Corporate Monkeys Comic #20 - MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!

Over the years we've tried our best to create "office" situations that are funny. Sometimes they are normal, and other times they are totally ridiculous.

Teaser: We have a stack of sketched comics somewhere that detail a monkey joining the organization and moving up through the ranks.

We always thought it would be funny if a Ninja worked in the office. But what ninja? How about Scorpion from Mortal Kombat??

Let's see how it turns out...

http://thecorporatemonkeys.com/comic_20.html

Corporate Monkeys Comic #19: Christmas 2010

As I've said in the past, we keep sketching new comic ideas but Trian has just been too busy to make them into real comics. Well this time I decided to take matters in to my own hands and draw one myself. Please understand that while I am very good at making the dialog and storyline of a comic, I can't really draw. So this kinda sucks. But it's a step in the right direct, yeah??

Anyway - go check out our 3rd Christmas Comic and show me some love here in the comments

http://thecorporatemonkeys.com/comic_19.html

Return of the Corporate Monkeys

So we've spent a while now trying to get back in to the swing of things. How can the Corporate Monkeys become famous if we never post new comics? Well that is going to change RIGHT NOW.
Here is the first new one. I know it's only stick figures but I kind of liked it that way. The style fits the content. I came up with this one after finishing grad school in August. (in fact, if you read my blog then you already saw me post this last month)
We're going to try to get a Halloween comic up this week... wish us luck...
 
http://thecorporatemonkeys.com/comic_18.html

Master Master Rob - he likes them apples

A few weeks ago I was watching TV and caught Good Will Hunting. Something about that movie has always confused me, but I was afraid to bring it up in case no one else was confused by the same thing. Of course, I've since stopped caring if I look stupid (lord knows it happens often enough). I'd rather just have the answer.  So I figured the best way to get my answer was to blog about it.

Then, while pondering how I would write the blog entry, I finished grad school. How interesting! I'm thinking about writing a blog about a movie about college, and I finish college in the process. I should probably tie those 2 topics together.

But wait, there's more! I pitched a rough idea for a new comic (yeah, we do still make them... just not always post them) about graduating from school in these tough economic times, and then Trian draws it that same night!

Well, all these things together make it easy to write a blog entry. Let's start with Grad School, shall we?

About 2 weeks ago I finished my second Masters degree. It took 3 years, and more money than I care to talk about, but I am now the proud owner of a MBA (Masters of Businessy Stuff) and a MIS (Masters of IT and Businessy stuff mixed together).

After finishing undergrad I went into the workforce for a few years, and I think that had a huge effect on my view of grad school. In most classes I found that I knew the material already. At times this was great because I could go deeper into the material and get into some really cool discussions with my professor (like how Low-cal foods don't test well in marketing, but low-cal drinks do great) but other times I would tell the teacher that I couldn't sit through the subject matter and needed to go home (like the day they were going to teach the classes what a database is....ugh....).

In the end, I learned a lot about how to be a manager, but I feel like grad school was a little unnecessary. And this is where Good Will Hunting comes into the blog. Because everyone's favorite quote is....

"See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna staht doin some thinkin on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certaintees in life. One, don't do that. And Two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library" - Matt Damon

I could have bought a few books on management and read them on the weekends and I probably would have learned just as much. Of course, you don't go to school for the information - you go for the diploma - you go so that you can put those acronyms on your resume.

But backing up. The thing that confuses me about Good Will Hunting was in the quote above. "One, don't do that" ... does he mean that you shouldn't belittle a guy when he's hitting on a girl in a bar? Or was it a more general "don't do that" about life? Was he being deep? Or am I reading in to it too much?

So what's left here? Oh yeah... that comic. One morning I was telling Trian that a funny idea for a comic would have to go with graduating from school during a recession. So he took my general joke (which was more specific than this description) and sketched up a comic. He only intended it to be a rough draft but everyone I've shown it to has agreed that it's really good just like it is. So I think I'll share it. Feel free to heap praise upon him.

