Category: so lame

There is an art, or rather a knack, to drawing stick people. Pick a nice day and try it!

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Of course, looking at THIS comic from my vantage point a few years later, I’d say that even the “improved” version could use a bit of work. I’m not even consciously aware of these changes happening, which is odd. It also makes me worry sometimes that I’ve hit a plateau, because even though I feel as though there’s a general upward trend in the quality of my work, I’m not really trying to get better. That sounds boastful, which I am not going for.

Let me try an analogy. Someone you know decides to grow a beard. You see them unshaven, and then don’t talk to them for a number of weeks. The next time you speak you might be surprised at the fullness of the beard, whereas they didn’t really notice a huge difference because the tiny bits of regular beard growth are harder to track and easier to adjust to. And on his part, it’s not like a guy just says “I’ma grow a beard” and it just appears, it’s a relatively small decision (“I’m not going to shave today” or in my case “What does it look like if I draw it like this?”) repeated over the course of many days.

Whether or not your friend looks better with a beard, or my comics look better today than they did years ago is going to be subjective for each person I suppose. But I happen to think your friend really does look better bearded. [February 27, 2012]

I’m takin’ a stand!

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There’s a tiny logo in the lower right of the 2nd panel artwork which is supposed to be that of Walking Time Bomb. It’s a little alarm clock with legs and dynamite strapped to its back. WTB was a company that specialized in the kinds of sarcastic, wacky nonsense that this comic is talking about. Loads of places carried WTB shirts when I was in high school, and loads of people wore them too. Ridiculous things that tricked you into looking at them and often made fun of you for doing so.

I myself owned two; one which said “Slacker” and was designed to resemble the Snickers candy bar logo, which I actually quite liked, and another (the disowned) one which said “YES, it DOES hurt when I smile.” In my defense, neither of these was particularly confrontational. [February 9, 2012]

hooray for products that advertise your personal problems

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One thing I didn’t pay strict attention to in the early comics was differentiating other people from myself. I established from the start that I’d draw myself as the most basic stick-person possible (path of least resistance, you see) but I didn’t always remember that it can be confusing to add other people to the mix and have them look, well, pretty much the same.

Light hair is a super-simple way to change that. For light hair I draw a stick person, and then throw a few spikey lines across the forehead. Boom, altogether different character. I’m not going to go and count, but I’m betting that if the comic requires a non-specific “extra” character they’ll have light hair nine times out of ten. [November 24, 2011]