This took way longer than it should have. In fact, I was going to update on Saturday, but a nasty cascade of events happened:

1. Photoshop fails to start.
2. Reboot, launch PS again, scan.
3. Spend about an hour looking for the stylus for my tablet so I can draw the speech bubble in the last panel.
4. Fail to find the stylus, reconnect scanner to scan in hand-drawn version.
5. PS crashes, taking all my work with it.

That said, I think that panel 2 and the last panel are some of the better panels I’ve drawn in a while (in b4 ‘lol J never updates’ jokes). I don’t think I would have been able to draw a sleeping pose at that angle before — staring at this image seems to have helped. The last panel is one of the best dynamic poses I’ve drawn in a while, and I regret not adding more speedlines on the bat to convey a sense of speed.

Anyway, now that I’m actually settled in somewhat, I might be able to post more. Next time: gadgets I’ve picked up recently.

Click for larger version.

This comic is based on this Finnish 4koma involving Mokou and Kaguya. The comic just has so many funny things working in unison: the terrible pun, the two pairs of sunglasses, the YEEAAAOOOOFFF in the last panel……

Since the dialogue and punchline work with Jace and Chandra, I decided to port it over. I wanted to title the comic “Stranglehold” in reference to this Magic card, but I wasn’t sure if enough people would know the flavor text…

First up, a 5-person loop. Participants: wah, J, Lushan, TV&, and Law.

The other 3 after the jump…

And as per last time, a “passing diagram”:

Of course, we weren’t done after that, so there was another one. We switched the passing direction for this one. Participants: wah, J, Lushan, TV&.

And another passing diagram:

Whew! That’s it for today. Join me next time for The Exquisite Corpse-a-thon!

That’s right, there’s still more of these.

Happy new year everyone!

This was a random 4koma idea I’ve had sitting around since who-knows-when. The professor is just a throwaway character, but he sure was fun to draw.

Also, the CO-O tag returns!

Also, gonna leave you guys with this rather smoothly fan-animated video.

A horrible pun I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. The first two panels actually happened last Monday. I did this comic without any computer processing other than some minor brightness/contrast balancing.

Pho
Rageguy
The foodtruck where the first part of the exchange happened. It’s good cheap fare, for any of you who are in Cambridge.

More authentic red “PHOOOOO” version.

So, I have this text file on my desktop, next to the FileZilla shortcut. Up until now, I never remembered to look at it, but it contains suggested rant topics. So, I’ll be presenting what I hope will become a recurring feature here on my (rare) updates. Introducing:

(There was a funny story behind the name of this section, but I’ll save that for another time (when I actually remember it). Also, can’t draw dinosaurs.)

Today’s topic: Why can people be tricked?

In this case, I mean “tricked” in the sense that people can be deceived by things like magic tricks, slight of hand, and general con-artistry.

Since most of us aren’t Descartes, we trust in our senses, not our ability to think. I mean, if you don’t trust in your senses, what else do you really have left? Plus, they’re usually right. In fact, they’re almost always right.

So we get used to assuming that they’re infallible. But like any other sensor, they can be spoofed. When this happens, though, people tend to assume that their senses are correct, and something unexpected has occurred in the real world, even if this would violate known laws of physics or whatnot.

Hence, you’ll get people who believe in ESP or various other paranormal activity, even though these activities would usually violate the fundamental laws of physics, if they were real.

Essentially, what we’re dealing with here is a conflict between a source that is “reliable” (scientific laws as we know them), and a source that is “close” (senses, personal “intuition”). Unfortunately, even among “educated” individuals, close can win out over reliable.

So you get things like evolution, which can be difficult for people to accept (in this country at least), because regardless of the reliability of the supporting evidence (fossil records, actual evolution in action in moths during England’s Industrial Revolution, mutating viruses), it just feels so darn distant. It’s not really something you can watch happen in front of your eyes. Look how long it took us to figure out that the earth moved and not the sun.

Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Basically, if you run into someone who has a deeply-ingrained belief in ESP or creationism or whatnot, it’s not really worth the effort to try to convince them otherwise. No matter how much you talk, you’re not the closest source.

They are.

So, after the Anime Club showing this past Friday, I asked if anyone wanted to do exquisite corpse. We actually got 5 people, so there was one comic each where one person didn’t participate.

Anyway, here are the remaining 3:

And here is a nifty diagram that shows who drew what:

I actually don’t really go to Anime Club that often anymore. In fact, I don’t really watch anime that often anymore. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I’ve just gotten less interested in anime. I guess it could be summarized like this:

1) If it has plot, it’s usually pretty predictable, so I basically know pretty much where it’s going to wind up and roughly what path it will take, and thus decide there’s no point in watching it.

2) If it doesn’t have plot, each episode is about the same in feel, so I don’t get anything out of watching the show.

Basically, I don’t really get that much out of watching anime these days and would rather put the time towards some other activity, so I just don’t watch it that much anymore. It takes what I consider a really good show to draw me in — I watched Eden of the East because the plot was interesting and it was hard to tell how it was going to end, and I watched Kuchu Buranko because the characters were written so well that its (essentially standalone) episodes stayed interesting for me. I actually bought the box set for Eden and the book that Kuchu Buranko was based on.

So, these days, I sometimes head over to the Anime Club clubroom after showings just to hang out with people there. Going to an anime club for social interactions? It wasn’t always able to work this way … but that’s another post.

I realize I have a lot of stuff I’ve done or drawn that I never really considered for an update, but would actually work, so you guys might see those in the coming weeks.

This is an old, old in-joke. Really old. As in J-and-D-were-in-elementary-school old. The two of us would come up with stories (mentioned briefly here), and occasionally there would be a need for some random object or something like that. To explain how the heroes got these things in the middle of nowhere (and I have no idea why we came up with this), we created 3-Second Delivery: If you called the phone number (1-2-3), you could get anything you wanted delivered within 3 seconds. I had this really old drawing of the original 3-Second Delivery vehicle, but I’m not sure where it went off to.

Anyway, I’m sorry for having totally dropped the ball on updating lately; the start of term has been … interesting. I’ll try to post more frequently, even if it’s just silly sketches or whatever, okay?

Oh, and this mini-arc isn’t done yet. (It’s been a while since we had one of these, hasn’t it?) See you all next week! (at the latest)

This one was inspired by a conversation with Sam, but for some reason it’s taken me several months to actually turn it into a comic. It’s been done with “greyscale bucketing” color technique, seen in this update. (By the way, “Bad Apple” in that update is a reference to this). Again, it’s done by first pencilling in red, inking, then taking out the red digitally. Erasing the red is a pain is really hard though, so I’m looking for alternatives to the red mechanical pencil lead I’ve been using. I’ve seen some “erasable colored pencils” in the supermarket, which might be a worthwhile investment just to see if they work.

The other alternative I’m considering is erasable pens. I used them in elementary school, and they were horrible then, but the modern ones seem to erase decently, so I want to try them out.

But yeah, not having to erase the whole drawing (as is the case with ordinary pencil lineart) is pretty awesome.

Today’s comic was inspired by an actual event. I was storing my milk in a friend’s fridge, and when I went to get it, I was rewarded with … milk slush. Yuk. I poured some out and defrosted it … and now the remaining milk is richer because I basically extracted the water from it (freeze distillation?).

Today’s comic is listed as “redux” because it shares a title with a “classic Nonsense Wars” strip — that is, the really old ones that were drawn before the webcomic started. In fact, it was the second ever NW comic:

Man, it sure has been a while.

Also, I’m gonna party like it’s my birthday today … since it actually is my birthday.

*booze*

Another pair of exquisite corpses; They’re from the same sessions as the ones in this update.

This time the participants were:

(Lushan is the same person as Lu)

I’m in the one on the left twice due to mis-syncing during that first session. Important rule: exquisite corpse requires that everyone draw at similar speeds…