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Strong Bad Email

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 originally planned to be simple and short,^[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 plan 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]

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.

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

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 the 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 be 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,^  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] 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)

email thunder September 23, 2008

hremails

2009 remarks on the sbemail pause... Matt: "200 was just a nice round number to take a break from it and do other stuff on the website. Not that it starts to get old, but if we never did another one I'd be okay with it." OMG Nintendo Interview - 12 May 2009 Mike: "The content is more varied now. Before, at least 60% to 70% of the updates were Strong Bad Emails, but now it's sort of a mixed bag. It's a little more fun for us." [1]

hremail 3184–videography October 5, 2009

The Big Hiatus (2010–2013)

See main article: Hiatuses

sbemail206 was teased by Matt on Twitter in 2012, over three years before its eventual completion.

@ronginald

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
• april fools day
• Kickstarter backer reward

Production

Early 2003:

• sb getting 500 daily emails Run Devil Run Interview
• 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

Mid 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.
• Mondays that year would see nearly 300,000 visits for the new sbemail The Boston Globe Interview - 9 Aug 2003
• "they [...] spend a couple of hours every day sorting through questions for Strong Bad. The brothers say they haven’t done as many new cartoons as they’d like because Strong Bad’s e-mail responses have become longer and more time-consuming." https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2003/07/22/tooned-in-2/
• "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." Club Aquatica Interview - 29 Oct 2003

100 flashback March 16, 2004

they got an office in 2004

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 200

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.