Hey! More site adjustments are coming in the near future, including the nifty “hovering Edmund” image on most comics (I’m working on adjusting the placement). Frumph has been very generous with his time and Comicpress expertise! Feel free to contact me with any suggestions or complaints as the modifications continue!
So, what are your goals? I have some. Here’s one. As long as you’re checking that out, why not check the archive of Thoughts? If you haven’t taken a look yet, it’s a running collection of musings by me- a little insight into my brain.
You all know these streets: where a 40 mph zone turns into a 25 mph zone for no reason, and there’s always an officer conveniently taking radar? Isn’t that annoying? But you know what’s more annoying than that? When you work up the courage to finally learn to ride a bicycle, only to have nay-sayers tell you things like, “You need to let go of the hand brake,” or “Bikes don’t work under water.” Listen, maybe I’m learning to swim as well, and I’m trying to knock out two rites of passage at once, ever think of that? In fact, it’s better that way. I think we should lump all rites of passage together and get them all done in one day. It would save on ink, since you would only have to print one photograph instead of multiple photographs, and it would save paper, since you wouldn’t need multi-page photo albums anymore; rather, just a jacket with one page in it, and point to that one photo and say, “This was the day I learned everything.” It would really suck if the sun drowned out the image, though, and you didn’t find out until you got the film developed. Well, that teaches you to use a 35mm camera when you could have gone digital, gramps.
So, in the interests of documenting the first concept sketches of characters I use, here is the first sketch of Nigel, a corporate CEO who was introduced in this strip. Strange as it might be, the way I write storylines is by sketching a random character first, and then brainstorming about what I think this character does and how Edmund would interact with him. Here’s Nigel:
Hey! Happy Friday everyone. Has anybody ever been to a hot-air balloon liftoff event (whatever those things are called)? The explosions underneath those things look like something out of an action movie. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’d be afraid to be directly underneath that kind of inferno in any case, let alone at thousands of feet in the sky with no escape route other than down. It may be my fear of heights. I get uneasy just looking off the balconies of tall buildings at times. Especially when I look down and see an army of ninjas scaling up toward me. But then they pass by me and I’m relieved, like when a cop puts his lights on behind you but it’s to pull over somebody else.
So, some of you may know that I’m not the biggest fan of copied-and-pasted panels in comics. I realize it’s much quicker for a cartoonist who pumps out, say, a strip per day, but I think it sort of pulls the reader out of the strip when you realize that you’re looking at three identical panels with different dialogue…Except for in the rare instances where that’s the point of the comic, such as Dinosaur Comics. No offense, if you do a comic with copied-and-pasted panels- it’s just not my personal cup of tea, and I realize everybody likes things done a different way. Anyway, if you think a similar shortcut in Disney animation might ruin some of the “magic” for you, then don’t watch this! But I don’t think it should- I think it was necessary back when animation was probably five times as time-consuming as it is now, to “re-use” animation in different movies so they were able to keep a schedule and keep pumping out classic cartoons.
Note: The title the uploader gave this video was “Disney Templates Fail,” but I don’t believe it deserves a “fail” title. This is just a way they used to make cartoons. I think it’s just interesting, more than anything else.
Just interesting to me, as it may be to you. A little “how they do it” (or did it) lesson.
In the interests of disclosure, on the topic of copied and pasted panels, I’ve done it once where I felt it helped the joke. In this comic. Here, the joke was that the information desk attendant’s revelation that he wasn’t wearing any pants caused Edmund to go sit right back down, as if he never attempted to make small talk in the first place. I thought a good way to convey this would be to have the “back to square one” feel by using the same panel in the last as in the first. Eh, hope I’m not rambling.
