HRWiki:Projects/SBEmail Production History

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 23:33, 22 January 2025

Additional sections to expand and improve the Strong Bad Email article with behind-the-scenes information sourced from Interviews and Public Appearances and Links#Articles (initially started in the HRWiki:Sandbox page by User:Bleu Ninja).

To do:

• History
  • Finish recounting through 2022
  • Add information that does not need third-party citations
    • In-universe information: A couple emails are mentioned, either as landmarks (first, first weekly, 100th, 200th/preceding pause) or because an interview specifically mentions them. Maybe we also mention a few particularly famous/noteworthy/popular ones — dragon, virus, japanese cartoon, kind of cool — where appropriate, though would be tricky to maintain NPOV and limit the listing. Mentioning when Strong Bad got a new computer might make sense.
    • Releases: Mention when DVDs, Podstar Runner, and YouTube became a thing (though of course the full lists should remain in their own section)
    • See if there are any statistics, such as sbemails becoming longer over time, that would make for good supporting evidence. Strong Bad Email Statistics and/or Category:Strong Bad Email Research could be useful resources
• Production
  • Cite "types of emails not to send" list

To be discussed: (See: talk page section)

• At what point in the article should this be added?
  • My vote is for "Strong Bad Emails" - "History" - "Production" - "Releases"

• Are there any extant subsections and fun facts that can be integrated into these new sections?
  • "Milestones", suggested by User:Stux

• Do we make mention of SBCG4AP?
  • Yes

• Can we find an explicit "here's why we decided to have Strong Bad start checking emails..." story or quote? The writeup is an awkwardly implicit "Strong Bad was very popular... fans were emailing TBC... you can see where I'm going with this, right?"

History

See also Timeline of Homestar Runner

Prehistory

See also Strong Bad#Character Design and Conception

Strong Bad is one of the oldest Homestar Runner characters, created alongside the title character for The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest in 1996. Despite — or perhaps because of — his role as an antagonist in early works, he swiftly became a fan favorite and breakout character. The Brothers Chaps took note of fans' enjoyment of Strong Bad's tendency to humorously insult other characters without coming across as actually cruel or threatening,^[1][2] and had begun to realize that Strong Bad had become "the most interesting" character as early as the release of A Jumping Jack Contest in 2000.^[1] Also around this time, the brothers were exploring the potential of the characters in toons like A Jorb Well Done and new series formats like Marzipan's Answering Machine.^[2]

The first sbemails (2001)

The first Strong Bad Email toon was some kinda robot, released August 22, 2001.

An email address to contact the Chaps was listed on the site from its earliest days (it would be removed in late 2015). As of a few months before the launch of Strong Bad's email account, the brothers were typically receiving "five or ten mails a day" from fans;^[3] one such fan had been Abdi LaRue. Requiring an email for Strong Bad to reply to, the Brothers Chaps reached out to LaRue: informing them of Strong Bad's then-new email address and suggesting they send him an email.^[4] Abdi's email (inquiring if Strong Bad takes off his mask and boxing gloves when sleeping) was answered August 22, 2001 in the first Strong Bad Email: some kinda robot.

THE BROTHERS CHAPS: Strong Bad emails were meant to be a really short thing to occupy the space between our longer cartoons. But they ended up turning Strong Bad into one of the most interesting characters.^[5]

Sbemails were initially envisioned as a simple and short feature,^[5] in the manner of a pseudo-advice column.^[6] Early sbemails typically ran for a minute or less, and frequently would only feature Strong Bad typing at his computer. The original idea had been to write a reply from Strong Bad to every email he received, with one selected each week that would be voiced, animated, and posted on the website; this plan was almost immediately abandoned,^[7][8] with the volume of responses (fifteen emails a day) immediately recognized as too much to deal with.^[7] Even emails that were selected would not receive a reply, with the sender only realizing they'd been chosen upon viewing the resultant toon.

At this point, both brothers still had full-time jobs^[2][8] and lived in different states (Mike in Georgia, Matt in New York),^[2][3] necessitating a split production. Mike, who worked freelance and had more free time,^[2][3] would animate while Matt provided voices; writing duties were shared between the two.^[3] Some early entries had no script, with Matt simply reading through then riffing on a fan's email and sending the resultant audio file to Mike for animation.^[6][9][10] Sbemails, much like the rest of HomestarRunner.com, were not being updated on a set schedule at this point: they were released on varying days of the week, usually with over a week elapsing between them. A total of seven email toons were released in 2001.

