Can you tell that it's snowing today in Chicago?

For my 25th cartoon milestone (well, and because it was Friday and Erica was already downtown) we went to Pearl and I treated myself to a few blue pencils and a bigger sketch book (a whole 8.5x11"!).

Knight & Dragon (and sometimes Princess) is a pretty classic cartoon combination. I saw a tweet from Cory Doctorow this morning about a new cartooning book for kids with a knight and dragon on the cover and this popped into my head in the shower. It took a number of iterations before I was happy that the dragon didn't just look like a lumpy alligator. And I kept drawing the knight with his helmet down, until I realized that that was dumb (also, crusader robes -- much easier to draw than armor)*.

I filled the page in my lil' sketchbook with the drawing, so originally this was the first of my cartoons that I hadn't hand-lettered -- I used a font that I made of my own handwriting via the YourFonts website (it's free!). But the font isn't tweaked at all and the more I looked at the longer words like "availability" the more I didn't like it, so I wrote out the dialogue and scanned it in.

* Oh snap -- that's the way the knight is drawn on the cover of that book. I guess I was trying to get away from that inspiration with all the armoured knights I drew (badly). Then I did a Google image search for knight and I was all like "aha -- crusader robes would be easy to draw. I must be a genius for thinking of that!" Sigh.

It is, in fact, raining like the dickens here in Chicago. And this hilights why I've been mostly doing talking heads so far -- the joke here, such as it is, relies on you recognizing that that's a puddle in the 3 panel and not, say, a piece of abstract art left lying under falling ants. Or something. But practice is, I suppose, the only way to get better and that's the whole point of this exercise. Sorry about the ants.

I mean, there's the reunion show next week, so it's topical for a whole seven more days. Take that Can O' Soup.

Erica laughed, but she's tipsy too.

I'm trying out a new Schmerica head. I'm also trying out the four panel model (oh, wait I have done that already). I'm also using the silent penultimate panel.

I think we're learning that Schmuzzy is kind of a jerk.

That's not too obscure, is it?

I can't find her stash, but you know it's true…

I think that should be "is harder" in the second panel there, but I don't know if I'm going to bother going back to fix it. In fact… I'm not.

I got a great email yesterday, inviting me to participate in an qualifying match of Layer Tennis this Friday before the main match (noonish, I believe). I instantly accepted and then went and asked my boss if I could have the afternoon off. And then... well, why don't I let my cartoon of the day tell you about my mental state:

I'm pretty firmly in stage two right now. I mean, I've talked a lot of smack about Layer Tennis competitors over the last two seasons and now it's my turn to face the criticism. And my opponent is a real designer and all and what am I? I'm an actor/video editor/server admin who dabbles. I dabble! And FuzzyCo is a mess! I should have cleaned up if I knew I was going to be having company!

Whew. Gotta talk myself down. You'll be fine, Fuzzy. You'll be fine.

There are many ways Erica and I are just alike, and sleepiness is one of them. Zzzzzzz.

Yes, we do watch a lot of reality TV. (Also, in fairness, I think it was season 2 of RoL that "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" was overplayed. Whatevs.)

Yessss… I did just watch some Dimitri Martin. Why do you ask?

My day went better than the ninja's, as far as romance at least.

Or... I'll draw a hasty cartoon and then live the joke.

This is, unfortunately, not something I dreamed up, it's just a thing that's actually sitting beside the TV. The devil wasn't that intimidating to begin with, and now that he's sitting in a bowl, he's even cuter.

Pretty big hair in the first frame there. I did actually clean up some layout stuff in Photoshop (the title was way above the cartoon, for example) but I decided that we all needed to see just how big Schmuzzy's hair could be.

This is probably funnier if you know our cats. See, Parker is bigger than Latte. A lot bigger.