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Strip Search - Elimination #7
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You don't think she is scaling the depth of the art to the time constraint? This is a deliberate and purposeful decision to keep the art in a style she knows she can do in 90 minutes. That's -more- impressive. Not less.
I think the reference someone made to Calvin and Hobbes earlier shows what people mean by saying it's a style (and to me, a very attractive style).
Take a look at one of the old black and white Calvin and Hobbes strips. He doesn't fully close in the forms (Calvin's hair, Hobbes' body.) The "straight" lines are not straight-edge perfect. Lines fall outside of the boundaries of the objects that contain them. I like this style. You may not, and that's fine, it's all opinion.
Yeah Lexxy's could use a little more polish, but I don't even want these comics to have the same flawless quality of her illustrations. I like the roughness of the style she uses for the 90 min comics.
Of course, I'm also one of those people who looks at Disney concept art and wishes that the finished films looked anywhere near as fascinating as those drawings. Too much polish often translates into boring for me.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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To me, it looks worse than most of the other art that has been put forward in the 90 minutes, whatever explanation you wish to give for that is up to you.
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
I read longer form comics all the time, including manga. I still found her comic confusing the first time around.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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Like many of us, I grew up on Bill Watterson. I loved Bill Watterson. I bathed myself in Bill Watterson. Lexxy, bless her heart, is no Bill Watterson.
Someone more steeped in art terms (I know "tangent" now) might be better at explaining why the comic you linked is many times better drawn than Lexxy's, but I'll simply have to say that to my very subjective opinion it simply is.
Though I wouldn't say Lexxy's was badly drawn. Just mediocre in the context of all the comics we've seen to date. It was the joke I thought was bad.
First time around, viewing the whole page? Or during the pan in the episode?
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
I thought Monica's was the better work. Lexi's was an old joke. Parodying brand mascots is old hat. Reminded me immediately of the Sprite "Sun Fizz" commercial:
youtube.com/watch?v=rPIdQ8gaRCA
In any case, I think the smart money's on Lexi at this point. It's her game to lose.
-P. J. O'Rourke
Well the first time around is the first time I saw it, which was in the episode itself.
It helped to have Jerry and Mike explaining it step by step in the episode. Then I saw it later on the spoilers page and appreciated it more.
Don't mistake me, I understood the basic concepts at first (Dinosaur roller skater being told it's better to set that aside for a serious career), It was the overall flow and the final few panels that didn't seem to fit in. My criticism of it would probably be that it's a little too on the nose for the first half (telling instead of showing), and that it's a little too cryptic for the last part.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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Lexxy's was a good cartoon, but Monica's had poetry. Lexxy's made a joke, but Monica's tapped my humanity. Maybe it's just that I come from more of a lit background than a cartooning background, but that is much more impressive to me.
Re: comments about Monica's and/or Lexxy's attitudes
Even if one or both of them had whatever kind of bad attitude or made whatever kind of bitchy comment, would it really matter? This isn't Greatest Personality Search nor is it Search For Mike & Jerry's Newest Best Friend. I think they are both just people. I don't see how trying to psychoanalyze the contestants or Mike and Jerry based on highly edited video of a drawing contest is really a worthwhile endeavor. There is that old adage: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Interesting. Everyone else I've spoken to who didn't understand it said the opposite; that they didn't think the beginning was explicit enough, but the ending was fine.
Edit: I've gone back to the comic five times today to try to figure out where it's losing people, and every single time I get caught up and just end up crying at my desk.
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
Ok, A. It seems a lot of people are having trouble perceiving the subtly of interaction between Mike and Monica, and are projecting. It did get a little dark, but it appeared to me that Monica got over on Mike in those exchanges.
B. Lexxy's simple style is amazing. The next best would probably be Katie's, then Maki's art in terms of expressiveness. I think if Lexxy could add a little more color, this whole thing would go away, but she works in black and white. Her characters are *alive*. I can draw fairly well, and put down a pretty good detailed image. I definitely can not draw with that simplistic style. It takes real talent to communicate what she does with such minimal linework, not to mention she does it all with near perfect anatomy and perspective with zero reference. It is amazing.
C. RE: The competition not being as tight. Everyone realizes that most of what the contestants say in these talking heads isn't just random thoughts out of their head, right? There's someone there doing the interview. The leading questions was likely something to the tune of :"Why do you think the judging took less time than your last elimination round". Her response is perfectly reasonable and not cruel in any way.
