The presumptive back cover to the perpetually oncoming second bimshwel comic book. As always, you may click on it to get a bigger version. I do not always say this, and I realize, despite sometimes forgetting that I realize, that usually means almost nobody knows it, and in this case it is crucial to having an idea what the text says, and some of it matters.
It took longer than usual, as little grasp as I currently have on what “usual” is, since initially i drew elpse in it.
(do not bother clicking on this one) and elpse was the most-drawn thing on it at that point! Because initially the idea was just the first three frames, which I drew in a sketchbook years ago, with pog and elpse. I imagined it went into the comic book somewhere, but forgot about it when drawing the part where elpse is actually in that place. After I remembered it for this, it seemed like it could function as abstract in space and time, like a stand-alone illustration, but then I did not know what to fill the rest of the page with. And so I extended it, and it felt then less abstract, and more like it would be seen to contradict a not-yet-drawn comic page from the near future (which admittedly I thought was in the near future a year ago) in which pog and elpse have not been properly introduced. In my MIND, this and the first comic book’s back cover happen at some point in the future (comic future, not actual future, though it would also be that, if it was anything). But with elpse here I would have to explain THAT, but only once I get to the point of the apparent contradiction, and it would seem like I just screwed up and made an excuse! I have plenty enough aspects of my life to give lame excuses for without adding new ones that actually aren’t excuses because I meant them to happen that way.
Anyway the reaction, telling pog what to do, then scorning pog without acting or commenting further, suits yibrik better than elpse. Of course in addition to drawing in the character I also had to go back to every prior yibrik drawing and give tails to them since apparently I never did. The only time I ever drew yibrik with a tail previously was on the other book’s back cover! I saw it recently and didn’t remember having drawn it. But a bit later when I thought to replace elpse, I remembered that I SAW that, and decided one tail ever indicated adequate past intent to justify permanent tailage (since I no longer remember why or what I thought about any thing I did more than a few weeks ago). Of course I might decide, if I WANT to insert this somewhere later, it will be in a story about kumquat giving out tails. But then it isn’t funny for kumquat to just out of nowhere offer to give pog one. Right? Sure. So I don’t have to go and erase all those new tails I just added and fill in the background around them. Good, I was worried for a moment.
I think, if I were to go through and redraw and rewrite all this a third/fourth time, and I would roller skate on an airport runway wearing a suit of armor made out of pizza before I did, I would make yibrik a more visible character, since the way I think of yib now, argumentative but potentially harmless, is considerably different than how I thought of it back in 1995, as likely villainous, which influenced how I introduced it here eleven years after that (twelve years before now).
Does all that make sense? It shouldn’t! I work this hard so that the nonsense behind my motives does not need to be discussed.
an attempt to practice at a different art software, Clip Studio, which I acquired for a stupid reason and feel obligated to make use of. I could finish this drawing. Yes I absolutely could!
I still had to open up ye olde paint shopped proe 6 and use the mouse to clear up that which is there. I thought I had the PSP cd but I apparently only have Kid Pix, my original impossible to draw in except zoomed in really close since consumer art tablets did not exist back in 1994 software. I initially used it at the understaffed daycare for dumb kids that legally counted as “school” which I attended and then made my mother buy it for me after I got a home computer but eventually I had to concede that windows 3.1’s built-in and free pbrush.exe had more practical features with which to draw poorly using a mouse.
And I must say I have never gone through the hassle I did replacing my broken art tablets the past two years to get a replacement for my stupid old mouse, even if it is apparently highly controversial to sell me one without a keyboard.
For rather a few years I was curious about the likes of adope photoglop but never had a machine strong enough to run it well until 2009 or thereabouts. By the time I was decent at it, everybody I knew was trying to convince me I should use Sai or Manga Studio or flippindippin Gimp. I would ignore them at first but eventually see other people’s great results and think I was missing my chance to to do better, and then do far far worse trying. I may have to accept that I was correct all along in rejecting higher functioning software; I can only draw dumb stuff with dumb stuff!
