This one started after I was toying around with the idea of doing a comic set in a law firm. What makes it work, what elements do you need to pull it off etc.
Turns out, you need to make it interesting and funny.
Oh well!
Again, an idea that could work well enough on its own…if I was a real movie buff, I guess. Which I’m not. Well, not really.
I mean, the idea that I’d sit in place for two hours and do nothing but watch a movie is just odd to me. I’m watching a movie (From Dusk Till Dawn if you must know) while typing this, but I’m also twittering, sending texts to the wife and playing with the cats. Movies are kind of a visual background noise thing to me.
But I still know a bad movie sequel when I see it.
Hey this one’s kind of outdated already because now the hot thing isn’t sequels, it’s entire franchise reboots. Let’s all go watch Robocop and Aliens all over again!
And hey, colour!
OK right off the bat I have to admit this one did not work at all. Or at least, originally it didn’t.
I started drawing this little story about a man who got cut off in traffic while I was stuck in a meeting. Before the concensus was tabulated and minuted and blah blah blah it had balooned out to 15 panels. I just thought it was funny that he was so angry for so long. It fit in with the Misplaced Anger Week theme so I figured cool, that makes for a good Monday strip…
Then I got stuck coming up with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday’s strip. Looks like I blew my proverbial load on the Monday one. D’oh!
Four frantic days later I resort to cutting the Monday strip into five pieces, colouring them in and putting them online. Since it wasn’t designed to be run as seperate strips the whole gag falls flat. Oh well, better luck next week!
Well, this is one of those strips that took me a lot further than I thought it would.
It started as a take on those old Mentos ads. I’m not sure if you remember them, so the basic run down would be that some guy or gal would be caught in a fix doing something slightly troublesome…like double parking, getting stuck in a cue for a coffee, or being caught stealing underwear, whatever. They’d do something unpredictable to get themselves out of said fix and, when nearby people express concern, flash a pack of Mentos and everyone would have a cheesy laugh and get back to their life.
Actually forget my clunky description, here’s some examples.
So it started off as a parody of that. Then I realised the Foo Fighters did this already first, so I changed it from a Mentos ad to people’s ability to come up with weak excuses for horrible things.
I don’t drink coffee, so I don’t get the whole ‘oh I’m terrible if I haven’t had my coffee’ thing. I used to drink three litres of Coca-Cola a day though so I guess it’s the same thing. Just as an aside, do not drink three litres of Coca-Cola a day. Sigh. If I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.
The wife was not too impressed with the third strip in this set, but damn, I really like the colouring. In fact I really think the colouring went up a notch this week overall. So big pats on the back for me!
History is full of fun things. Like did you know that we landed on the moon once? Actually more than once!
Writing this week’s set of strips was a bit harder than I initially thought. It started off with a quick trip to Wikipedia to see the big list of events that happened well, on this day in history. It turns out that there’s a lot of interesting things that happened! The tricky bit was finding an event that lends itself to an easy joke. The one about the Aeronautical Society was easy. The one about Hitler moving into his bunker really, really wasn’t. The man’s like a comedy black hole.
Oh! I’ve decided that I’m going to try colour on Funny Webcomic again. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to people’s reception of the strip. Let me know what you think! Sometimes I think I’m “over colouring” some of these, so hopefully I don’t go too crazy with the trippy backgrounds. Wish me luck.
I sometimes wonder about returning to previous strip ideas or even spinning them off into their own webcomic. Medical Drama Comic would definitely be a strong contender for this, maybe also How I Would Have Ended. I think On This Day In History would be fun to do again…what do you think?
Well at least I had a core idea for what this strip would be when I came up with the title. I thought it was funny how this guy would put a cat on a car crash just to make it cute. Anyway. Cats, huh? What’s up with that, etc.
Again it’s a strip idea that I warmed up to a lot as the week went on (remember I do these comics a week ahead of time - a buffer that proved invaluable this week since I got so busy I ended up doing the Friday strip on a Saturday afternoon) and I think Thursday’s one is the best one. Also did a bit of copy and pasting which makes the art consistent in some strips but makes the original art look kinda weird. Panel two would be just a floating head and a speech bubble - but in my head I can see how it comes together and an hour later it’s up on the screen!
How on Earth did I get so busy anyway? It’s supposed to be a week off from work! At least I’m drawing some more Plant-Man…
I decided to use the last week of the year, when all the other so-called “good” people are taking the week off, to do comics with all the left over ideas I had that couldn’t be used elsewhere. Some of them might have made good week long strip ideas on their own, some others were left alone for a good reason. Time, and smart ass people on message boards, will be the ultimate judge.
So, how was your Christmas? Did you get spoiled rotten? I know I did…the wife, bless her, bought me a Wii and a ton of great games for it. Super Mario Galaxy is, well, Super Mario so it’s awesome in some ways and stupidly aggravating in others. LEGO Star Wars I am having a ton of fun with since the levels are short and I can play a quick session without feeling too guilty for not drawing or doing something productive. De Blob is the real surprise of the bunch even though I heard good things about it I wasn’t prepared for just how good it is. On the other hand I played five minutes of it tops - the wife has been devouring it like I go through sausage rolls and hedgehog slices when I think nobody else is looking. In fact she’s playing it now while I type this and I’m trying to ignore what’s going on the screen so I don’t get spoiled later. Oh! Boom Blox is fantastic fun, look past the cutesy animals and give it a try.
Oh the last paragrah had nothing to do with comics but I DON’T CARE, IT’S RANDOM COMIC WEEK.
Again, this is one of those strip ideas that started off as a quick silly line of text and I just assumed I could turn into a comic. Oh, hubris!
I thought it would be funny if every strip used the same artwork, with just different speech or thought bubbles every day. If you think that reusing artwork is an easy way to save time, think again. It’s a massive pain! I kept having to redraw stuff and work with fifty different layers to handle all the different thought bubbles and different characters…agh never again, never again!
Still, this one worked out to be a lot of fun. I have no idea how she got there. I have no idea if she’ll ever get out of this predicament. I do know that she’s only in four strips this week since there’ll be a special Christmas Edition of Funny Webcomic on Thursday!
Which reminds me - hope you’re having a great holiday! Only a day and a half of work to muddle through before I get to just stay home and draw more comiiiiics whooo hoo!!
This is one of those ideas I put in the big list of 52 Funny Webcomic ideas without really thinking too much about it. I mean, I knew it was a silly sounding idea, but that’s about as far as I took it before trying to think of the next one. In theory it would be easy to flesh out the idea once I get around to doing it.
Sometimes I wish I can punch myself in the nose for these dumb ideas!
Still, I think the idea has legs and I’m glad I pushed ahead with it. It just took a few days to warm up to it. It does make me wonder how far I should be pushing the “dirt” level of the humour - some of these strips feel like they belong in Viz…which to me isn’t a bad thing, but still, something to think about!
Oh and look out for a guest appearance by Plant-Man + Flowerin’s Action Sally on Friday’s strip! And there’s an appearance by another character that will make her debut in Plant-Man in a few months from now. Gosh!
Loading ...