D. Mom jokes. This seems a like a cultural divide thing. A lot of older/traditional types have a huge problem with them, whereas the people who love them the most seem to tell them in the abstract. It has nothing to do with anyones actual mother. Also, the 'who even wears stripes anymore' was hysterical. 'Your shirt is stupid' is just like 'you have dumb face'. It's funny in how dumb it is.
E. I'm really surprised in the disparity in what people find funny on the PA forums, considering their bread and butter are jokes about genitals, bowel movements and absurdity.
Edit:
And F: Whomever wins may get office space and 15k, but they do NOT get a job at PA. There's no paycheck. So, unless they could instantly monetize their webcomic in a new city, a funds campaign makes sense, be it KS or IGG or whatever. "...to compete for $15,000 in cash and a year integrated into the Penny Arcade machine." That's what Levin had, and Scott and Kris have. They're in the office, but they don't draw a check from PA.
What we are both presenting is opinion. Assuming that someone who knows more about art can "explain" your opinion, as if your opinion were some kind of cold stone art fact like a tanget, is a bit arrogant of you.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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You think tangents are a stone cold art fact? That's interesting Quite often, which tangents would be considered problematic are a matter of taste. In one of her streams recently, Lexxy was mocking people for constantly seeing problematic tangents where there were none.
Heck, the Abby episode illustrated this perfectly. The shoulder tangent was obviously an error that Abby agreed needed to be fixed. However, the chest was a deliberate artistic choice. Mike perceived it as a line that was accidentally confusing the shape of the breast, while in reality the decision not to outline the breast was an artistic one.
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
I don't find it all that surprising. One of the strengths of Penny Arcade is that Mike & Jerry form a sort of human Venn diagram in the kinds of interests they attract and the style of nerdity they bring to the table. I think Mike is extremely funny, and they are both a lot of fun to watch, but I relate a lot more to Jerry's humor and interests.
Ok, maybe that's the wrong way to put it. But, "Maybe some art experts can enter the thread and explain why my art opinions are correct, plebian" is still p. messed up.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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The occasional misstep is very endearing. These are people, for goodness sakes, in a high-stress environment.
I think it may also be worth noting, unless I'm wrong, they have gone a week straight now in this intense reality show event lifestyle. I think it's fair to say some of them may be on-edge, nervous, and probably pretty wacky at this point.
You may choose to see it that way if you wish. I don't know how much harder I could simultaneously present myself humbly and qualify that this is entirely my subjective opinion, though.
Obviously this is all opinion but IMO what set Lexxy's comic apart is that it takes an old trope (absurd ad about a fake product which is actually terrible) and pushes it far beyond expectations. The characters aren't just subjected to a bad product, they are literally ripped to pieces and devoured by the product. That element of surprise is what got me to laugh.
Very much this. I'm not getting how people can say, "It's 15K how could the winner need anything else?!" How do you expect the winner to live, man? Best case scenario they do a kickstarter and get instant funds now so that they can art as their full time job. Worse case scenario they have to get some kind of job on the side so they can eat and have a place to live. Hopefully just being on the show will mean their products are more likely to get sold, but there's no guarantee of that, and even if sold product were guaranteed, it isn't necessarily immediate cash in hand. I personally don't know how fast websites like TopatoCo send checks to the creators, but guaranteed it's not daily. You can spend a shitload of that 15k just in moving and placing a deposit on a new apartment.
In some ways 15k is a lot of money. In other ways it's a perilously small amount.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, so this may have been responded to multiple times already, but man this shit drives me crazy. Let me know the next time you tear up a 90 thousand dollar check and then I'll listen to you tell me what people with 15k should and shouldn't do.
Edit to add:
It doesn't actually matter if 15k is a lot or not. Hell, the prize could be 150k and I wouldn't begrudge the winner for running a crowdfunding campaign. Like...that's the goal right? To be able to create work that people enjoy enough to want to pay for? Like I said, I really want to meet these folks that are tearing up 90k checks.
RE: Monica's replies - most of her "NO" replies came from the whole reason of the comic (and she alluded to as such in the car as well) so I can see where that comes from.
I wasn't too impressed with Lexxy's reply though - as someone earlier said, it's something very easy to get misconstrued.