I am not even going to pretend I know anything about cooking. I think it might push this series more in the direction I want it to go if I am honest about what I do not understand, also.
I should also be honest that I am terribly amused when somebody gets poked in the nose.
And initially the item was square-shaped and being removed from an oven, and I like this dialog line better with “oven” in it, but since I didn’t at any point show it going into the oven, I could not make that work with the pot I have already shown being fixated on. It shouldn’t even be important enough to mention but I literally have too much anxiety to sleep lately over dumber things than that. The fact that I did not previously draw an oven into the same room was thankfully of less concern to me.
Also I keep forgetting to mention that the first book can be bought from here. Or rather I wanted to make a longer post about it, but I also wanted to wait until after I made another post explaining that weird “maybe I’m a lion” post, so that they are buried together, and I have been unable to find a shovel big enough.
Part 3, page 08 of the questionable comic strip.
I was worried that I had lost touch with the comic through all the delays and my lack of a clear path to a conclusion, but I like this page more than many that came before it.
Unfortunately, you can tell nemitz is a scoundrel because nemitz ALWAYS thinks it is funny when elpse gets hurt.
What a ridiculous scenario. The lizard and elpse are fighting over NEMITZ. Nobody should want nemitz, much less two people trying to prove who wants nemitz more! Thankfully these are dumb imps and not people. Still, it makes me mad. The lizard thinks it is being polite by refusing the drink! It thinks it is TOO polite to drink that, even though it is causing a major problem, and it keeps saying lope. It literally does not know how to stop saying its name. After I work so hard to not say its name, it is quite rude to sabotage my work.
page 39 redrawn from the first part of that
This one has been too-long coming. I drew it differently than the other pages I have been redrawing, where I vectorized and upscaled the line-art. This one had no lineart to vectorize, rather some scribbly experimental technique that while not totally hideous, it was partially so, especially since I changed how I did it halfway down the page, and I dropped it immediately, but never bothered to bring it in line with the pages around it, so I had to redraw it fresh, so it STILL looks out of place, just not as jarringly. There are a few more pages coming where I tried to use pencil lines but I at least used solid colors and less heaps of limbs and so interpreting them should not take nearly as long.
You are no longer a misguided self-insertion so that doesn’t help!
page 38, another one of these. The next page is the one that really needs help, but then I still need to re-do 18 more after that. It seems inefficient and futile, but so is eating chocolate cookies. That is just how my life is going.
Concerning content, there is no way krumquat could say all that and shut the door before all before elpse had time to be startled and toss nemitz. The magic of comic strips!
page 7 of part 3 of this questionable comicoid.
I like that the lizard’s nose is a different shape in every frame. At this point the comic primarily exists for me to laugh at that creature.
The last frame probably has too many actions for one frame but i think the order is apparent eventually.
I decided somebody should actually hold the shopping bag by its handles once before it passes from relevance, to justify drawing them all this time. I would like you to think I deliberately avoided using them as some subtle commentary on how dumb these imps are but I do not think that far ahead.
Inconsistencies between here and the last time I showed this apartment are merely my own lack of effort and not deliberate evidence of in-story subterfuge.
page 3 of this we are up to! After all these years, FINALLY at page 3!
The future of the automated comic display system is currently being evaluated then, and thus I have not done it yet.
This page SEEMS useless, but it re-establishes for this “chapter” that lope is a nuisance, and that elpse is a nuisance, that the hat does not like, and solves the problem of my re-establishing that elpse hates robots on the previous page without sending the story off in a more interesting direction than I had planned before i thought to put the robots there. The robots had solved the problem of elpse being about to murder lope for having hit nemitz with the car earlier than that. And this re-establishes that nemitz and elpse forgive each other for their mutual nuisancical qualities (even though I have personally advised elpse against this forgiveness).
