For example, if Fooky writes about a character that fits your style, you can illustrate that part of the story.  When writers do this kind of thing they call it "The Exquisite Corpse".   So what shall we call our thing?  Vote!  Or leave your suggestion!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

* Yes, of course you can still contact me directly if you see something you want to illustrate exclusively.

There's something addictive about working on the new Fookleyur site, so we decided to kick it up a notch and use an idea that was planned for the Oddhobby site before there was a name for it (captcha).  Actually, I'm not sure if captcha means goofy letters or if it applies to any human detecting system.  Hmmm, I hope we don't have to change the name. Hold on, let me look it up on the Wiki…

"It is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." Carnegie Mellon University attempted to trademark the term, but the trademark application was abandoned on 21 April 2008."

HA!  Victory is mine!  Ok, so here's a sneak peak of Captcha Royale.  This is my first time using images under the  "Fair Use"  clause–I'm still not very happy about it, but there's no other way to do it.  Still, if you ever see your work on a site I design, please let me know and I will remove it or give you proper credit.   The challenges are selected randomly and our plan is to have enough different challenges such that it will be unlikely to see the same more than once in the course of normal use.

JS

For a while, Fookleyur had fallen off the face of the earth.  By chance, John (Lee) and his son liked to watch BoBoBo, Bo BoBoBo, The Mighty Boosh and other weird shows.  John is a friend, and sometimes client, and the CEO of a consulting firm that does work for small group of publishers in Chicago.  John mentioned (on a blog or something, I forget exactly) that he had a friend who wrote non-sequitur humor; one thing lead to another and we found Fookleyur!

Design For the main page of the new Fookleyur Site

I've fallen in love with the work of many of the artists who have contributed to the Fookleyur project.   When the site goes live you'll understand how difficult it would be to pick a favorite or even a top ten list.  That said, I didn't plan on replacing Fooky's caricature but then I saw "logicly me" by Yell Saccani www.yellsaccani.com.   I don't normally brag about web sites, but Fooky's new site has got to be one of best collections of artists on web; the contributing artists have my unending gratitude and appreciation–I'm sure the first 10 pages of Fooky's blog will express the same sentiment.  We're also both grateful to John Lee and CIL.  CIL did a fantastic job programming the site (including The Captcha Royale) and he customized this blog (check out the rating system).  John Lee donates, teaches and motivates and is a very good friend as well as a client.

We've always known that Fookleyur's work was cutting edge and ahead of its time; so we vowed that if we ever found him we would talk him into creating new content for his site.  There were several reasons he didn't want to do it (I won't go into them), but we were able to talk him into it.

I thought it would just be the 3 of us.  We just wanted to move his site from Bravenet to one of John's prefered hosts.   I found some of the old artwork (I did most of the original artwork for Fookleyur.com) but then I also found some of his old unpublished work–it was a thrill finding a "lost work".  I did a short and very rough animation (John's son is a Flash developer) and John did a voice over (I didn't even know he could do voices–he's really good at it).   We had so much fun we decided to unofficially commit to a new site–a no pressure thing; we'd work on it only when time permitted.  We noticed that even after sitting fallow for years, the site had a disparate little group of followers overseas.   So it was nice to know that others would enjoy the site too. 

The economy tanked, and suddenly I had a lot of free time (although I'm back to work now–nothing big, just keeping the bills paid).    I'm not an egomaniac so I quickly realized that Fooky's work would benefit from different styles with different moods.  So I reached out to artists whose work is profound or poetic or ok… just plain weird.  The response I got was overwhelming; not just artists, not just professional artists but the "best of the best" in my opinion.  

At this point, we all looked at what we had going and decided, "this is a thing now",  "We're going to have to put some effort into this, this is a special project".  I know what you're thinking: "does that mean the site will make money?"   The answer is, no; but we're hoping the site will at least be  enough of a 'reference'  in their portfolios that all the contributors can use it to their benefit.

For now I'm going to skip the history of Fookleyur.com, and Fooky's UseNet days.  I've got 2 interviews I'll publish later.  For now, I'll focus on the site design. 

 Gotta run!  Stay tuned!  Part 2, the contributing artists…  Part 3 more ways to participate…

It is Sunday,  26 September 2010 and Fooky's site is 90% done!  Soon we'll do the beta test.

This blog exists only because I have help from sponsors and friends.  A special thanks to CIL and John Lee of JHLMC.  Full credits can be found on the 'credits' page, and other links on the links page.   When you visit their sites, please give them your support by clicking on any ads you see.  Free sites need your support and just in case you didn't know, they get paid when you click their ads even if you don't buy anything.

In addition to discussing my art and art I like I will blog about the sites I've designed and other projects.  Some of the most promising new designs (for older sites) and projects are:

• Weird Store (just wait until you see the new design!)
• Oddhobby (still in planning)
• Fookleyur — his fans will be really happy I think  (see the special projects page)
• The FOO  (After Fooky's site is done)
• Damn it all to hell .com
• Yikes to Yummy (see the special projects page)
• Other Meez
• and of course Slaughter Art.com