Come now, if we go THAT far it's just ridiculous. I mean, at that point you might as well say "really, Rob Liefield is just as good as Vincent van Gogh." We can talk about technique and proportion and anatomy and all that good stuff.
The problem is that's not what people have been doing here. As someone with a dozen years or so of art training, I'm going to attempt to lay out some actual art talk. Bear in mind that I haven't been in an art course in ::Coughcough:: years, so some of this might be slightly inaccurate.
Every artist in this competition has strengths and weaknesses. Lexxy's poses are great and she's really good at conveying action and expression, but her final sketches feel like an intermediate phase between an initial gesture drawing and a finished contour drawing. A lot of the sketch lines remain, which could plausibly be an artistic choice... still, I feel that if she had more time, she'd probably choose to clean up some of those sketch lines.
Monica, however, managed to do a drawing in the same time that cleaned up all the sketch lines and added gradients, shading, and effective black/white contrast. Traditionally, taking these steps is a key part of producing a piece of comic art for print. If you look at the Calvin and Hobbes strips linked in this thread, you'll see that all of them have undergone this kind of cleanup - even if they don't contain gradients, they contain much bolder black/white color blocking, and a complete cleanup of any initial gestural sketch lines. If you need me to point out specific examples, I can.
Now, I can see why some people find the sketch lines charming. They add a looseness to the picture, and enhance its gestural quality. But if you look at other pieces of Lexxy's own work, they have usually undergone a lot more cleanup before she posts them. Thus, many people may see this work as unfinished, because it hasn't undergone the usual polish steps that we are accustomed to seeing in print comics, due to time constraints.
Monica's has undergone those traditional polish steps, so looks more like the kind of comics you'd see in print in a newspaper.
Make sense?
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
Yeah I'm going to need you to point out examples of what the heck you're talking about. Yes, Lexxy's art could use some cleanup, but the gesture and form building sketch lines you're talking about in drawing do not exist on Lexxy's finished strip.
I did a GIS on "rough sketch drawing" so I could find an example of an actual completely not-cleaned-up piece of artwork, and found this. You can see the original guide forms the artist used to sketch out the shape. You can see the first tries for the overall dragon shape the artist wanted. Show me where anything like that is present on Lexxy's drawing, please.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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to all those saying Monica was doing brilliant countertrolling...You are wrong.
First, analyze what we have here. We don't have an art competition. We have a reality show. If this was an art competition, then they would just have two weeks of them making art or strips, and the best one voted by fans would win. This is a reality show. That is why they have go carts and ping pong.
Second, this isn't solely about finding the "best strip." If it were, they would just read all the applicants comics, have two week meet and great, and pick the best person they get along with who produces the kind of strip they were looking for. This is a reality show. That is why the "make a strip" competition is done in extremely non-real world circumstances.
Once you get those out of the way, analyze how the other elims went. Everyone who has gone in had to be badgered, questioned, bothered and so forth. Hell, Katie had it two days in a row while wrestling with her own inner-demons about it. This was the first circumstance in which the artist "countertrolled" by making BAD TV. What makes her so special that SHE should not be interrupted? Everyone else took it in levels of stride, and hell, Abby was a true countertroll by throwing the questions BACK at Mike and Jerry, and understanding they were trying to make TV. SHE coutnertrolled to GOOD TV. You could feel her tension, while she seemed to understand the NATURE of the challenge was making good TV. She also generate a damn good strip.
Now, I understand that not everyone handles stress the same way, or well, but I don't understand the people running to "rescue" poor Monica, other than a mixture of "white knight," and that people liked her personality. Fact is, she was making TERRIBLE TV, which is why Mike was uncomfortable, because she was making the SHOW bad. Can you imagine if the elims were silent watching them draw? It would be boring. If Mike didn't keep the angle of bothering her going, it would a. give her an advantage over the others who helped make good TV b. unfair to Lexxy who actually interacted and c. make for a crappy to watch elim challenge.
Oh, P.S., a "your mom" has been ridden into the ground so much that it reminds me OF YOUR MOM. See, easy way out. At least Abby's "suck a dick," was done in a funny way, not whispered in a EXTREMELY passive-aggressive manner. All in all, the only thing funny about Monica this episode was how Mike SAVED it.
Now I like Monica. She's funny and her strip is great. HOWEVER, she came off as a petulant child, unable to deal with the stress of the challenge in an adult way, and people defending that action seems to miss the fundamental point of this show. Entertainment.