For the first time in a while I made up the colors instead of pulling them out of previous pages. It seems to have been an improvement, though the previous pages now appear very dull by comparison. And of course these will be re-dulled when they are printed, so it is probably better to keep doing it the other way even if that looks worse on a computer screen. But we both know that I am contractually obligated to find the most complicated, inconsistent and unintuitive way of doing all tasks.
In other news, the dumb lizard is so pathetic, sometimes it doesn’t even have a mouth, and just has a nose. This thing is incredibly fortunate I need two months to get out a new page. It has no idea how many dumb things it is not doing due to me being held up. And neither do I! Stupid things just HAPPEN when I put it on a page.
Why don’t you just shut up, nemitz. nobody has any interest in ANYthing you have to say. you might as well NOT TALK. Have you forgotten what I threatened to throw at you four years ago? Or have you remembered and here thrown my throw threat back at me? Neither of those is excusable.
Somebody who cannot read or does not understand english might look at this comic strip and think nemitz is saying something, when it IS NOT. 100% or more of what nemitz says is RUBBISH. Why do we, as a nation, put up with nemitz? I have had enough. Good NIGHT. Unless you are a brightly colored imp, in which event I wish you a very BAD night. You are so frustrating, I was distracted and inverted my capitalization scheme.
It is one of my long-held personal beliefs that if you need to ask others if you should take on a creative endeavor, then you probably should not. Additionally, if you ask anyway and people make every effort to not give you a clear response, then their answer is “no” but they think you are too emotionally unstable to handle criticism or dissuasion. They may be right, in which case I will resent their positions of superiority and continue making uncomfortable liars of them.
I proceed despite all evidence implying that it is a terrible idea. This can mean two things: I am a visionary individual, destined for great success, or I am truly insane and destined to lose much money and what little optimism I had left for my creative endeavors. Perhaps it is not surprising that the box office record-breaker Delgo looks like what would happen if I paid a “serious” artist to draw an elpse.
People didn’t believe in that property either, and it went on to earn a historically low amount of money. It shows that if you believe in yourself and persevere amitz adversity you too can get the world to mock your life’s work. I feel motivated to one day produce an even bigger disappointment than the character I at one time called “the unnatural clone baby of Abe from Oddworld and Jarjar Binks.” (That is slightly more apparent through the “leather pants with bare feet and vest” aesthetic that is not evident in the picture I used here and I am not going to look up another and risk having to draw another elpse that creepy this soon)
True, worse movies with uglier characters that cost twice as much to assemble have stolen billions of dollars from customers but they had corporate backing every step of the way, which is apparently the sole valid factor. Delgo is a rare example of a computer animated horror getting precisely what it deserves and for that it should be recognized (even if it is mistakenly recognized as elpse). Is it wrong for me to desire recognition?
Whatever happens, the ambiguity that surrounds everything I do will dissipate at last. (Which therefore means I will never actually get to that point).
I must do it, even if only to crush the desire to do it. My goal was always to print the comic. That is why I forced it into such a rigid shape all these years. Despite all the printing I have done for non-sequential “art” pictures, I never considered how inappropriate my colors were until recently. Typically the printout maintains the relative contrast pretty well. The only problem is that it often seems too dark, and I hate having to guess at that sort of thing. Different printers or softwares convert my frightful RGB computer colors to CMYK ink colors differently and I can never know how it will go, and the employees working the printers often seem to know less than I do, and unmistakably care less than I do.
I considered that the faded colors I get when vectorizing my old, low resolution drawings in Adobe Illustrator is probably best to not rebrighten too much over, since the reason they are being faded in the first place is because Adobe Illustrator only uses CMYK ink colors. Paint Shop Pro, that I draw the comic in, only uses RGB, meaning the color gets converted three times before the end and sure to be degraded considerably, but effect of the final degradation will be less extreme and easier to predict. Some of my pictures are garish anyway, but I do not on my own think to tune them down, ordinarily. The colors that are ugly on a computer are often impossible to reproduce in ink! My creation is literally too abominable to exist.