Weekly schedule (2002–2008)

MATT CHAPMAN: I'd been living in New York, and then I moved back [to Georgia] and we decided "Hey, let's start doing something every week." We'd done a few Strong Bad Emails at that point, but we decided "that's the easiest thing we could do. We could do one of those a week." So that was 2002 — I feel like just the weekly updating of Strong Bad Emails was really when [the site's popularity] started to go crazy.^[11]

Sbemails released in 2002, such as techno, gained significant traction and led to the burgeoning popularity of Homestar Runner.

2002 was a significant year for Homestar Runner. Matt moved back to Georgia, with the brothers sharing an apartment, and now that they could collaborate in-person they strove to dedicate more time to the website. The then-simple Strong Bad Email toons were selected as something that could be done every week.^[11] The email that established this weekly pace was brianrietta^[10] on January 10, 2002; the subsequent email, i love you (released January 14), standardized the practice of releasing a new sbemail every Monday. Most updates released in 2002 were Strong Bad Emails.

The site's popularity gradually increased throughout the year,^[12] boosted by the new weekly schedule.^[5] At the time, high-speed internet in homes was less common and the site's fans were more likely to watch the toons at work (often in technical jobs) or at colleges, its popularity spread via word-of-mouth; fittingly, viewership and merchandise sales saw a spike in September coinciding with the beginning of the school year.^[11] Both brothers still had full-time jobs at the beginning of the year,^[8] but income from the store allowed both to leave their other work to focus on Homestar Runner full-time by the September spike.^[12][13] Matt would later recall the 2002 emails guitar and techno as being particularly popular, influencing their selection of emails to focus on humorously disparaging specific niches.^[11]

Strong Bad Email's popularity surged in the following years. Strong Bad was already receiving hundreds of emails a day at the beginning of 2003^[7] — mere months later, two to five thousand emails a day become the standard for years^[6] (the deluge of messages peaked at nearly 8,000 a day in the summer of 2003,^[6] with the caveat that a significant portion was simply spam^[14]). Mondays in 2003 were seeing nearly 300,000 visitors coming to the site to watch the new sbemail,^[13] compared to 200,000 on other days.^[15] A common inquiry^[2][7] — addressed on both FAQ pages — was if the emails Strong Bad answers were genuinely sent by fans: they all are, with the exception of mile (which was purportedly made up by The Cheat).

Though the brothers had hoped to add another weekly feature,^[2][9] the demands of running their own business restricted their time.^[9][16] Additionally, as Strong Bad Emails continued to increase in runtime and complexity, their production took away from opportunities to make other types of cartoons;^[15] the Chaps estimated that "at least 60 to 70 percent" of the site's updates were sbemails.^[17] However, they did not feel limited by the popularity of the series, with Matt reflecting that "when we feel Strong Bad Emails are getting old, we can quickly jump into something else."^[18] The toon Sbemailiarized!, released in 2009, joked that "not all that much!" was differentiating sbemails from the other cartoons on the site.

Milestones

Emails that reached a centenary milestone, or a significant division thereof, often focused on (or at least made note of) the landmark. Thus far, five emails have commemorated a significant number of emails; several of these had been teased with an additional toon released the week prior that played off viewers' anticipation.

• 50: 50 emails — Strong Bad attempts to check 50 emails in honor of his 50th email-check; he only succeeds in answering three.
• 100: flashback — The email is presented in "wiiidescreeeen". Marzipan, Homestar Runner, Senor Cardgage, Old-Timey Strong Bad, and Limozeen congratulate him on his 100th email (although Homestar absentmindedly wishes him a "happy 100th birthday" instead). The Compy presents Strong Bad with a congratulatory screen indicating that he has checked 100 emails, and Strong Bad celebrates by saying "email" 100 times.
  • Sbemail 100 Fakeout — Viewers hoping to see email 100 before its official release are teased by Strong Bad.
• 125: rock opera — Strong Bad performs a rock opera featuring scenes and at least one word from all of Strong Bad's previous emails.
• 150: alternate universe — Strong Bad visits alternate universes featuring different versions of himself; they all form a supergroup to sing a ballad commemorating the "sesquicentennemail".
  • Sbemail 150?!? — Strong Sad trys to convince Strong Bad to check a 150th email, proposing a storyboard for it.
• 200: email thunder — The Poopsmith breaks his vow of silence to sing a grand fanfare (by They Might Be Giants). The email also ends with a screen listing the first 200 emails.
  • Place Ya Bets! — The Deleteheads speculate on what will happen in email 200.
  • Sbemail 200 Fakeout — The Deleteheads camp out at the sbemail200.html URL.

