Continue reading »]]> Another elimination contest and afterwards there are only five Stripsearch contestants left:

Spoilers spoiled and more after the break -Entertaining as most of the elimination episodes have been but Monica may have been the most awkward participant in the elimination contest so far.  Which has nothing ultimately to do with the fact that she lost. No that has to do with the fact that she went for emotion and a concept over an actual laugh which is a priority for the Penny Arcade guys.

I did not laugh hard myself at Lexxy’s comic but it did have an actual moment of mirth in it and a punch line last panel which was good enough for her to win and hang on another episode.  Monica’s strip may have won if she had done a better job of constructing her comic and tightening up the ending — anything that really delivered something at then end might have been enough.

Regardless having seen two of Lexxy’s comics now I would put her as a longshot to win.  Katie is very good and has a sense of humor she can deliver both with words and the art itself.  Tavis and Maki both know how to deliver a joke. Abby delivered something right in the PA wheelhouse in her elimination contest win but I wonder if that was a but fluky.  I’ve been reading her comic now and while it’s fun, it’s rarely as intentionally funny as her comic on Strips Search was.  Still she was utterly confident during her stint in the elimination zone and I think her self-confidence is probably sky high now.

Here’s my guess for who’s most likely to win the whole thing at the end:

1. Katie

2. Abby

3. Tavis

4. Maki

5. Lexxy

Continue reading »]]> After today’s elimination show there are only six contestants left on Strip Search.  That’s another 18 episodes which is about 9 more weeks.  I guess that means we’ll have a winner in June or July (someone look it up on a calendar, okay?).

Tavis won last Tuesday’s convention sketching contest and so he had the dubious honor of picking the contestants for the elimination show.  Without much to go on he picked Erika and Abby.  Check out the episode; spoilers after the break:

A pretty entertaining show today.  Both Erika and Abby seemed to deal well with Mike and Jerry’s by now expected obnoxious questions.  Abby did her entire comic by hand which is a first, everyone else on the show has used the Cintiq tablets.  Erika spent the first 45 minutes planning out her comic before getting to work on the tablet.  I was honestly worried for her but I’m not sure it had too much of an impact on her final comic.

Abby won.  I was genuinely surprised because for the most part we don’t really know how good of a cartoonist any one is until they get into the elimination contests.  Abby is really a good artist and while it wasn’t perfect, it was a very funny premise she set up in her comic.  I laughed at seeing it — it seemed like the judges did too.

Erika also did a great job but like some of her work it was not a single funny gag but more of a series of things that were weird and unusual and interesting.  This was one of those and in this kind of knock out format, I think single best moment is going to take it with Jerry and Mike.  They could have picked Erika but I think Abby deserved to win.

Abby has a shot at winning the whole thing. I wonder if the other contestants realize that; after seeing her beating out Erika they probably do.

UPDATE: I checked out Abby’s comic, Junior Scientist Power Hour, and to be honest, it’s uneven. It has a loose, “throw whatever I want on the screen” vibe that feels more like peeking in on the artist’s sketchbook than a specific final product.  Having watched Abby onscreen now, I hear her comics with her actual voice which helps a lot; I’m not sure she actually always gets that on the page itself.  Still no question she has a good sense of humor and a decent sense of how to construct a comic.

I liked the very last one she posted, not only funny, but speaking as someone who is coaching one of my kid’s soccer teams, so true.

Continue reading »]]> Odori Park by Chris Watkins has a tag line of “East Marries West.”  I’ve been an off and on reader since it started back in 2009, but definitely on again this year.  It’s very cute, slice of family life comic with a dash of culture clash thrown in.  I liked the very recent storyline where the main characters are inspired to create a graphic novel together:

What I didn’t know until very recently was that Chris used to run Border Walker – a relatively old school webcomics site that featured some great talent.  In a recent blog post Chris mentions future plans for Border Walker — I wish him luck with that although I hope it doesn’t detract from his updating Odori Park!

Continue reading »]]> I try to keep up with David Hellman‘s projects (co-creator of the webcomic A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible).  He has been creating the animation for a very funny series of videos called Jeff and Casey Time.  I’ve finished the first “book” which is a five episode arc where Jeff and Casey recount their day to their friend Brian.  It’s absurdities piled on absurdities and I found myself laughing many times.  Hellman’s painterly artwork is amazing — it’s not really fully animated, but it is really interesting to look at.

Continue reading »]]> Today’s episode was Maki versus Amy.  Two good comics; only one really nails the ideas of Mermaid and Ukelele selected from the wastebasket of ideas.

Spoilers after the jump!

Maki wins; Amy goes home.  Mike and Jerry give Maki some grief for “over-working” the joke and their feedback is that Maki’s comic would have been much better without text on the last two panels. Maki’s art was Perry Bible Fellowship-level awesome and he definitely came up with a comic that really riffed on the mermaid and ukelele ideas.  Amy’s was good too although I didn’t laugh like I laughed when I looked at Maki’s so I would have picked Maki’s comic too even if Amy’s comic had really incorporated mermaids into it.

It is surprising that no one on the show has made any effort to play the game — I wonder if they run another season of Stripshow whether the contestants will be more nakedly cutthroat about sending their best rivals to the elimination zone.

Last time I had Amy 6th on my list of surviving contestants.  It’s pretty hard to predict who will win but let’s give it a guess anyhow.  I’m still counting on Erika’s experience to help get her through any elimination zone contest she gets into. We’ve seen Katie, Tavis, Maki and Lexxy all do well in the elimination zone (Lexxy technically lost but did well enough to get brought back).  Hard to know how well Monica Ray and Abby will do but they have steep competition in the other remaining contestants.

POWERRRR LISTT UMLAT UMLAT

1. Erika Moen
2. Katie Rice
3. Tavis Maiden
4. Maki Naro
5. Lexxy Douglass
6. Monica Ray
7. Abby Howard

Continue reading »]]> I can’t figure out how to get Photoshop Elements 8 to scan in directly from my Epson V33 scanner. Weird! Manga Studio will scan in from it but this version of photoshop won’t.  Technology advances but it often leaves simple functions behind.  Weird…

An idea for a story I noodled on earlier this year — a quick concept sketch I scanned in and started playing with in Manga Studio.  It’s probably the wrong title for the story which is about time travel, at least in a sense.  I’m not actually thinking of it as a comic but just a story.  Ideally (as in an ideal that I can strive for) I’d write it and then break out a comic script from the novella and find someone awesome with serious art chops to collaborate on it with. 

Continue reading »]]> I read Spacetrawler by Christopher Baldwin religiously for a year or so but it was another one I lost track of. It’s a great webcomic but one that might ultimately work better in longer bits. Baldwin delivers a great bite of the comic in each update but he’s also so good at working over the longer arc of his story that the deeper layers are very rewarding and it’s not something you want to read, having forgotten much of the details of the earlier bits.

So – rereading from the start; hoping to catch up to current episodes very soon.  Most of the comics have a lot of humor, Baldwin rarely goes for the biggest laugh but stays within the characters and usually paints a lot of colors from the emotional palette.  You get sincerity, morality, guilt, jealously, perversion, greed and sorrow with your jokes.

The comic below is one that truly is funny, building on a string of jokes in the preceding updates, but also ends on a really terrifying left turn.  Baldwin handles this all amazingly.