Tuesday, May 5, 2009

In Amazing Technicolor!

Weapon Echs!
Forget Me Not


Art -


Story -

12 comments:

rdy said...

We're sure getting a wealth of eyes from Brent. Is this one of those 'evolutions' or merely a phase.

Fingers crossed SK also starts to stray more from the constant letter-box mouths that plagues most of the characters.

TheOriginalJes said...

He's drawing Brent's glasses with perspective as the POV moves about his head. Yet, Jade's eyes are outside of her hair.

Jai said...

Panic Room:Yeah, Jade seems to be one of the few remaining characters whose eyes aren't even semi-realistically covered by hair or glasses due to their placement on the head. Poor bug-eyed Jade (Well, it doesn't actually look bad most of the time -- maybe I'm just used to it. I think her EXTRA-buggy eyes are making it look worse today. Maybe, someday, she can find her eyelids again).

As for Brent, his glasses slide down his nose for EVERY appearance of his lately, but he never has to push them back up (Because that would make him a nerd!). And, most peculiarly, his eyes aren't visible at all in the final panel's profile angle. You can't fool us, SK -- we KNOW he has eyes, that cat has sailed out of the bag already! There's no reason to suddenly pretend he doesn't!

The behind-the-head view of Jade is refreshingly sane. You can't see her eyes, nose, or mouth. As makes sense. Will this start to rub off on the other characters? Will they stop having weird shadows/highlights cast under their eyes? Will Brent ever be able to bend his bottom lip?

R.W.McGee said...

As long as we are doing art critique today (and I will definitely agree that Jade's eyes were especially bothersome in today's strip) check out Jade's chin in panels 2 and 4. In panel 2 she has a very triangular chin, in panel 4 suddenly it is soft and rounded. A lot of facial inconsistency going on with her, the over the shoulder panel was DEFINITELY the best one.

I was not a fan of the 'big finish' fifth panel, either. All the anime lines around the characters sort of force you to expect an EXCLAMATION from a character, or some big dramatic statement...but they were just exchanging some witty banter.

I actually felt like the art in the fifth panel detracted from a funny ending.

Something more intimate, Brent sweeping Jade into his arms or some other romantic cliche might have sold the romantic cliche dialogue better.

When going for irony you can never be too over the top, but you can clutter up a perfectly good punch-line with contradictory art.

R.W.McGee said...

I vote we just don't mention 'Icing on the Cake' It's just...it's not FUNNY. I listen to the PA podcasts, and those guys spend hours a day trying to come up with a three panel gag.

I don't know what Kurtz's process is, but we've gone from confusing and rapidly changing plot-lines to just tortuously bad strips.

I'm glad that you're doing a lot of new stuff with your art, and there has been a really noticeable improvement in it's quality...but the impetus behind your strip seems to be dead. You told the story up to the wedding, and now it's like the story is sort of over.

Nothing made this more obvious then the success and brilliance of the Ombudsmen stuff, and the fact that your guest strip week was a highlight.


If Kurtz gave a shit about my advice I would tell him that if he is going to tell stories he needs to start plotting out some arcs IN ADVANCE. If he just wants to do one-offs that's cool too, but dramatic one-offs get old pretty fast.

This is starting to get Buckley-esque in terms of lack of bringing the funny.

A Nonny Mouse said...

I think he's just going for cutesy rather than dramatic or funny. The cake one mostly just made me wonder whether the taste really would be that bad.

I guess I also wondered why they kept cake as a memento if they were going to eat it a mere year later, but that's just my hoarder's instinct. Things need to be kept forever.

rdy said...

The cake strip is another variation of that terrible light strip. "Oh, I hope nothing bad happens.... Ohno! It did!".

Chrysee said...

Nonny, it's fairly traditional to keep the top tier of a wedding cake and then eat it on your first anniversary.

And I can tell you, it's not _awful_ really. The frosting is still pretty good, but the cake itself becomes somehow stale.. but not really hard.Okay, it is bad. You take a bite or so and then agree to toss the rest. ..Kinda like exactly what happened in this strip. but that doesn't make the strip funny.

Jai said...

I'm just wondering how a mouth full of cake turns "yeah" (Or so I assume) into "fmeah". I have spent many years researching and practicing "mouth-full linguistics", and I have never noticed that cake turns "y" sounds (Among the clearest possible noises you can still utter) into "fm" (Two separate and distinctive sounds of their own, also located among the top tier of mouth-full noises). Maybe she's not saying "yeah" at all, and it's just the noise of Jade trying to spray her cake messily through a mostly-closed mouth (Like a spit-take. Cake-take? Spit-cake? SK may be on to something, here!).

TheOriginalJes said...

It's no wonder that they forgot their anniversary. The calendar in the background of panel 3 is clearly un-marked.

I suppose that may have been intentional in SK's part. 1 Point for scenic detail. -3 for Jade's eyes.

R.W.McGee said...

She has amazing eyes; green on May 6th and Gray on May 7th, heh.

rdy said...

Well, we've had 'mood Skull' just recently too. Elephant gray one day, electric blue another.

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