(Click to Embiggen)

NOTE: I stole "click to embiggen" from Patrick Rothfuss

Filming - Day One - The Replacement

So today we began filming our 2nd movie, The Replacement.

If, for some reason, you haven't seen our last movie then you can view it HERE. It's called A Meeting Gone Wrong. For that feature, we had a 3 page script with a handful of storyboards. We used 3 main characters and a handful of extras. After filming for maybe 2 or 3 hours we had enough footage for a movie that would be 4 minutes and 36 seconds long.

So - how does this one compare? For starters, the script is 14 pages (and that's after some trimming). We're using 5 main characters and a handful of extras, and the end product should be a little over 10 minutes. So compared to our last movie, it's like going from making a TV show to making the movie Titanic.

Well, today we shot for 4 hours and barely got through half of the scenes. Plus, these were the easy interior office scenes. Next time we have to move outside and do some stunts / Special Effects. Oh, and I have a feeling we'll wind up scrapping a lot of today's footage and re-shooting the scenes. In short, today was rough.

But ya know what? I loved it. There is nothing more satisfying than taking an idea from your head and putting it on paper, and then actually filming it. Plus it's fun to tell people what to do on set :)

I imagine that none of this is very interesting to anyone. But I wanted to get it on paper (metaphorically speaking). Hopefully we'll finish filming by the end of the month. Then it'll take about 2 months to edit. We'll plan a Red Carpet Event for the end of May. I hope to get a trailer up online by the beginning of next month.

PLOT OUTLINE:
Tom and Gus (the Corporate Monkeys) are IT guys for a big corporation. Because of the current economic situation, the company decides to lay them off and replace them with one person. So Tom and Gus decide that they need to hatch some crazy plan that will win them their jobs back. Will it work? Or will they be in the unemployment line by the end of the week?

Stay tuned for updates.

Corporate Monkeys Comic #18: V-Day

So Valentines Day is here again. I promise that we have a LOT of comics sketched up in the queue... but Married-Boy has been busy with the ball and chain (blah!). Now where was I? Oh right... love and happiness. That's the theme for this wonderful day. So go check out a V-Day card that my artistically adept partner created.

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/comic_18.html

Corporate Monkeys Comic #17

It's not either of the comics that we intended to post next, but when an idea strikes you just have to go with it. We were wondering what it might look like if 2 Project Managers dated each other...

Leave some comments - show us some love.

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/comic_17.html

Corporate Monkeys comic #16 - 2 yr Anniversary!

It's been a fun 2 years here at the Corporate Monkeys site. We haven't posted as many comics as we'd like but that will get better some day. Once our Senior Cartoonist gets married things should settle down.

We keep creating new storyboards all the time so don't worry about us running out of material.

This special comic completes the story that began with our first comic (and then continued with the 1 year anniversary comic). The links to those comics are at the top of the page when you go to the link.

Check it out and show us some love.

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/

As a bit of a teaser: Our next comic (Trian has already begun working on it) is freakin hilarious! Also, watch out for an upcoming comic that I am drawing (and my skills are poor).

No Business like Show Business...

I hate to inform you all, but my blog probably won't be around much longer. You see, I'm about to become famous. Yes, famous. I've discovered a place on the "internet" where ordinary people can post movies... and then let others watch those movies. It will obviously lead to me being discovered by some talent agent and then I'll be wisked away to live the good life with people like Tom Hanks and ..um... some other famous people.

Ok Ok, I'll be honest. It's not my movie. But I am in it!

Trian is in a streaming media class and made a movie as his final project. We made sort of a "live" version of a corporate monkeys comic. It was a lot of fun, and Trian put a lot of effort into re-cutting the movie to perfection. I'd like to take some credit here but really I just did what he told me to do.

Check it out and leave comments so he doesn't cry himself to sleep at night.