Bicentennial and Break (2008–2009)

MATT CHAPMAN: 200 was a nice round number to take a break from [Strong Bad Email] and do other stuff on the website.^[19]

The milestone of 200 emails was reached on September 23, 2008: email thunder. The narrative of this cartoon quickly shifts from celebrating Strong Bad's achievement to a surprising reveal: Homestar Runner has his own competing email show — hremails — that has been running parallel with sbemails. Though the toon ends with Strong Bad gleefully destroying Homestar's computer, the coming months would see the release of additional hremails and other cartoons while the Brothers Chaps took a pause from producing more sbemails. In interviews, the brothers expressed that this hiatus was taken to vary their output and that, though they were enjoying the variety, this did not necessarily signal the end of sbemails.^[17][19]

"I've got other plans for the Lappy today."

Another landmark in 2008 was the release of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, produced by Telltale Games in partnership with the Brothers Chaps (the first time Homestar Runner had been licensed out to a third party). This five-part episodic video game centered around Strong Bad's adventures, kicked off by answering emails in the manner of the site's toons (notably, these emails were created by Telltale's writers^[20] rather than sent by fans); each game also featured additional, optional emails the player could guide Strong Bad to read, respond to, or delete. Though the release of the game's episodes overlapped with sbemails going on hiatus, the brothers were quick to specify that the decision to pause sbemail production was not a result of the SBCG4AP workload.^[19]

Strong Bad Emails returned in 2009, with Strong Bad reclaiming the fanmail format from Homestar in hremail 3184 on June 30. Four more emails were subsequently produced, albeit now at a monthly rate rather than the previous weekly pace. The 205th email, videography, was released October 5, 2009; though this toon was not particularly noteworthy or conclusive on its own, it would prove to be the last email for over five years.

The Big Hiatus (2010–2013)

See main article: Hiatuses

sbemail206 was first teased more than three years before its eventual completion.

Updates to HomestarRunner.com began to slow in late 2009, quickly and dramatically dropping to where only three toons were produced in 2010. The site entered an extended hiatus in 2011, with no new toons for over three years.

During this hiatus, Matt occasionally posted to his Twitter account @ronginald. He affirmed that the site would continue to be updated "forever! just sporadically and without warning", and hinted that a new Strong Bad Email could be released "Someday, when you least expect it...".

Modern Era (2015–present)

MATT CHAPMAN: We're not expecting [Homestar Runner] to be our full-time gig [again], we just want this to be fun. There were points in the initial run where it was a great job, but it was also stressful. If we want to make a great cartoon, every couple months it will be something new. But we're not going to stay awake all night just to finish a Strong Bad email.^[21]

HomestarRunner.com became active again in 2014, albeit without a schedule and with a slower pace of updates as the new standard;^[21] as the main pages put it, the site is now "updated every someday". Strong Bad Emails returned with sbemail 206 on April 1, 2015. The email cheekily acknowledges the time that had passed between emails; however, befitting its release date, it is primarily an April Fools' Day cartoon that is not centered around Strong Bad replying to a message from a fan.

See also @StrongBadActual

Sbemail 206 also began the practice of ending with a prompt for fans to "email" Strong Bad by replying to @StrongBadActual on Twitter (rather than emailing strongbad@homestarrunner.com). The Twitter account @StrongBadActual began posting regularly in 2014. This account is presented as being run by Strong Bad, and nearly all posts are written in-character to some degree. In the post-hiatus era, it has become the most active facet of the body of work and superseded many features: acknowledging fan works, sharing production artwork, and announcing new toons and projects have all been done through this account. Though only two full Strong Bad Emails have been made in response to fans' tweets, the account has generally substituted for sbemails' primary function of allowing Strong Bad to interact directly with fans.

