Not A Blog™

[Click comic to enlarge]

Holy crap, webcomics take a freak-ton of time. I have no idea how other people do it. No, that’s not entirely true. I know some of them do it. Many webcomic artists have a stock library of vector characters which they move into place and shotgun the dialogue up there and—bam—instant comic. I do not do this. No, I insist on hand drawing every step, from the initial sketch in Art Rage, to the inking and color in Photoshop. It basically means I go over the comic four times (sketch, ink, paint, dialogue and structure).

What an interesting learning process. It’s fun, but I don’t know how long I can keep it up. Something’s going to have to change. I have some options. I could move part or all of the process outside the computer. That would definitely speed up the sketching; not so much the color. I can not work at 300dpi (no, that’s not really an option). I can not color. That’s probably the first thing that’s going to go the next time I’m in a time crunch. But more than anything, I’m kind of hoping I just get faster at it. This is pretty much the first time I’ve been drawing anything since college, so I am slightly rusty. Even so, I’m really interested to see how it evolves.

Regarding the comic itself. This is only one of half a dozen things which make me hate the telephone with a passion. (I’ll probably illustrate the rest some time.) I run into this almost every time I talk on the phone and for the life of me, I can’t figure it out—at least I haven’t been able to figure it out the way I have with most other interpersonal communications. I don’t want to hang up on people prematurely, but I have no idea how long the “post-important stuff conversation” closes are supposed to run. I think a simple one-to-one exchange would be optimal, but some people muddy this up with a pseudo-close such as, “I’ll see you”. Is that like “bye”? If I say “okay, bye” to this, sometimes people come back with another “bye” as the phone is leaving my ear. Okay, there’s an extra line there, but I understand nothing needs to follow. But sometimes people come back with “take care” or some other sign-off. Does this mean they’re done!? Am I supposed to return in kind (that is to say, with a: “you too”)? I don’t get it! There’s no consistency!

Some people solve this by waiting until the other person hangs up first. That’s what I try to do. It works—fifty percent of the time with those people who don’t worry about this sort of thing. But the other half of the time, the other person is trying to do this, too! Both people are sort of hanging on the line, but not saying anything, waiting for the other person to hang up. Annoying and inefficent.

I don’t think I’ve ever hung up someone as I show in the comic, although I have said to people, “okay, I’m hanging up the phone now” to diffuse an awkward post-close, pre-hang-up pause. It’s more of a joke than out of annoyance—but it’s annoying, too. Some people just keep talking, even after the close has clearly closed. One of these days, I am going to pull this stunt out of exasperation.

For those of us who are not conversationally adroit, we need more definition in the structure of an audio only conversation. If I may make a suggestion: I think it should be a rule that when you’re done and about to hang up the phone, you say “bye”. When the “bye” comes—that’s it, done. Both people have to say “bye”, at which point it is clear that both people are hanging up the phone. No ambiguity. No talking over each other’s words. No having to guess at pause-length as an indicator of conversation end. Of course, this only works if everyone does it and no one tries to be creative with their closings.

I can’t figure out how to end phone conversations. Email me instead.

-Pulsar