Paul Southworth of Ugly Hill* is starting a new story line, and Dead Baron is a band that will appear this Tuesday (I presume it`s because new albums generally come out on Tuesdays). Make double sure to visit on Monday and Tuesday to check out the new storyline, and while you`re there, read through some of the archives. Ugly Hill is awesome. Tell Paul he rocks, too.
* – Paul Southworth is now on Not Invented Here.
I`m not happy with this one. The writing is loose, the art is bad (especially in panel 2) and I was really pressed for time, so I ended up using something that I think could have been a good idea on a bad strip. Of course, if experience says anything, I`ll actually get several e-mails about how much everyone likes it. It`s odd how things work like that.
That is, of course, one advantage of this format — You get everything, warts and all. Syndicated artists get a whole bunch of strips rejected by their editors, so you`re missing out. Upon further reflection, I`m not sure that`s a bad thing…
The title is a not so clever pun on the name of the first chapter of Half-Life 2, Point Insertion. The comic shares nothing with HL2, I just wanted to use the name.
This is probably going to be one of those strips that few find funny. I had a blast with it. Normally, I add small things to my strips; a background detail here, a particular wording there, that has particular meaning to me. In this case, I`m commandeering a whole comic. Y`all are going to have to accept that this is one of those occasional strips that is totally self-indulgent in its entirety, and though I`ll explain the joke here in my commentary by explaining it I`ll rob it of all its humor. Play along, anyway, it might be insightful.
First off, the big joke here is that self-insertion cartoonist characters, especially those who break the fourth wall, are doomed to failure. By show of hands, how many are familiar with a strip called Garfield? In the first strip, Jon Arbuckle accomplishes all of this. Garfield has gone on to be one of the most successful comics of all time. So, apparently, it can`t guarantee death.
However, this joke is a big one for me, because as I look back on my work on Yet Another Web Comic, I see myself making all the same mistakes (with the exception of breaking the fourth wall, correct me if I`m wrong). The further along I got, the more I regretted each cheap, amateur move I made. This appears to be a common thread among cartoonists, but there`s certainly a learning curve. Just like anything else, you have to make mistakes to learn. For me, I don`t even recognize why something is a mistake in cartooning until its way too late.
All of this is in the context of all the `branching out` I have either done or been trying to do lately with art. I`m hoping to make some big mistakes in the coming weeks, and lots of them. I probably won`t recognize them until months from now, and hopefully they won`t all be in the strip (to spare you, dear reader), but here`s to learning.
Oh, and put your hands down. You`re probably all alone in front of your computer, where nobody can see you. I`ll bet you look ridiculous.
I can`t remember right now, but I think I`ve used A Modest Proposal before…
I had a lot of fun coloring this first panel. Usually I look at coloring as a chore. It limits the amount of comics I can do in a week and makes those comics take longer. I also feel like I can never assemble a good color pallete.
I`ve been reading a lot more books on newspaper comics, mostly those that have lots of samples, and I realize that color selection is always really simplistic. My imagination filled in a lot of the blanks. That`s not to say that Bill Watterson didn`t do a better job coloring his strips, of course, but I realize that I`m a lot better off than I thought, and to get better, I need to actually simplify, not complicate.
This explains how comic artists can do ten or more strips a week, at least one in color (several are rejected by the syndicate).
I picked up a set of French curves on clearance at Wal-Mart and I really like them so far, but they`re taking quite a bit of adjustment to not make my curves look so disconnected and out of place. I inked Sunday`s comic today, and I can already see an improvement. In a few weeks, the word balloons should look a lot better.
I have repeatedly said that the characters in this strip share little more than names with their real-life counterparts. However, I really like writing for Mary, and I`d like to think that a good bit of her real-world counterpart shines through in the character. At least, I hope so…her real world analogue kicks ass.
–Two years later (one year and 50 weeks, actually) I still think this is one of my favorite jokes.
Unfortunately, I tried to do a lot today and color this strip at the last minute, and a layer mistake set me back a half hour, so the colors will be flat. Fortunately, part of those other things include scanning some samples from my sketchbook for the gallery page, so be on the lookout for that in the coming days.