It is apparent between 24 and 25 that much less redrawing is being done on the updated pages, than in the past, perhaps less than is called for. I underestimated my ability to find something ugly. Printing in color is expensive, so I will probably just do the first 32 pages for the first book attempt, which gives me a functionally arbitrary stopping point. Once I get there I will look at it as a whole for the first time and fix the art up better, within reason, provided I can afford reason and the printing costs. The text needed to be completely redone, however. It flagrantly crossed barriers and performed unorthodox actions, and I risked it being more interesting than the characters.
It probably is not any easier to read now, but if you glance or squint at it, it seems like it would be if you looked closer.
But why would people pay money for a comic strip they can get for free on the internet? I do not know! But apparently some people do. I know that when I have, at stupid art shows, shown people printed out samples of the comic, and they seemed interested, and I told them they could find it on the website, I never heard from them again. This then also knocks out another excuse. It will be there in front of them, to not buy or care about instead of not buying or caring about my art prints. With just the prints to sell I feel silly, since I would not buy art prints myself. But comic books, I have bought a few of those, willingly, usually. Eventually people will have no choice but to admit they think I am marginally talented and delusional. Victory at last!
I subsequently felt bad about leaving that elpse out in the thunderstorm in such an alarmed state that it transformed into an armadillo.
Thus to ease the situation, without so much thought that I risked another disaster, I drew a fresh elpse. But something just out of view seems to be upsetting elpse. Is it you? What are you doing? Whatever it is, please cut that out! I think elpse has had a difficult day.
I expect I have alluded to this before, but may have never properly addressed it: Cracklin’ Oat Bran.
This box design has not been in use for some while, but provocateurs still attmpt to push the agenda by distributing empty boxes through trusted commerce channels like ebay and dumpsters that have not been cleared out in 15 years. The decision was made to remove cereal from the box not because it would be inedible a decade and a half in the future, but to reduce the weight for shipping, with the expectation that buyers could reclaim the exciting breakfast experience if they wished by eating the box.
“More, please.”
This is supposed to be a cereal for adults. Get your own dang cracklin oat bran. And for heap’s beep there is a G at the end of “crackling.” The first meal of the day and you are already slacklin’ off in multiple unrelated ways.
“More, please” is no request. It is a demand. The “please” is totally disingenuous. You are liable to be banished from this cruel Victorian workhouse with that sort of entitled attitude!
And that strawberry slice is a work of fiction; I have eaten fruit with cereal before (you are surprised at my adventurous tendencies, no doubt), and the distribution never works like that. Only with cautious planning is there enough fruit for there to still be any when the cereal runs out, and my boss here was not even smart enough to take a promotional photograph of a product with the product actually in it. I think this cracklin hobo has actually not had any cereal yet; there would be more crumbs than that, and plenty of unsightly white goop residue. If this were authentic I would not be able to look at the bowl to make such an analysis. But the bum didn’t even pour it out the first time. I could understand demanding more if you had painfully exerted yourself to fill the bowl, and that was your accomplishment for the day, and you now qualified for assistance. Trying to trick me by cracklin’ a few oat branuloids into an empty bowl and cutting one strawberry into half is disgraceful. You think I do not use my oat brain? You think I am using my raisin brain today? I am not such a tragic case!
Well there you go. You should never have gone. Another home wrecked by raisin brain. Could someone you tolerate have a raisin brain addiction? I am disgusted that you put up with that!
An older picture I recently altered to make prints of for a pumpkin-themed event
See if you can guess which table is mine
(hint: it is the one with the lamest merchandise that the least number of people are looking it)
I sold nothing, but I sold nothing at higher prices than I had ever sold nothing at before. Partially at the urging of the venue owner, and partially because for all my stabs at integrity it means nothing once I can blame something that feels like a lapse on someone else. It also means I now must keep that price consistent or else the people I showed the high price to will get angry when they see something less than that. Or they would if any had paid it.
