HRWiki:Projects/SBEmail Production History

From Homestar Runner Wiki

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 mention a few particularly famous/noteworthy/popular ones — dragon, virus, japanese cartoon, too 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 can be integrated into these new sections?

• Do we make mention of SBCG4AP? Production of the game didn't lead to pausing sbemails, but the game uses Strong Bad Emails as a framing device throughout.

• Also noting that I haven't tracked down a "here's why we decided to have Strong Bad start checking emails..." story or quote, which is why 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 were realizing 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, toons like A Jorb Well Done and Marzipan's Answering Machine began to focus less on Homestar entering competitions which allowed for the cast to be explored in new directions.^[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] 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, and now that the brothers 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, spreading 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] — a number that would climb to a range from two to five thousand a day and remain there 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).

Strong Bad celebrated the milestone of 50 Emails on November 11, 2002. The 100th email, flashback, was released March 16, 2004.

Though the brothers had hoped to add another weekly feature,^[2] the demands of running their own business restricted their time.^[16] Additionally, as Strong Bad Emails became longer and more complex over time, their production time 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.

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. Subsequent emails were released at a monthly rate rather than the previous weekly pace, continuing with four additional emails. The 205th email, videography, was released October 5, 2009; though this toon was not particularly noteworthy 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)

sbemail 206 April 1, 2015

@StrongBadActual

post-hiatus emails have almost always been motivated by an external factor and/or have additional context beyond "let's check the email" (sentence could be reworded)

• april fools day
• Twitter contest (though every email since 206 has encouraged viewers to "tweet to email", this is the only one to actually respond to a tweet)
• april fools day
• Kickstarter backer reward

Production

Early/Mid 2003

• sb getting 500 daily emails ^[7]
• 8 hrs to make a sbemail https://web.archive.org/web/20030201082658/http://www.resexcellence.com/hack_html_03/01-30-03.shtml
  • Mike pointed out that the average Strongbad e-mail comes together in less than 20 hours. The Brunswickan Interview - 4 Apr 2003

• 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." Matt estimates 12-15hrs Tastes Like Chicken Interview

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

Mid/Late 2003

• sb getting 7,000 emails a day Atlanta Journal-Constitution Interview - 21 Jul 2003
• 15 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Interview - 21 Jul 2003 hours to make a sbemail toon.
• "they [...] spend a couple of hours every day sorting through questions for Strong Bad.^[15]
• "We're actually working on it all week. We'll check out, like, one or two hundred emails in a sitting, and if one catches our eye, we'll plot it out kinda, but we really work best with the Strong Bad emails to do it all in one big shot over the weekend."^[14]

2004

They got an office in 2004^[8]

• The Brothers Chaps explained in a 2007 interview that emails were typically chosen quickly, that they tried to come up with an idea "within the first five seconds" of reading a submission — noting that a simple misspelling or idea or how to mock the sender's name could be the impetus for a toon.

JOHN1974: I've got a question for you guys. Somebody asked this in on the Red vs. Blue site, and I thought I'd steal it and make it my own. When you guys are picking an email— I'm sure you get tons of email for Strong Bad— What do you look for to know, "Hey, that's a good email, that one needs to be made fun of." Is it the name of the person emailing, is it the question, the lousy spelling and grammar, or what is it?
MIKE: It can be any or all or combinations. Usually like within the first five seconds of looking at an email, either it's deleted or you are thinking about something. Most of the time, it is deleted.
MATT: Yeah, it's sort of like, you read an email and a Strong Bad keeps talking in your head, like he starts to respond to the email in your head, then it's like, okay, and you sort of see where he goes with it. And if it starts to be funny, I mean, often times we'll pick an email because I'll be like, "Hey, what about this one, Mike?" and I read it and then think of the first thing, yeah, think of how Strong Bad makes fun of their name or what they said or how they spelled whatever. And then, we'll be like, "Ah! That's funny! That's a good enough joke!" and then we come up for something for the email. Yeah, sometimes, just the person not knowing how to spell something will get it in the door. But then at the same time, there's obvious ones where we can tell they're trying to misspell things on purpose, to try and get Strong Bad to make fun of it.