Now, on an un-rant-related point, her strip was poignant, but it didn't flow great, and the fact is, dinos and roller skates were props, just like Amy's were. If she picked "flower" and "driving" it would have been the same comic. Yes, the judges seem to prefer funny, and that is mainly because funny seems to sell, based upon their experience and marketing. However, the strip was mainly a response to the badgering, which (and this is just to me) seemed a bit like "Pick me." Same reason I didn't like Katie's second strip, although I love her. The strip should be independent to the competition, and without the other context, it's just a dinosaur wanting to Rollerblade instead of getting a job.
Oh, and if her comic is her answer to "Why become a comic artist," then she could have ended the whole uncomfortableness by saying, "Because I love it." Simple.
Parry is the word.
Monica was fine to do what she wanted, and Mike should have anticipated that some people might take his heckling very negatively (and maybe he did). My only deal is that I felt uncomfortable watching it, and also felt that both Monica and Mike were uncomfortable too, though that may have just been me projecting my own discomfort.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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She sat their silently for the most part, then she kept shhing and "you'll seeing" with whispered retorts. That isn't good tv. Without the subtitles and Mike's hard reaction, it would not have even registered.
-Good natured teaching moment- It's parry, as with weapons
Note that I said an intermediate stage, BETWEEN a sketch and a finished project. To try to explain further, bring Lexxy's comic up on the strip search site. Look at the line of the chin and cheek of the girl in the lower left hand panel. There is a double line there where a single line would be much cleaner. Look at two children on the top right: the line for their necks intersect with the line of their cheek. Also notice in the Calvin and Hobbes strips, how the arm and the shoulders are always connected with a solid line. While hair and fur might have gaps in the line in order to convey messiness and fuzziness, the contours of the limbs are almost always outlined, or filled with a gradient or color to establish the shape. The camera man in the lower central panel lacks these connecting lines that delineate the edges of his form, instead he is a gestural representation intended to hint at action and form, rather than show the full contour. note the obvious gaps in his shoulder and crotch.
Look also at the blacks. They are obviously quickly and gesturally filled in. The effect is charming, but less polished.
Compare that to Lexxy's own viral table flip comic: The contours are steadier, there are fewer accidental double lines, gaps in the inks of the blacks are obviously deliberate and achieve a specific effect, using standard techniques to imply shading. Gradients are used. The fingers join to each other without visible gaps between them, with contours even more defined by the addition of gradients etc.
If you need me to actually copy these over and draw circles and arrows, let me know.
Again, I do not think that Lexxy's art is in any way bad. I feel like her strip search comics lack some specific pieces of polish we associate with traditional newsprint comics. I'm not saying that a comic needs to resemble a traditional newsprint comic to be good, or to win - I'm merely trying to explain why some people, who are used to seeing newspaper comics, might think her show comics look less finished than, say, her viral table flip.
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
1. She's good at comics, she knows it, and she had a legitimate chance of winning the show and
2. How life-altering it would have been for her to win, as a young artist who obviously has a lot of demons associated with pursuing her passions.
While Mike is pestering her to death and distracting her you can almost feel her about to snap and scream, "This is a joke to you but don't you realize how important this is to me?!"
Here's my submission for this week's Home Edition comic.
Monica really rocked last week with her ping pong skills, so I guess I'm rooting for her. Time to watch!
So it's not important to everyone else? Was Monica the SOLE person who is a "young artist who obviously has a lot of demons associated with pursuing her passions?" What was Amy to you?
Which is why I said she came off as a petulant child. When the cards were down, she made bad tv. She produced a nice strip, but did so in a way that made her seem very immature. Which could have played a role in the outcome. While her humor would go great in the PA offices, they might not want to invest a year into someone who, when the pressure mounts, does not handle it well.
Or it was just bad TV, and as a viewer, turned me off a bit. No matter how many times she "shits her pants."
Origin ID: jazzmess
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Monica shouldn't be rewarded for refusing to play along. Mike was being the "asshole judge," like many reality shows have. They do that to make the boring competition exciting, and so far I have had no complaints about the elim, until now.
And the "asshole" seemed pretty niceand understanding in the end by not destroying the piece. You know, when he wasn't trying to make good tv.
I'm sad because I was really rooting for Monica from the start, but the beauty of this show is that all the contestants are likeable.