How Do We Do It?

Volume.


















LARRY:
So I found this piece of paper that I'd forgotten about, and I'd written this limerick on it that's pretty much meaningless except that it's all rhyming homophones:

There was a girl with a plait of great weight
So she scarce could keep a straight gait
She ne'er could wait
But race through her gate
She'd a lot on her plate, in that strait

Kinda clever, huh?

MARY:
I don't like limericks.

Racoon Lad

This little guy is for a project I'm helping a friend with.

Ol' Painty Can Rule

Sometimes it's fun to try something you wouldn't usually do, like sketching on the Windows XP "Paint" program using the spray can tool and a mouse.



The sky kind of ambles along the line between "moody" and "over-wrought", but a mouse I says!

Displacer Beast Rampant

House Kraegurn all up in your grill.



So, I've started playing Pathfinder again, and inspired by the whole Game of Thrones thing, I decided my guy there needed a coat-of-arms like the Starks and the Lannisters and the rest of them. I think some good words would be "Over sea and Underdark", but I'm sure once the fever breaks it'll all be perfectly punctual apricot mittens.

Werewolf, Knight, Elf, Tree

This month I learned that you can treat a goldfish with swim bladder/buoyancy issues by feeding it a single pea. I'm still not sure why.


This month I learned that camels have "reversed genitals". They do not, however, have extra knees in their hind legs.


This month I learned that one of the reasons King James instituted his English translation of the Bible was because the Geneva Bible, which was the previous most popular translation, was seen as containing too much anti-royal sentiment. The "Bishops Bible" was decidedly pro-royal, but nobody liked it.


This month I learned that if you fell into lava, you wouldn't sink. Although lava is more or less a liquid, it's still much denser than a person, so you would just hit the top and burn.



Bonus:

"Werewolf, Knight, Tree" doesn't sound as good as "Werewolf, Knight, Elf, Tree", so that's why the elf is there. I also have this bonus elf:



Merry Christmas, see you in the New Year.

Hey, here's some things to look at in a hurry

Whoops, quickly now, down this way, wotcherstep, here's one:


Bonus: Also this.

My Daughter is Nonplussed by Modok

I made a Modok costume for Halloween. That is all.

A Boy And His Lizard

The grease and salt at the bottom of the bag.

Hey diddle diddle
I seem to lack spittle
I thus cannot blow my horn
I tried this here fiddle
But it ain't beer and skittles
As my rotator cuff is torn



He kept to himself
Ne'er a curse, cuss, nor holler
'Till the day he decided
To wear a ruffed collar



There were seven to start
But seven's too many
She got carried away
Now she hasn't got any

When you got way too much
You go through 'em to fast
When you had it was Now
But Now it's all Past

One got lost in a crowd
One got caught in a breeze
One was trapped, one was drowned
One was bled out by fleas

The last two left together
They ran for their lives
To escape the cruel fate
Of the unfortunate five

Under the sofa, behind the monopoly shoe

Look, here it is again for the first time.



Back when I drew this, I said "She should have worn a shirt." It's as true now as it ever was, but the passage of time has revealed more layers, including the ones I can't remember.

I've started watching some old Johnny Quest episodes my brother-in-law gave to me along with a stack of other cartoons (again, many thanks Scott, if you're reading this, or even if you're not, in which case does my gratitude even exist? Is it like Schrodinger's Thank-you note?), and I noticed something that I never noticed before. You probably have, as it's pretty obvious: there's no women in that cartoon. Not one. Not even in the background. Now, it could be that it's because boys were the target audience. But it could also be that Joe and Bill just don't know how to make girl characters.
And once you start walking down that road, you kinda notice that most cartoons don't usually have a lot of women characters in them. And when they're there, they just kind of seem tacked on, with the same two or three personality types recycled through them. "This girl's SPUNKY! Such a thing has never been done before!"
It happened to me once in animation school. Both me and one of my classmates came up with two very different pitch ideas for cartoons independently. However, what the two pitches had in common was that they both had exactly ONE girl character, and they both had EXACTLY the same personality description. It was kinda sad.
Could I do better now? Am I older, wiser, with a more mature outlook? I dunno. I doubt that picture I just posted is helping my case very much, in any event.
Plus, we're making cartoons here. If someone describes a cartoon to you as "older, wiser, with a more mature outlook," they usually aren't going to add in "hilarious".
Fact is, most cartoons usually rely on stock character types for both genders. You don't need to know someone's deep dark character background to hit 'em with a hammer fer a laff. Still, I think it's worth thinking about, if only to recognize the limitations we place on ourselves because "That's how we've always done it."

Well, this post got way out of hand and wandered all over the landscape. I was originally going to bring up Johnny Quest because the other thing that struck me about the show was how it was parodied in Venture Brothers over forty years after it was on TV, and how everyone was giving Space Knights a hard time about being a parody of fifteen year old property.

Of course, those folks who cared about Space Knights at all stopped caring about it two years ago.

Man, I'm behind the times. Like, in cubesville, Daddio.