The mark of an amateur is putting your friends in your strip. Sure, it makes everyone happy to see themselves in a comic, but then you`re stuck in a writing corner. I`ve often told everyone that the characters in my strip share name and some characteristics, but nobody is a carbon copy. This still leads to awkward moments…Like Joelle being a grammar Nazi, which is two steps beyond a grammar vigilante. Sorry. Understand the character is not you. To those aspiring cartoonists, I strongly encourage you to come up with characters not inspired by your friends. If you can`t help it, at least change names to protect the innocent. People will see themselves or others in your characters anyway, and they will be based on your experiences, so you can`t escape it entirely, but it`s a real n00b thing to do it this explicitly. I would know, being a huge n00b when I started this.
I like the conflicting personalities here, and I`m glad to be writing for some other characters and exploring them further. I also like the lobster riding on Joelle`s head…that`s totally awesome.
And by the way, I realize there`s a bit of irony in a man with middling grammar to write for a grammar nazi, so forgive that up front. If you must correct me, you can write an e-mail, but I`ll probably never correct it. I have too much to do to go back, but going forward I`ll try to pay attention if it`s not too unabsorbent for my thick head to ingest.
There`s a lot to say for this one. First the title, Atlas Shrugged, merely refers to the use of the word “shoulder” in the comic. It in no way refers to the particular piece of claptrap written by one Ayn Rand, though I could make some kind of remote connection as to the selfishness of the truck driver seizing the road from the more deserving “men (and women) of the mind”, or in this metaphor, our main characters who hold up the world that is the strip. Actually, that`s not half bad…
But I (often) digress. I again focused on the cars to improve my drawing, and as usual made extensive use of Google image search. The car is of no particular make or model, it`s just one of a million mass-produced, uninspired four door sedans that litter our roads. I used a different angle in every panel to force myself to pay attention to the different body details that are apparent and to proportion. I think it`s much improved over my previous work.
Also, I expanded my usual nature drawing. I`m trying to get into rocks, bare earth, and that`s real tough. I added the winding mountain road in the last panel as a technical challenge, and since I have several strips worth penciled already, I can tell you that it helped really improve an upcoming strip. I think you`ll really be pleased. Part of the issue is bare earth, and part is again that nasty perspective, and how differently things look as they get further away.
I also have gotten into the details of the “how”s as well. The roadway was, in parts, blown out of the side of the mountain. The curve in the last panel is one of those parts, and if you were to extend the portion below the road upwards it would eventually come to rest near the word bubbles with the edge of the mountain that still exists today. Just goes to show what can be accomplished with the proper use of explosives. Of course, there`s no way anyone would know that from looking at the strip. I decided it halfway through the rough penciling, went back and made some changes, and the strip looked much better for it. Attention to detail is important, which is difficult to convey in a comic strip which is (at least the past thirty years or so) almost simplistic in nature. Though the detail itself isn`t conveyed, it makes an almost palpable difference in the end product, where something can almost be grasped that was once flat and disconnected.
I wrote the dialog first, and thought it was funny, but the illustration insisted that I attempt to make it the star. I hope that doesn`t rob from the joke. Also, I`d like to point out that it wasn`t intended to be an examination of the attitude of entitlement…But what would happen if the main characters went on strike? Perhaps there`s more Rand in here than I give credit.
I`ll be doing a lot more outdoor scenes and car shots in the coming strips, because that`s where the story`s going to take me. I need to do more auto drawing and I like doing outdoor shots, so it should be interesting.
I`m not happy with the word balloons in the last panel, though. I knew better than to position them that way. The rightmost one comes first, and I tried to convey that by making it higher. It just didn`t work, and I knew it wouldn`t but sometimes we make dumb choices. Oh, well, it`s good enough.
The title comes from a memorable episode of How I Met Your Mother, a show which I will actually half-watch while I am hacking away poorly-colored comics in the evening.
I`m not happy with the joke construction on this one, and now I`m going to have to back myself out of the hole I`ve written myself into later (more on that as it develops), but I`m not totally upset with the result. I particularly like how mine linework and shading turned out today, especially the background. I tried to make it interesting since I didn`t fill it with stuff, and I ripped off Danielle Corsetto`s technique (Girls With Slingshots). She`s been awesome to me lately, really inspirational, so I figured who better to rip off?
The joke was my favorite part of this. I realize, however, I still can`t draw vehicles. That`s something I`ll need to remedy.
I put the lobster in her lap to get him into the strip. I never intended to have a lobster long-term, much less have him be so popular. In all honesty, it still amazes me today.