Four Strong Bad Emails have been made since 2015. As there is no longer a set schedule for the feature, they are typically motivated by a holiday or made as a reward for a fan contest rather than simply checking Strong Bad's inbox at an arbitrary time:

• sbemail 206 (April 1, 2015) — An April Fools' Day cartoon
• too cool (August 14, 2017) — The winner of a fill-in-the-blank contest
• the next april fools thing (April 1, 2018) — Initially presenting as an April Fools' Day cartoon, the toon is soon revealed to be a sbemail responding to a fan's tweet
• parenting (April 1, 2022) — Produced as a reward for a backer of the Trogdor!! The Board Game Kickstarter, "not an April Fool's Joke".^[22]

Production

Selecting an email

Due to the popularity of Strong Bad Email, it was impossible for the Brothers Chaps to read every message in Strong Bad's inbox. The strongbad@homestarrunner.com account would regularly receive two to five thousand emails a day,^[6][23] requiring the email server to mass-delete the inbox every few days.^[6][23]

The Brothers Chaps would read through emails for hours at a time,^[7][15] arbitrarily selecting chunks of dozens to read through^[6] as they reviewed hundreds of emails in a sitting;^[14] it could take up to 4-5 hours to decide on an email.^[8] The emails would be read in Strong Bad's voice, seeing if humorous riffs or interesting directions to potentially take the toon would emerge naturally.^[6][23][24] Emails with potential were typically identified quickly, "within the first five seconds" of reading — a simple misspelling or idea of how to mock the sender's name could be the impetus for a toon.^[24] The brothers maintained a "good ones" folder of emails that could be used weeks or months later.^[6][25] Other times, the Brothers Chaps would have an idea in mind for a toon and would search the inbox to find an email on the subject:^[6] for instance, Accent had already mostly been written as the topic had been a recurring subject, and when the time came to finish the cartoon they simply searched the inbox for an appropriate email to "reverse-engineer" the cartoon's framing device.^[25]

MATT CHAPMAN: There's a lot of repetition [in the emails]. People can’t seem to get over how Strong Bad types with boxing gloves on.
MIKE CHAPMAN: For the most part they are not very interesting. I wade through them for a couple hours a week and usually only find a handful that can be used. About 80% of them ask how he can type so fast with boxing gloves on.^[7]

Strong Bad would typically receive thousands of emails every day.

The Brothers Chaps would frequently remark that a significant portion — or even the majority — of emails received were repetitive (with another portion as spam, from people simply entering strongbad@homestarrunner.com in email fields around the Internet), asking the same questions that were invariably deleted. These offending subjects were so consistent that the brothers had even considered making a meta email where Strong Bad would address the topic.^[14][25] Such topics included:

• Asking how Strong Bad types with boxing gloves on^[7][14] or what he looks like without his mask^[8]
  • some kinda robot obliquely addressed this, while the chair poked fun at the concept.
• Requesting Strong Bad repeat a topic from a previous email,^[14][23] with requests to draw Trogdor (or another dragon) again especially common^[5][8][25]
• Suggesting a parody of a currently popular movie, event, or cultural phenomenon^[5][8][23]
  • The 2006 Winter Olympics were given as an example of an avoided topic in 2006,^[8] by comparison, the Olympics parody strong badathlon was not in an Olympic year and the email Strong Bad responds to was not about the Olympics.
• Inquiring about characters' parents, particularly asking what they look like^[5][8]
• Using obviously intentionally-poor spelling and grammar to bait a mocking response^[24]
• The same email address sending several emails in a row,^[26] or an identical email again and again^[24][26]
• Taking "too long" (over four or five sentences) to get to the point of the message, though an overly-wordy email could be edited for clarity^[14]
  • In long pants, Strong Bad aggressively truncates an email he deems too long.
  • The email presented in space program was originally over twice as long when sent to Strong Bad.

