I get tickled thinking about a bunch of keyed up adults, showing off their new toys on the drive and POW! After the first paintball goes off, and everyone’s had a nice laugh, and the adrenaline starts to sour in their bloodstreams… then the second shot, then the mayhem.
It’s more the airsoft guys who wear full combat gear around here than it is the paintball people. I guess, technically, you could wear one of those inflatable sumo wrestler suits just as well. Well, YOU couldn’t probably. Nobody expects any better out of ME, though. I could probably get away with it.
Oh, it’s good to be back. I’m a little sleep deprived, a little soft around the midsection, and a little jumpy, but the book got finished. There will no doubt be some changes made when the ad agency and the client look over things, but those are never the long, hard slog that the actual painting of the pages are. I have a giant list of things to get caught up on. But…I’m an extra week ahead on The Buckets suddenly. I have some invoices out that I will be very happy to have paid.
And I finally got to draw Paste in the Ghillie suit, which has been pencilled for a while, but of course I couldn’t get it done yet.
Now. Are you ready for some Paintbaaaaaaaalllll?
This is nonsense for most comics readers, but for any of you who look closely enough- The original Hubris art style was influenced by a particular pen I liked at the moment. That art style was modified a little when this site went into production and I decided to ink everything with my usual fancy brushes: Raphael and Winsor-Newton. But you know how us old guys are. I listen to the kiddies talk about their fancy inking preferences, and so I bought a nice Pentel brush pen for twenty bucks and a bunch of ink cartridges for it for another eleven dollars, and I’ve been using that lately. It’s convenient, I suppose, and it certainly is better than any other brush pen I’ve ever tried, but it’s just not a fantastic thing. So whether you can see it or not, today’s cartoon was inked with a real brush and real Higgins Black Magic ink again. The brushes are hard to get these days, due to some weird snafu about overseas shipping of hair from a weasel’s tail or some damn thing, or the work would be even better. My brushes, poor things, are old and nearly used to the point of being downgraded to emergency-only use. There you go- a look behind the ragged curtain.
I don’t know if it’s true everywhere, but around here, it’s the nervous new kids that wind up saying they’re going to be snipers during paintball games. What that means is, they’re going to run to the closest hiding spot behind a wall and they’re going to plink away at anything they see moving. And there will always be those guys who try to take charge and start calling out orders while doing the hand jive like you see cartoon characters do when they’re parodying Schwarzeneggar movies. The problem is that there’s usually more than one of those guys in a team, so the team splits up and the disparate parts wind up shooting at each other at some point.
This gag grew out of a thing at an airsoft game instead of a paintball game, but… y’know, it’s amazing how that kind of humor can work for such two different sports…
I got a late start on today’s strip. I’m not sure I saved much time by doing a single panel. I like the effect, though.
In case you’re wondering (and I know you’re not, but I like to put SOMETHING here occasionally) I have a little personal experience with this. Back when I was learning what weekends were good for, I did sneak off and learn laser tag and disc golf with a buddy on some weekday excursions before we were expected to turn up for our first games that weekend. Not sporting? Pfeh.
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