Anyway, in addition to some free iced tea they were nice enough to let me have the featured artist space for January, (though the decision came prior to my recent performance) and I will have pictures on walls inside the restaurant, which will not have interaction with me as a condition to owning one. The scenario also is feasible that somebody may buy a picture just to get it OFF the wall so that food may be consumed more peacefully. I am intrigued to discover how I will mess this up.
This was an improvement on my last event, where there were mystery boxes dumped directly in front of my table which visitors used for sitting on while facing away from me and eventually for standing facing toward when all the boxes were taken. I would rather fail because of what I did than have nobody know I did anything. When that happens my goal becomes to make people know what I did, and I might not consider that I did something pathetic. After this week I feel like I have taken another step toward my ultimate goal of giving up. After all these months of distractions and setbacks it is nice to be making progress again.
Additionally, you may have become aware of the three for the moment unsightly link “buttons” now at the top of the main bimshwel page. If you had not then now you have, in a sense. One attempts to connect to whatever this is.
In the past i have given out “business” cards to people at events like these, but nothing ever comes of it because if anyone entered the website URL mentioned on the card, instead of art details they would see instead endless rambling about supermarkets and dumb things people do on the internet (such as write about it). Now they can find pictures, if they wait a few seconds for those awful “buttons” to load, and then they can see the pictures and think “yep, that’s the stuff I didn’t buy prints of today sold by that awkward weirdo who kept saying ‘hello’ out of forced habit but had no natural social inclinations beyond that. Gosh that was upsetting. Why did I take this card?”
I intend to make the awful buttons less awful, but I also intend to go running once in a while and eat pizza less often.
Ideally, the gallery’s rather default-looking setup is only temporary. Even so, it is rather nice for something free, I think. And unlike other free galleries, when something does not work it is not done deliberately as a ruse to try and sell me non-free version. It might be unethical for me to use something free as a means to make a profit, but I have not actually considered any way to use this for that purpose. I imagine I could send art-work through the mail. My imagination usually gets me into trouble.
Here is what my ridiculous imps would look like if I had business sense. More gimmicky, impossible to tell who drew them, and seemingly ripped off of other commercial properties. Is this an official spinoff of trolls or little ponies or care bears or an unrelated venture trying to chase the same buckwagon? People only relate to things that I do not relate to. They want to buy things that remind them of other things they have been ordered to buy. I would never buy one, and thus I am ill-equipped to make something that a buyer of these would buy.
Of course this display was gone the next time I came into the store and I have never encountered the name “zelfs” since nor had I prior to then (and I must be clear that I do not desire to), but that can also be desirable. If your soulless, derivative, cynical grab at money fails, you want everyone to have forgotten it by the time you make your next attempt at reminding people of stuff that worked. You might notice that is the opposite of my personal feeling, where I prefer to be remembered and to not remind anyone of anyone else. If I saw something that reminded me of me and it made money I would get mad, because then I would need to change me to seem like I wasn’t copying me.
It is common, on the art websites I use, for a participant to become infuriated at “art theft,” in which somebody tries to sell another person’s pictures and collect money for it. I don’t even matter enough for anyone to bother. I would probably doubt that if I heard it happened. If it was TRUE and it worked I would consider trying to take the perpetrator on as a business partner (an unbiased observer might advise that person to turn me down). The closest I came to “art theft” was when I taped a huge pencil drawing to a wall beside a door at the university while I went to retrieve some other things, and it fell off, and somebody picked it up and walked off with it because it looked like abandoned garbage rather than a legitimate finished project that the artist was trying to take home. When the person was persuaded by police intervention to give it back I almost felt bad. I felt like I had ruined several people’s days (not including mine). I wanted to thank the unidentified taker for wanting it. The party which I retrieved it from offered no comment on the quality. I might have let the person keep it but I had not scanned it yet and I needed to bring it back at the end of the semester for a grade anyhow (rubbish generally gets a better grade than nothing at all). Currently it is on a shelf smaller than itself behind me with other things stacked on it and probably no longer in displayable or theftworthy condition.