Corporate Monkeys comic #15

Well, folks...Valentinesday is here. Gotta love it, right? Well, check out our latest corporate monkeys comic to see if Tom and Gus feel the same...

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/

Corporate Monkeys comic #14

I know what you're all thinking: Christmas came and went without a holiday-themed Corporate Monkeys comic! Oh Santa, why hast thee forsaken us???

Well, stop talking like a weirdo and calm down. Here is a much belated Christmas comic.

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/

Leave comments here and tell me what you think.

Corporate Monkeys comic #13

What happened to the corporate monkeys?? Did they die?? Did they stop making comics?? Have they found real lives that are more fulfilling than spending their time together??

um... no...

we've just been busy. We still sketch new comics all the time... but with grad school and PMP training we don't get much time for real comic publishing.

But here's a one panel created by my other half - let me know what you think...

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/

Corporate Monkeys comic #12

Believe it or not, we spend a long time coming up with the dialog and captions for our comics. Sometimes, we narrow it down to 2 captions and just have a hard time choosing between them. That was the case for our most recent comic. You can read the "official caption" by going to the website, but I've also listed an alternate caption below. Let me know which you like better.... and also if you think the comic is even slightly funny.

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/


ALTERNATE CAPTION:

Corporate Mergers - They always end up with someone having to ask "Do you want fries with that?"

Corporate Monkeys comic #11

Ok we have a few comics that are partially sketched and on their way... AND we're still dynami-fying the site with some cool new features. But until that's ready, here's a one panel about the recent release of a great movie...

http://www.thecorporatemonkeys.com/

feel free to comment

Corporate Monkeys comic #10

Sometimes our one-panels are funny... sometimes they aren't... judge for yourself...

Corporate Monkeys

We are redesigning the site to include comments, an RSS feed, and other features... woohoo!

Corporate Monkeys comic #9

Here's another attempt at single-panel humor.

The extremely short background is that companies in India are beginning to raise their prices, and so cheap labor isn't so cheap anymore. One theory is that we'll just move on to another poor country until they do the same... and so the pattern will continue until some day we just train animals to do our work for us...

Check it out.

http://TheCorporateMonkeys.com/

Corporate Monkeys comic #8 - 1st Anniversary

Well it's been one year since we started the Corporate monkeys. It's been slow going. The ideas came quickly but the implementation remains very time consuming.

We have at least 10 comics sitting in queue and if our art team doesn't get their act together then we may have to out-source the comic creation to India...

So go check out our Anniversary comic. Then read our first comic and you'll be rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter...

http://TheCorporateMonkeys.com

Corporate Monkeys comic #7 - Christmas Edition

Well, it's a few days late... but here's our Christmas comic. It's another attempt at a one-panel story. I think we did a good job.

Check it out:
http://thecorporatemonkeys.com/

On a side note, I'm so glad Christmas is over. I was ready for it to end before it actually happened. This was for a few reasons:
1. I'd been listening to nothing but Christmas music on the radio since thanksgiving. That gets on your nerves after a while.

2. I'd been watching almost nothing but Christmas movies since thanksgiving. Out of 60+ hours of movies that I own, we watched about 36. Yeah I know... that's a bit low... but I'd been busy.

3. As a guy, I don't shop very often (unless you count Best Buy). So going to store after store to find gifts for eleventy billion people really sucked. I should have planned ahead and ordered everything online.

4. And this is the biggest part of all. Now that I'm in a relationship, I have more than one family to see at Christmas. We spent one day with my extended family, and then another day with her extended family, and then I still had to go home ON Christmas day to celebrate with my immediate family. I was freakin tired by Christmas eve.

So now it's over. Time to move on to New Years Eve. Then my 1-year anniversary in January. Then Valentines day in February. Then J-Love's birthday in April. Then a destination wedding in June. Not to mention company trips, and a personal vacation.....

...oh god... I'm never going to get any rest again...