The terrible green couch is a product of their destitute living conditions and the wealth of hand-me-downs in a college town. It’s not all caviar and champagne as a grad student.
Posts Tagged ‘Joelle’
22 items.
To stir things up a bit, I decided to focus on Mary and Joelle, roommates who are fighting their way through graduate school. The addition of the kitten will bring out their interactions (i.e. give them something to fight over).
I really enjoyed this strip, though that’s probably due to the preponderance of pernicious puns.
The second panel takes some of my techniques and really throws them for a loop. I shaded everything in the foreground by my usual 15% opacity black shade layer, then erased the edges. I desaturated the background and then used a light filter (not a lens flare) to give the impression of a projector. To give a hint of…womanness…I added another 15% opacity shade layer to add an extra level of shading to Joelle.
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 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.
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.
Honestly? I really phoned this one in. I was going to make the couch panel really dramatic, but I`m so far behind on so many things I just gave in to the path of least resistance. I hope its minimalist flavor pleases you.
On another note, I noticed that I`ve actually developed a story arc in the middle of an “interestitial” run. I figured I`d have a few throwaways, but this story took on a life of its own and ran off. I`ll have to correct that in the archives. Oh, yeah, and update my archive page.
The face paint on the lobster for this strip and yesterday cracked me up. People seem to have noticed other things (Joelle “poking” the lobster yesterday, for example) but the face paint was my favorite. I like the khakhi uniform and corncob pipe on Macarthurette, too.