23 October 2012
Volcabbage, a controversial figure of the Sham Grimeasty in today’s Republic of Porfbe, had often said, in life “I want to dig a hole and live in it,” but until now details about being dead in one have been scant.
Initially, our excavation crew had been granted permission to investigate the tomb of Roneldo, the famous and influential warlord, but the Porfbeian government withdrew support the day before it was to happen, deciding in the end that Roneldo was too respectable to be violated in this way. They suggested Volcabbage instead. Volcabbage did not enjoy Roneldo’s level of popular support nor leave a lasting impact on anyone’s customs or ideology but nonetheless had a large and eccentric grave site. Our team of archaeologists was not terribly interested, but as they had come all that way they figured they might as well. We were unprepared for what we found. Primarily because we were prepared to find something else.
Volcabbage was a court eunuch who usurped power from the beloved monarch Gorko by changing the palace locks when Gorko went out to buy a pumpkin. Gorko, despondent with shame, went into exile and never returned, even though Volcabbage ended up getting tossed out of the palace and also exiled later that evening, having neglected to win the favor of the staff in charge of the windows. As it happens, Gorko did not maintain a stock of concubines so it is unclear why eunuchs specifically were employed on the premises.
Volcabbage was only emperor for several hours but somehow had time to order this massive tomb be built. It is speculated the tomb had been designed far in advance; possibly up to a week and a half, and Volcabbage stole power primarily to demand its construction. As the workers were busy on the construction they were not notified that Volcabbage had been ousted until they finished the job. Some of the non-structural artifacts are believed to have been contributed from Volcabbage’s personal extratombal property.
What an ugly diagram! We had best look at it more closely.
1: Entrance to tomb. (1a) top floor may have been rented out to other deceased to cover some of the costs
2: Inner passage to lower level. (2a) Escalator: Volcabbage was indecisive. If the afterlife proved unsatisfactory, the deceased may have wished to return, in which event a comfortable exit from the tomb was desirable. Similarly, if being reminded of this world once more helped to put things into their proper perspective, the spiral slide (2b) would provide a quick and simple re-entry.
3: Vehicle storage zone. classical decadent tombs often contained stables, so this was seen as an appropriate analogy. (3a) Helicopter chair: keeping in mind the idea of “if you can create a physical, visual approximation it will work in the afterlife,” this was designed to simplify transportation, as Volcabbage was not a licensed driver. (3b) Chariot: in Porfbeian society a license was not required to operate one of these. (3c) Hovercraft, because there was space for one.
4: Houses for servants. most of volcabbage’s employees were little imps. Some of them are more affluent than the other imps and it is speculated the wealthiest had their own little tombs containing even tinier servants
5: Banquet chamber. (5a) banquet table: Volcabbage rarely enjoyed company. It is uncertain if this meant to represent a pathetic hope for more human contact or to give unwanted guests a space to deal with their own business in while Volcabbage worked elsewhere, possibly at (6b). (5b) Terra cotta figure of Pog, the Inedible, on a large serving dish. Pog reminds us of an ancient Chinese story of a tree which grew old through being so useless that nobody saw any reason to chop it down. Pog, in contrast, was useless and lacking in flavor merely by chance, and no predators dared attempt to consume it. Volcabbage developed odd culinary tastes, it is said, as a means of encouraging visitors to purchase their own food, particularly guests of roommates. (5c) tiny table for tiny servants to hold banquets at.
6: Bed enclosure. Reduced scale, compared to banquet chamber. Much clutter that seems to be of little consequence. (6a) Bed said to be remote-operable, but as its optimum operation requires it lie dormant this is of dubious significance. (6b) miserable, tiny desk. Not ergonomically suited to any task we can think of.
