MS Paint Adventures

rdf:langString MS Paint Adventures

rdf:langString Action-adventure, Puzzle, Comedy-Drama, Science Fiction, Science Fantasy

rdf:langString Ended in 2018

rdf:langString MS Paint Adventures

rdf:langString mspaintadventures.com

rdf:langString MS Paint Adventures, abbreviated MSPAdventures or MSPA, was a website and collection of webcomics written and illustrated by Andrew Hussie. According to some estimates, MS Paint Adventures was the largest collection of comics on the Internet, containing over 10,000 pages as of April 2016 among its five series thanks to its frequent updates. The comics were written in serial works or "adventures" in a manner that parodied interactive fiction games. The characters' actions were originally driven by commands suggested by fans in the comics' official forum, but fan suggestions were eventually abandoned due to the size of the fanbase and the author's desire to tell a more coherent story. The comics tended to draw inspiration from video games, imitating and parodying genres such as RPGs and simulation games. They frequently reference other aspects of current internet culture. Despite its name, the site's comics have been created primarily in Adobe Photoshop, not Microsoft Paint, other than the first page of Jailbreak; Hussie decided after that page that telling a story using Paint was not feasible. Over time, the comics evolved from simple static images and captions to frequent animations set to original music, and occasionally to interactive games created in Flash and HTML5. One adventure, Homestuck, has given rise to a large fan community as made evident by the increasing amount of fan art and cosplay at comic book conventions. The rapid rise in the popularity of Homestuck led to its recognition at the Toronto Comics Art Festival for two years running, and it brought, on average, over 600,000 unique views to the site daily. An adventure game spinoff of Homestuck titled Hiveswap was released September 14, 2017 and was produced with funds contributed by fans of the comic via Kickstarter. This project raised nearly $2.5 million, exceeding its goal of $700,000 in a little under two days, at that time being the 6th largest Kickstarter drive. A sequel titled Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon was launched October 25, 2019. MS Paint Adventures supported its author financially, formerly through the sale of merchandise on the online store TopatoCo as well through advertising, and the site's own store and record label, What Pumpkin. Music used in the comics is sold through Bandcamp. In 2014 a majority of merchandise began a slow migration to We Love Fine. In October 2017, VIZ Media announced acquisition of the publishing rights to Homestuck, and their plans to republish the graphic novel adaptations of Homestuck starting in April 2018. Today, the MS Paint Adventures website redirects to homestuck.com; all works prior to Homestuck are available at this URL, while later works such as Homestuck^2 are on their own websites.