Next time, Paste needs to take off his helmet before the slide into the mud. I’m tired of drawing his toasted-up head.
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2391 comics.
This is a proper cartoon for all you big fans of mixed metaphor.
I think the two finishing competitors so far have different experiences to look back on.
Today’s dippy sermonette on cartooning at the Hubris Patreon Page was one I was pretty pleased with. For those of you who don’t Patreon, I post the cartoon a little early, and talk about the nuts-and-bolts of it or some behind-the-scenes aspect.
Don’t feel left out if you only read the cartoon here. It’s not critical information, and not really even cartooning lessons- just some fun trivia about writing or drawing or coloring these particular strips.
If that’s interesting to you, please become a patron. For a buck a month or whatever you like, you too can be Team Hubris and hear what I have to say- in this case, at least- about varying lettering and why you’d wanna.
Crowding the tape. We do it. The cops put up caution tape, the parade functionaries put up sawhorses, the museum directors put up velvet ropes, and we belly up to them as though they’re going to stop the stray bullets, out-of-control floats, and idealism-maddened zealots. And we get sprayed with whatever detritus there is flinging itself past the mostly-imaginary boundaries set up by our social gatekeepers if not by actual physical limitations. Pow.
Witness the ‘innocent by-standers’ on the outermostside of a curve in a Dakar race. Pow.
Those in the first row of a Gallagher concert. Pow.
Those who crowd the line at the bank teller’s window when the sketchy guy who seems to make the teller nervous keeps waving the ragged slip of paper and gesturing to the back of the room with a pistol.
So, don’t ‘crowd the tape’ when watching races that end in man-made swamplands. You’re just gonna get your underpants covered in mud. Even when they’re neatly covered by every other piece of outerwear you’re also wearing.
You have to take the personalities of your characters into consideration when writing these comics. I’ve said that before.
They each have their own voice and behaviors that matter.
Paste, on the one hand, would definitely ride out a crazy stunt.
Lowell, on the other hand, would bail out, after it was kinda too late to bail out.
And you people would stand at the edge of a mudpit and cheer the little rat as he flew to certain doom. Admit it. I got ya figured out.
Lowell isn’t starting a dirty word in the last panel, by the way, he’s ending a perfectly serviceable word. “Enough!” he seems to be saying, though he’s obviously in shock and time has slowed down for poor ol’ Lowell.
I guess it’ll be Monday before we learn what he means by thinking “Enough”, whether he’s a bit shocky or not.
Okay, it’s critique day.
Troy is actually doing lessons with the legendary animator Don Bluth (I’m crazy envious), and so pulled this particular cartoon out of his files rather than doing new stuff for today (his lessons involve doing many, many drawings of the Cheshire Cat, if I understood right, leaving little time to think up new ideas, sketch out said ideas, tighten up the best ones, choose the single best one, ink, scan, and possibly color said concepts and then send them to me before I nod off on Wednesday.)
So, classroom time!
Review and Critique. You guys feel free to join in if you have something constructive to say. (I learned in college that this simple phrase gets misinterpreted often- some people thinking it was an admonition to say only positive things, and others thinking that only serious, deep conversation with lots of vaguely mystical, multi-syllabic words were appropriate.) In this case “constructive” means useful. Non-sarcastic, carefully considered, academically useful.
So here’s mine: “The Blue Lagoon” was a strong movie way back when. It’s not so much any more. That’s often an issue with some cartoonists. I worked with a guy for a few years doing editorial and sports cartoons who LOVED doing movie references, but he’d quit seeing new movies years earlier. His references were often dated. In Troy’s defense, he had homework to do, so went into his archives. That’s fine as far as it goes because he’s burned through a lot of his archive here when time wasn’t on his side. On the other hand, a working pro might’ve skipped over this one, it being a cartoon that dates itself in a serious way. I’m not saying that you guys are 20-somethings, but you might not leap instantly to memories of The Blue Lagoon when enjoying your morning comic strips, either. Considering the audience is part of cartooning.
Considering only the theme and the art, I think it’d be better if it tied tighter into the movie- solidifying the fact that it’s referencing the movie at all. If it were on a beach and the legume were wearing a loincloth and curly wig and sitting next to a legume with only a passing resemblance to Brooke Shields, I think it would, in the parlance of an old editor of mine, “bring the whole concept full circle” Sitting on a park bench is for Forrest Gump. The wordplay is fine, I just don’t see the reason for steering away from the movie. Peanuts are Legumes, right? What if it were Mr. Peanut on a tropical island? There needs to be more than that, of course. What makes that movie stand out? Brooke Shields with no shirt on? The two castaways having a baby? Whatever it is that stands out in that movie for the largest number of readers ought to be in the cartoon, I think. Mr. Peanut could still be looking melancholy and all, thus making him a Blue Legume, but I can’t see abandoning the movie reference altogether.
There you go- my college critique of a perfectly serviceable cartoon. Feel free to remember that I’m old and cranky, and can therefore successfully be ignored.
Mrs. Nutley has her work cut out and placed before her, doesn’t she?
Shepherd her five young’uns around this lunacy and hope they’ll discover a reason to go outside and play, while never seeing the kind of thing that haunts her darkest fear- something that might injure one of the li’l angels.
There’s Tiger Moms, Overprotective Moms, Helicopter Parents, Snowplow Parenting… but what about simple “I put a lot of time and energy into these people I love and I don’t want ’em getting smooshed out there in the big bad world” Parenting?
Or are those all variations on the same thing?
We live in a time when almost anything is a lyric.
If you know enough classic rock, alt rock, golden oldies, country, hip hop, and rap, then there’s probably not a phrase that can get past you without putting a tune in your head.
I don’t think that used to happen in Mozart’s day.
Okay, now everyone… “Head gaaaame…” sing!
I hope ‘pound sand’ isn’t some really obnoxious euphemism these days.
It wasn’t in the dim past, as I recollect it. Doesn’t mean things have changed.
The so-called ‘Urban Dictionary’ is plain wrong on a lot of words, if you ask anyone over 30. And yet…