• In various interviews, the Brothers have listed subjects or elements that led to emails being ignored and deleted (even mentioning in 2007 that they had considered making a meta email addressing the topic):
  • Asking how Strong Bad types with boxing gloves on or what he looks like without his mask (addressed obliquely in some kinda robot and the chair)
  • Requesting Strong Bad repeat a previous email, such as by drawing Trogdor again
  • Suggesting he parody a current movie, event, or pop-culture phenomenon
  • Inquiring about characters' parents, such as asking what they look like
  • Intentionally misspelling words to bait a mocking response
  • Submitting the same email multiple times
  • Sending a block of emails from the same address
  • Taking "too long" — over four or five sentences — to get to the point of the message

Server deletes everything every couple days. A lot is just spam.^[6]

"He still gets 2,000, 3,000 a day, something like that. Our mail server deletes everything every three days." Giant Magazine Interview April/May 2005

2006

• it took up "most of the brothers’ time" to make sbemails: “They take between an 18- to 24-hour range of straight animation and recording of the voices and music,” Matt said. “It usually takes a couple of days to write it, while throwing ideas around and fine tuning it. A four minute cartoon is usually 20-something hours of work.” https://web.archive.org/web/20221216192224/https://dailyemerald.com/archives/ask-strong-bad/article_3b9a3ac1-0888-5a6b-a3fc-b57f1ef5b407.html
• Process
  • Mondays or Tuesdays they begin looking, can take 4-5 hours
  • Brainstorm
  • Write separately, compare and merge
  • animation taking place during the last three or four days of the week
• "Emails and short toons are in the 18-35 hour category for animation and recording. Then there's a few days of writing on top of that. I'm not sure what the breakdown is on writing vs. animating since we tend to do the animation in one long marathon session. The writing we try to let happen more naturally." Zoinks! Magazine Interview Oct 2006

2010s

they never quite got a backlog going

“We’re not expecting this to be our full-time gig, 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,” Matt says. “So now, 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.” Rolling Stone Interview - 3 Oct 2014

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

reflist

1. ^  Coyle, Michael. "The Creators of Homestar Runner, The Brothers Chapman". ResExcellence. January 2003.
2. ^  Carriveau, Derrek. "Legion Interviews Mike Chapman of Homestarrunner.com". Legion Studios. 2002.
3. ^  Stephan. "Interview: Mike Chapman from homestar runner". wtf i'm l33t. Summer 2001.
4. ^  some kinda robot (DVD commentary); @StrongBadActual tweet (16 Apr 2020)
5. ^  Allin, Jack. "Strong Bad’s the Brothers Chaps". Adventure Gamers. 12 Dec 2008.
6. ^  Carlson, Jay. "The Inkhole Exclusive Interview with Homestar Runner Co-Creator Matt Chapman". The Inkhole. July 2004.
7. ^  Neutron, C. "Interview with Mike and Matt Chapman, creators of Homestarrunner.com". Run Devil Run, 2003.
8. ^  Chapman, Mike and Matt Chapman. "How and Why Homestar Runner Cartoons Get Made". Flashforward 2006 Seattle conference, 28 Feb 2006, Seattle. Lecture.
9. ^  Scott, Kevin. "The Homestar Runner Interview". UMFM, 20 May 2003.
10. ^  halloweener (DVD commentary)
11. ^  Rubin, Jeff. "Homestar Runner's Matt Chapman". The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show, episode 123. 7 July 2014.
12. ^  Chinsang, Wayne. "Homestar Runner's The Brothers Chaps". Tastes Like Chicken. June 2003.
13. ^  Aucoin, Don. "Looking at a Thing in a Bag". The Boston Globe. 9 August 2003.
14. ^  Dan. "Matt Chapman Interview". Club Aquatica. 29 October 2003.
15. ^  Hirsch, Deborah. "Tooned In". The Orlando Sentinel. 22 July 2003.
16. ^  Carriveau, Derrek. "Legion Interviews Matt Chapman of Homestarrunner.com". Legion Studios. 2002.
17. ^  Raugust, Karen. "Catching Up with Homestar Runner". Animation World Network. 14 May 2009.
18. ^  Simpson, Aaron. "Homestar's Show Runners, Part 2". Cold, Hard Flash. 4 October 2006.
19. ^  Ashby, Alicia. "One year of WiiWare: Matt and Mike Chapman on Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People". OMG Nintendo. 12 May 2009.
20. ^  Henning, Jesse. "Hands-On: Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People". GameCyte. 16 May 2008.