User:Starblueheather/Okashina Okashi - Strange Candy

Okashina Okashi - Strange Candy is a webcomic drawn by Emily Snodgrass (Emi-chan) and written by Allison Brownlow (Tanzy), Karen Olympia (Kourin), and J. Baird (Xuanwu). It was started in 2001, with Brownlow as its first writer, with Olympia added to the team in October 2001. The comic is hosted on Comic Genesis, a free hosting provider for webcomics.

Baird considers Okashina Okashi one of the three most important comics — alongside Penny Arcade and Dinosaur Comics — in the fields of education and public health for facilitating the development of art-based research methods and a variety of educational projects. This involvement began when Baird used the comic as part of his classroom exercises while teaching for Hess Educational Organization, an English education provider in the Republic of China and Singapore. Similarly, he used the comic again when he volunteered to teach the Create a Comic Project, a free after-school youth literacy library activity in New Haven, CT.

Snodgrass has appeared at some conventions, speaking on fan-run and amateur artist panels. Baird has also appeared at convention panels. Snodgrass is an amateur artist who does not make a living from her online strip.

In August 2007, Snodgrass branched out with a spin-off comic set in the Beauty Man Garden, a fictional chain of restaurants in Okashina Okashi. The comic was called Mini BMG. This attempt at another comic "fizzled pretty quickly" but Snodgrass hopes to relaunch it someday, hoping "to plan better and have more comics done."