I keep trying to tell myself I have at least one of these. The basic idea for this was, uh, influenced (yea, that’s the word) from Sinfest, yet another comic better than this one.
A couple of (un)natural laws I’ve discovered while doing this comic, so far:
- You get your best ideas when half-asleep in bed.
- You forget them by the time you fully wake up.
- It never seems as funny when you get ready to post.
- You always think of a better punchline after you’ve published.
I’m sure I’ll be adding to this list as time goes on.
For today’s strip, the big problem was getting the kanji to look just right. Knowing how to do it using a fude (pronounced foo-day, a Japanese writing brush) helps with knowing how it looks but not how one goes about doing it in Gimp (or any other drawing package); the subtle dynamics of the real brush are hard to emulate in a program which only has static shaped brushes. Best I could do is rough shape it and then tweak the ends.
Even then, I’m not an expert by any means using a fude. “Ichi” is the first stroke learned and, in some schools, students work on that for months before going on to learn the other strokes.
Sinfest=Win