Writing

The earliest sbemails were written and animated in one sitting,^[9][14] but as of 2004 the Brothers Chaps allowed themselves several days for writing and brainstorming.^[6][8][27] After selecting an email, the brothers would talk through ideas while at their homes^[6] or their office,^[8] chatting amongst themselves, going on walks, and otherwise drawing inspiration from their surroundings; Matt described their writing process as something that they "try to let happen more naturally."^[28]

After a few days of fine-tuning,^[27] the brothers would each write their own script for the story and ideas they had come up with together. These scripts would be compared and compiled, using the best parts of each.^[8] With the final script in place, Matt (the voice actor for most characters) would still ad-lib or reinterpret the lines during the recording process: "nine times out of ten what ends up coming out of my mouth is usually a little different. And sometimes just through me screwing up we'll come up with funnier ideas."^[9]

Animation

"Making of Email 100" provided a look into the office of the Brothers Chaps during the three-day production of flashback.

At first (and even for a while much later into the process) done in one long sprint - Sunday evening into Monday AM

• Sundays set aside for sbemails Penguin Brothers Interview - 26 May 2003
  • Mike: "The Strong Bad emails are written and made on Sunday nights, starting at about 6PM. And then we have a marathon, 16 hour, no sleeping, drinking five Red Bulls, type of thing."^[12]

MIKE: Let's see. We'll start with Sunday. We are looking through Strong Bad emails for several hours on Saturday and Sunday, trying to find the one that we're gonna do, and generally we start working anywhere from 4 pm until 10 pm on Sunday night. And we've been pretty bad about procrastinating lately. And then once we get started on it we work pretty much non-stop; usually Sunday nights we're up until six or seven in the morning, working straight through. They generally take, like, twelve to fifteen hours, depending.^[9]

"it's actually pretty much 50/50 on the animation. [...] While I'm recording, Mike will be on another computer doing the graphics for the next cartoon or whatever, but then once it's recorded we both just split up whatever scenes are in that email or cartoon and each of us will just take half the cartoon and animate it." ^[9] I'll start at the beginning and Mike will start at the end and we work toward the middle.^[6]

"We try and start looking on Tuesday for an email, and then hopefully have it written and recorded by Thursday or Friday so then we're just animating all weekend. Fifty percent of the time we do that. The other fifty percent, we just pull an all-nighter and put it up Monday afternoon or something."^[6]

MATT CHAPMAN: We've been trying lately to get them written and recorded before the weekend, but we always end up deviating, sometimes even completely rewriting them when we actually start making them. So we can't escape the all-nighter thing. We always feel like that's where most of the gold–if there is gold on our website–has come from. Those five minutes before we decide to upload a cartoon and we think of some other thing.^[23] (2005)

Animation taking place during the last three or four days of the week (2006)^[8]

road trip (DVD commentary) (toon 2006, DVD released 2007) MIKE: We used to rely on— that's why emails aren't up always on Monday mornings like they used to be. {Karen laughs} We used to just drink a bunch of [Red Bull] until they were done and then I'd just go to bed and finish up by morning. [...] Babies and those darn wives. {Matt laughs} Ever since we got those darn wives!

General details + changes over time

The runtime of sbemails slowly increased over time, with a runtime of 3–5 minutes becoming the standard by the late Compy era.

How long does it take?

• 6-7 hours "originally"^[27]
• 8 hrs in 2003^[1]
• less than 20 hours. The Brunswickan Interview - 4 Apr 2003
• Matt estimates 12-15hrs (June 2003)^[12]
• 15 hours Atlanta Journal-Constitution Interview - 21 Jul 2003
• 18-24 hours for animation/recording + "a couple of days to write it"; "20-something hours of work" total (2006)^[27]
• 18-35 hours for animation/recording + "a few days of writing on top of that"Oct 2006^[28]

Bros. began working full-time on H*R in late 2002^[12][13]. Office of The Brothers Chaps in 2004^[6][8]

retrospective remarks

various "we'd hope to build up a backlog" comments^[6][14][addn'l citations?] which they never seem to have been able to do.

"We’re not going to stay awake all night just to finish a Strong Bad email [any more]."^[21]

MIKE: There was also some creative burnout too. We had been doing it for 10 years and we probably stuck to that weekly schedule a little more strictly than we needed to, so we needed a break. It was definitely a slog sometimes. Like Saturday you’re at a friend’s house and it slowly dawns on you that “ah shit, we don’t have an idea for a cartoon.” Even during the hiatus I’d feel weird on the weekends because for 10 years there was this cloud looming over me that I had 20 hours straight of sitting in front of a computer bleary-eyed on Sunday night. Gizmodo Interview - 24 Jan 2017

References