Refs: Roark | Mikhail and Stefan | Not being left behind | Monica
I was quite pleased with how this comic turned out, in terms of both dialogue and art. I even managed to make the Mulinix Hall nameplate visible!
Next week begins a new arc!
Chapter: – The Featherhead
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Jorocks Used Growth!
Ref: Glove
I like how Percy’s short speech ties everything back to the dreams in The Fountainhead. It also amuses me that both times that Jorocks has been called the titular name of this arc, he hasn’t actually been wearing a feather at the time…
I was FINALLY pleased with how the size comparisons came out. Pity it had to happen on the last comic of the arc! I debated about having the anti-fanservice block back, but decided the ongoing frizzy Jorocks joke was better because his hair cracks me up. Disagree? Let me know (nicely) in the comics and maybe it will return!
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Campus Security
Ref: Percy gets attention | And again
A while ago on Twitter I mentioned that I wish I would have given Percy ear hair. I satisfied this urge with Jorocks’s elf form. I was happy for a change with how the sizing turned out with the elves. Chris’s face is a little off though. In a way, I like it as he kinda looks like his dad this way.
Having a bit of trouble with my mouse. Apparently when I updated to OSX Maverick, the Logitech driver doesn’t play nicely. It makes dragging text boxes a royal pain. If anyone has a fix to cover this until the driver update comes up and can explain it to someone who still isn’t quite familiar with Mac programming yet, I’d love to hear it!
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North Pole Obtained
Refs: Gogol | First appearance of Gabriel | Ding-dong? | Left behind
I know, I know, you all wanted to see elf-Jorocks. He’s still getting dressed. But hooray, Percy now owns the North Pole! Yes, there would probably be a huge pile of paperwork involved. No, I’m not going to show it. Paperwork isn’t usually funny.
This wound up being quite text-intensive, which is something I’m working on. However, in this case I felt it was justified, especially as I cut a large amount of material out to make this whole legal matter go faster, and hey, there’s a lot of details that needed to be presented but don’t need to have a whole arc devoted to them. If the comic updated three or five days a week, I would have spread that out more, but once a week calls for a different scripting strategy, especially when I know what needs to happen by certain dates.
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More of Jorocks Than Anyone Wanted to See
Ref: The Shadow! | The Shadow? | THE SHADOW.
Couldn’t resist the link pattern above. 🙂 It is, of course, a reference to The Gamers.
Nikki is really hard to draw shorter than Percy! She’s a little too tall in this strip. Her face in Panel 3 as she’s attempting to follow Percy’s example and make scientific observations but at the same time REALLY wanting to look away is priceless.
This comic had its issues. First, I couldn’t get GIMP to play nicely with my newly installed OSX Maverick. Then, thanks to Brianna, I got it working and finished the comic well ahead of the deadline…only to realize that in taking that one weekend off, all of my dates were off a week and I had drawn NEXT week’s comic! Then as I was frantically trying to finish up this week’s comic (by this point, it was already late…), GIMP crashed on me and, being the nincompoop I am, I hadn’t saved my last hour’s worth of work. But hey, it’s done now and I have a buffer for next week!
No sketchbook this week, though. I want to make sure the main strip gets some love.
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Percy’s Costume Shop
Chris putting on the sunglasses that he found is a reference to Pokémon X and Y, where the default character design has sunglasses on his or her hat. Personally, I thought they looked dumb and switched the hat decoration immediately, but it is a little more recognizable.
It’s weird drawing a character shorter than Percy!
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The Next Test Subject
Ref: Percy is short | Elf Nikki | Lord of the Necklaces reference
This commentary really has nothing to do with the comic above, but a general announcement that I’m rather excited about. At the end of the next story arc, I will be putting Spoofy Randomness on hiatus for a month. Why am I excited about this, you ask? Because I will be working on developing a new comic, with the working title of On the Origin of Idiots. My intention is to have this second comic be focused on a discussion of the ridiculous scientific misconceptions that our society has. As such, the art is not the focus and it will likely just be a copy-pasted mashup, hence why I’ll be able to run two comics at once while still teaching and not go insane.
Oh hey, I colored elf-Nikki from Percy’s internal dialogue! There. Now this commentary relates to the comic at hand.
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Elf Sized
Refs: Panel 1 Flashback | First time combined forms are seen
SO MANY WORDS. This is the shortened version, too!
At first I was just going to copy-paste the old panel in for Panel 1, but coloring and sizing would get interesting and this gave me a chance to draw Matt Smith again using a bit of a different style. Then I had to figure out how to show a flashback in color! I like this grainy effect.
That’s probably not the way to inject something and I could ask my wife (who does phlebotomy as part of her job), but meh. It was easier to draw this way.
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The Great Cloning Debate
Ref: Elf Clones | Allowing Emotions
The problem with drawing a comic that often strays into sci-fi is that it tends to require a lot of exposition. I really honed down the script, but even so it tends to get very text-happy. Updating once a week doesn’t help.
There are FOUR references to a previous unfinished work of mine, Magical Minds. This was a story I started writing but never could finish it and now I don’t have time to even think about trying. The dorm, Mulinix Hall, has often featured (especially the Tower Room); Mulinix Machines was the antagonistic company in my story. The town of Greenpath (reference #5?) in Magical Minds was founded by a man by the name of Goodshow, which is the (slightly obscured) name of the math and science building at Edona. Ichabod himself greatly resembles the cat Snowball in Magical Minds, and the issue of cloning rights played a central role in Crystal Brown’s character, as she was a clone. Not sure why I felt that wave of nostalgia when making this comic, but there you go.
Also, this is not my first time making reference to the first webcomic I ever read, but it still amused me.
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Johnny Can’t Play The Fiddle
This is the comic that I mentioned on Twitter a while ago about how I was getting a real Lit Brick vibe from this script. While many comics make parodies of famous literature, it was the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” musical reference that really drove home the Lit Brick vibe. I threw that in there at first as a mildly funny joke, but then I realized while finishing up this comic that the main character in the song and our favorite Commie-hater share the same name. (Reference just in case no one has heard this song, or for those of you who now want to listen to it as a result of this comic).
Not to toot my own horn too much, but I felt that Panel 3 shows that I’m starting to get the hang of comedic timing. Also, Ichabod’s safety glasses were a last-minute addition that cracks me up. A white lab is really contrasting with John’s darkened house, but I tried to offset it by showing more window. Also, tried a new hairstyle for Nikki, as long hair and labs don’t mix. As one of my students eloquently put on their safety quiz: “Fire + Hair = No hair”