7: “pig room.” Potentially the most peculiar section. It requires special attention and so it is illustrated and discussed in greater detail later in this document.
Though this is Volcabbage’s tomb, is not known whose body was actually buried within; considering Volcabbage’s known wish to not be buried. The most common theory is that it is actually the body of Rygar, a trusted court official. A more fringe suggestion is that the original body of volcabbage was dismembered and fed to partisans of Roneldo in anticipation of a bowtie-clad imp statue being placed inside the tomb. Overcome by food poisoning or a simple curse, their lives were thenceforth inconvenient and they were buried here afterward, for they contained the tomb’s owner, who they resented and decided to spite with their posthumous placement. In another oddity, however, no bodies were found. All that turned up were skeletons, the infamous restless undead warriors. The excavators thankfully found it unnecessary to battle the skeletons to gain their respect before entering. They are not currently a threat to visitors. However, a pine cone was discovered on the premises so it is advisable to be cautious.
7a Toilet paper: Volcabbage endured allergies regularly (possibly from overconsumption of foods like 7h pizza) and found “roll” the most effective method for the dispensation of allergy relieving paper material. This roll is very large and its user would never fear tearing off an amount inadequate to contain nasal excretion flow out of a desire to conserve the material. However, it is also far too large to be portable. We wonder why Volcabbage did not propose a representation for an allergy cure to go in the chamber.
7b Nemitz: Large ceramic figure of semi-divine entity of Mupelzorian religion. Porfbe is said to be named from one of Nemitz’s quotations. Unlikely to be an effective guard. Perhaps volcabbage just found it funny to look at. Its attire suggests butler-like duties, but again it may simply be to appear ridiculous. A similar statue called an “Elpse” (7c) was looted shortly after the excavation began. Nemitz was evidently less desirable.
7d dopes: Large-eared smiling creature with similar demeanor to nemitz. Volcabbage repeatedly claimed in life to despise these “dopes,” and yet the tomb is filled with them; one for each of the six columns and a rotating gold dope (7e) in the center. The other dopes are plastic. Hopefully the servant imps were not as foolish as dopes.
7f Bowtie imp: unlike the dopes, there is no imperial record alluding to the existence of a jade bowtie imp and it is not in the plan. It has been speculated that this was placed into the tomb by a rival, possibly Roneldo, to be a source of annoyance in the afterlife
7g Ducks. No ducks found.
7h Pizza. Volcabbage was an avowed believer in the importance of a balanced diet, low in saturated fat and cholesterol. The pizza represents people not having pizza anymore because it’s in this tomb and thus people will have no choice but to eat more healthy foods. Or perhaps Volcabbage just really liked pizza.
7i A bottle. Surely this represents a drink of some sort to go with the pizza. That seemed bland so elaborate handles were added to the sides. However, much like the large toilet paper roll, this must have made the bottle impractical for placing into a coat pocket.
7j The large pig, at last, represents a fondness for pigs. The pointless monarch once said of pigs “they look funny if they are sculpted and displayed.” Volcabbage must have thought a very large pig would be very funny. A strange person, Volcabbage.
Subsequent grimeasties looked upon Volcabbage with disgust. With a mind for cultural preservation the tomb was left where it was, but highways and utility poles were built nearby. Several chambers remain unexplored, including one that appeared to represent an elegant tiled single-occupancy bathroom, but it is doubtful that Volcabbage bathed and in any event we were getting tired and decided to go home.
page… I don’t even remember, 49? of that
Don’t stop me if you can see where this is going. It goes there slow enough that your effort would make little difference.
and there also goes the last internet comic with no scenes that take place in a bar. we had a decent length run, I’d say, if I’d held off a bit longer.
