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The married couple of Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons (left) and Rosearik
Rikki Simons make up Tavicat. They worked on Robotech comics before turning
to a different idea, a comic for all ages that was based on manga design
and stayed away from epics about grunting super heroes. |
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Super Information Hijinks: Reality Check! is the story of Colin Meeks,
a student ignored by his parents who takes solace in a 21st-century virtual
internet. Colin is joined on line by his cat, Catreece, his girlfriend,
her cat, a cat-tified computer virus and a host of odd virtual characters.
Rosearik Rikki Simons said their series was offered to a Japanese publisher
and was rejected because it was "too American" with too many American jokes
and cultural references. |
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Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons came up with the idea for Reality Check after
she got her first modem and discovered the online world. Catreece, the
cat who is humanoid when in the virtual world, was a character she developed
who blossomed in the Reality Check universe. The series is aimed at all
readers, because "There weren't any American companies doing anything for
a general audience." Oddly, despite the comic saying "Access for All Ages"
on the cover, Reality Check still gets lumped with adult comics in many
stores. Wolfgarth-Simons thinks that happens because the series has so
many anthropomorphic characters, which links it in some retailers' minds
with "furry" titles. Since those comics are often considered to deal with
sex, the Simons don't want Reality Check considered to be a "furry" title. |
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Does Mimi, Catreece's sister, look like Tavisha? It might be more than
a coincidence, she hinted. Tavisha draws the characters ("The anime influence
is because that's all I can draw," she said) and then Rosearik creates
the computerized backgrounds. The combined effort takes 18 months to create
a new issue of Reality Check, which is unique in its use of backgrounds
made on a Macintosh. "At first we were being tedious," Rosearik Rikki Simons
said. "We didn't know where to stop when it came to graphics. Now we've
figured out how to do things quickly. The backgrounds are developed on
MediCreations Painter and RayDream. "It tends to make all your creations
look like toys, which made it perfect for Reality Check. I didn't want
it to look real - I wanted it to be this toy-like dream place of the future,"
he said. |
