls it, and can be found outside of her room on numerous occations. Because of this, not much else is known about her, save the fact that she can draw REALLY well.

Stig, dig this you cool, cool, sexy, cool cats! I get to write up my own little section! See, I used to be the colorist for the strip, but I was bitching so much that I actually ended up teaching Sam how to do it, now he's the full artist of Idle Minds. Why am I on the project still? Well I made and maintain the site, and I'm also a part of the creative team. While Joel and Sam may have invented the strip, I like to think that I played a significant role in developing the strip to where it is today (64 unique visitors today! Whoo!) me being the only IMer that doesn't have an all encompassing job and a lack of better ideas for my vacation. In coming months I'll be posting our coloring tutorials on this site, explaining how to color like we do, because we know ya loves it!

The Making of the Strip--

For the first three or four strips, I relied on magic comic strip faeries to make them come to life, but after that, I realized that it was going to get harder and harder to catch them to meet deadlines, so I decided to try making them myself. Well, not really, but it's a more interesting story than the way it really happened. And, in the end, isn't something more entertaining really the truth? The answer, of course, is no. So here's how it's really made.

I started out by printing out a frame I made in Photoshop onto paper. The frame, in the beginning, was 4x4", making each panel 2x2", making it very hard to draw detailed characters. This is evident in the first 3 or so strips. They suck. I admit it. BUT! I realized the error of my ways and enlarged the frame to be 8"x8", thereby making the panels, in essence, 4"x4", doubling the size of it. That didn't necessarily double the quality, but it did increase it.

As for character designs, the 5 characters you see now are essentially the same as the original designs, with the exception of Amanda, who used to be a talking cat. Not really, but she looked a lot different (picture to the left). If anyone got a hold of the first draft of Amanda, it might double in value (read: "nothing and a half") some day. One of the less noticable things is that we randomly changed the eyes to just black dots instead of black with color, or just colored dots. It really depends on the artist and whoever has the conch shell at the time.

Starting October 4, 2000, Idle Minds gained 2 new characters. Corey and Meredith. Corey's a buddy of the cast, currently attending college down in Louisiana. and Mer's his bestest buddy and our other buddy. She's currently attending college in Washington, DC. As far as plot goes, Corey and Mer don't live with the rest of the cast, beyond that all that's known is that Corey went to highschool with Sam and Joel, and met Meredith in college. Whether the two live together, work together, or even have living quarters and jobs is a total mystery. Some like to think that Corey and Mer have some wonderful jobs at Echo software, and if we can't think of anything, they probably will.

Drawing the strip is a long and arduous task that only happens when the crack team of specialists (not the team of specialists on crack, we keep them away from me) stroke my ego enough so that I can feel good about my drawing skills to not be embarrassed to do a strip. After that, I use the aforementioned frame to make sure that it's straight (As my religion prevents me from using rulers) and then draw using a Papermate Sharpwriter #2 Pencil (only because I can't find #3 pencils that easily). I use the green and the yellow colored pencils without reguard as long as they have an eraser.

After I draw the characters, I ink them with a very non-standard inking pen, a Sharpie Ultra Fine Point pen. Yeah, they're permanant and they go through the paper, but I like them, and you're not going to change my mind. (Well, you actually can change my mind, I just say that because it's more threatening.)

After I ink it, I erase the pencil, then scan it with my Adara Imagestar II (read: "Crappy") flatbed scanner into Photoshop. I proceed to adjust the brightness and contrast, then color and shade it. Normally, now, I do the coloring and shading, but Stig used to do it before I did because he's the "highly paid graphic artist" and whatnot, but then he got jobs that he actually gets paid to do, so I learned how to do it.

After coloring and scanning, I put in the words, then the word balloons in Photoshop, draw in the background and color and shade that, put in the IdleMindsOnline.com, the copyright and the copyright joke, I save the .psd and send it over to Stig. He prays over it to make it Kosher, then compresses it into GIFs, then puts it on the site with the news update for the day (if any), and I don't know what he does after that, probably goes back to his Tallgeese Shrine and worships more. I usually just watch Late Night with Conan O'Brien or something.

Pictures will probably be forthcoming of the process of making the strip, but, I'm too lazy to do it. So there.