There are two things you can expect in a good webcomic: it will become painfully obvious what the artist’s favorite paraphalia is and the main characters will go to a bar within a few pages. Ah I’m kidding, of course. There are no good webcomics.
I thought it might it might be easier and more potentially amusing to base the setting off an actual place I’ve been to, but the one I wanted to use doesn’t have a layout that works with my staging and the one I used instead is rather dull and doesn’t match the locale I’ve established. I think I might have said that last time.
Also, Edward Sorel called. He wants his sketchy, noncommittal ink lines back. And I actually draw with pencil first. By the way why don’t you get a cellular telephone already? I’m tired of taking messages for you.
I think I could handle being a slow inker or a bad inker but being both is becoming harder to accept. Is the huge pint bottle of ink that i bought and have not yet opened reason enough to keep using real pens? If I had a job doing this I would be fired for what this page looked like before I spent a week putting color over and redrawing it with a mouse. Although if I had a job doing this I would have been fired years ago for needing a two weeks of uninterrupted time to finish one page and usually being surrounded by interruptions. I don’t even know what to revise to [further] fix this, much less have the ability. However, this either goes up as it is now or two weeks from now when I can work on it again to make subtle changes that you probably won’t notice.
Oh OH excuse me, am I talking too much for you? Guess what elpse, nobody is intimidated by you! Even with that impressive scar along your midsection. Yes, and I know you also said “oh OH” on the page. I’m very impressed that you almost finished a game of tic tac toe. By the way I’m actually not impressed!
Or Disgracy’s Angstgiving Malaise, if you prefer, but why would you?
Do you remember when I used to write stuff? Well I have forgotten and that is why there have been so many of these lately.
It was meant to be a response to that because I talk to myself. However, I rarely listen, so it was rather a bit over a year before it could be shown. Ordinarily, people would have stopped caring by then, but fortunately nobody cared to begin with. The only thing I got right was the bland layout.
It may strike you as decadent for one character to hog the rope belt AND the single suspender. Are you going to put up with that?
Through no deliberate thought by me the central figure (“dope”) is the most dignified looking idiot here through not having made any botched attempt to appear dignified.
And now that I have made this, what do I do with it? It has no purpose. There is no reason I should have spent so long on it. I lack even the motivation to update this page’s banner twits. The secret to online fame is to acknowledge and pay reverent homage to stuff that already exists, but that doesn’t work if it’s your own stuff, unless you referenced other stuff prior to referencing your own, and chances are people will be annoyed that you didn’t just reference the stuff you usually reference.
I didn’t say so in the past but generally these things conceal links to larger, more clear versions of themselves. I don’t actually believe that this conveys any information here on the page. I don’t believe the full size conveys much more, but it’s slightly more and that’s the amount I intend.
Most of the development for the background occurred before I had merged it with the characters, because at the image size of 20000×7000 pixels it was irritating having to deal with constant delays while I added large amounts of blurry computer paint (the fourth row is just a temporary mock-up that I have saved for some reason). Having multiple layers, then, made the situation totally unbearable. Then at some point I realized nobody would notice or care if I reduced everything to 10000×3500 and after I did, it became feasible to merge them and development escalated, now (then) that I could see where things were in relationship to each other better. The result was still an unsightly, muddy mess, but and I’ll think up a justification later.
This was removed from the space where the yellow creature eventually was placed because the character is sort of boring, and I thought it worth incorporating alternate modes of improper dress.
This was earlier removed from the same position not for looking too stupid, but I imagined this thing would not be pleased that others challenged its bow tie supremacy and would refuse to stand with them. At that point I had considered having the center dope also wearing a bow tie, which further complicated matters. I drew a new one into the background because I forgot I had made one already.
The creature elpse is mildly allergic to stripes, and so appears to merely be sneezing, rather than protesting. In fact this sneeze would have seemed to be directed away from the dope out of courtesy, which I cannot allow.
This pose was too interesting.
Of course I’m kidding. Most of these characters need to be in trash AND jail.