Better Living Through Lying

The good news is that I'm feeling much better than I did Sunday and even yesterday. The bad news is that I think that I may have pulled something in my stomach when I was puking on Sunday. It feels as if someone is punching me right in the old sternum. But we're not here to talk about my alcoholic tendencies, that's for the entry under this one. We're here to talk about the new strip.

What new strip you ask? This one: www.room19comics.com

I hate to pat myself on the back (no, I really do) but it always amazes me how much better the strip looks after I ink it. When I finished with the pencils on Friday I just looked at it with disgust. It was flat, sort of boring and it sort of just laid flat on the page. But on Sunday after I was done with the inking, it seemed to be pop a lot more. This is a minor miracle, because on Sunday night I was near death.

If there is one thing that I wish I could do, it would be to add more black. Originally Kurt's shirt was supposed to be black, but I liked the way that I positioned Kurt in the first panel. In the long run, it's probably not that great of a position, but I usually don't draw him at a 3/4 position, so I thought that blackening his shirt would be sort of a waste of that pose.

BTW, the logo on Kurt's shirt is for Violet Lemons. What's that? It's a logo that I had to come up with for my Adobe Illustrator class. I thought it was pretty neat and I couldn't think of anything good at the time. So, that's what the VL stands for.

The first three panels are pretty typical of what I've been writing. Eddie sets it up, Kurt reacts and then there is that somewhat awkward silence. I really think that the silence sets up the final panel.

As far as the fourth panel goes, I am happy with the expression on Eddie's face. I think that it's absolutely perfect for what he says. When haven't we lied to our buddies to make ourselves feel better? It's done all of the time. And it's usually never malicious. It's just an easy thing to do sometimes.

There are a few things that I wish I and trying to improve with my art and I'm not sure if I'm doing a decent enough job. It's where to put the arms, Kurt looks absolutely wooden in the first panel. The other thing are shoulders. Most of the time I catch a bad shoulder, but there are times when they just sneak in there. This is also in the first panel and is also a part of Kurt's figure. I think that's what gives him the wooden look.

Otherwise this is a bang-up job.