Comic Stripper 02

As in Comic Stripper 01, I often put composition of the elements over conveying the message - a strategy that (again) did not win me competitions, but all you admirers instead. Someone who knows me would think this was an unlikely topic for me to make a comic about, but that someone is sweet enough not to make too big a deal about it.

I wanna hold your chand!

To quote Juror #4 from the 1957 movie 12 Angry Men, "two things:" (yup, that's the quote)

• The focus was on symmetry in composition; I love comics where minor changes occur between panels to convey a story, especially when there are no speech bubbles. It requires a little extra focus on the viewer's part, kinda like the Slylock Fox 'Spot the 6 differences' puzzles, and is therefore more rewarding.*
• Though I prefer black and white comics, the red tablecloth adds the extra layer of meaning in the last panel - a cheap thrill for me and hopefully for you. Only a few artists can make a comic truly stunning in colour, so for now, I'll stick to monochrome.

It's when I took a test print of this strip that I felt the contrast between the lighter and darker shades of red should have been more, but everyone isn't born with that much foreskin. ("I said 'foresight'", "Oh, I thought you said 'foreskin'" etc)

*This does NOT mean I condone the 'talking heads' comics like Garfield where the panels are almost photocopies of each other, with only the text in the speech bubbles changed.

This Thesis is The Thesis

For those who came in late: In the early months of 2011, I was required to present a thesis on Architectural Design. My search for a topic started with a Resort in a hill station and ended in a Marine Park and Research Centre facility on the coast. At this stage, you're supposed to have an opinion on Architecture, and must have formed some sort of hypothesis (how I came to dislike that word!) that you would test in your Thesis. With some struggle, I decided my hypothesis would explore the generation of a form that would reflect the connection between Man and Sea, between recreation and research... (This is ArchiSpeak, or A.S. You've probably heard of it as B.S., but that is soooo 1990s, dahling)

Though I am a functionalist, this hypothesis steered me in the direction of form exploration, a painful journey, but with sweet enough fruit at the end. 

If you'd like to get a whiff, here's the link.

As with my slightly more painful Dissertation, just gimme a little credit if you use any part of it.

If the final form wasn't exciting enough for you, forgive me on two counts:

• I've never bothered about Form before, with the firm conviction that the Functions will generate the Form if they're in the right place
• The final design was done in less than a month, as a drastic jump from its previous avatar

Brought back from long absence, a haiku to mark the occasion:

Form follows Function

But with a slip of the tongue

Function follows Form

Mental note: Must haiku more.

The return of Uncanny!

Welcome back to another episode of Uncanny! Observe the following pieces of information. The first is from the Book of Revelations from the King James Bible. It's more recognisable as the opening to the song Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden ("Who?", you ask, as the universe slowly conspires to erase you from existence for that utterance). The second is a definition from Wikipedia, which is as good as authoritative nowadays. I've emboldened and underlined the keywords in each for all you lazy readers:

Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. 

(Revelations 12:12)

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. 

(Revelations 13:18)

During the canonization process of the Roman Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith, popularly known as the Devil's advocate, was a canon lawyer appointed by Church authorities to argue against the canonization of the candidate. It was their job to take a skeptical view of the candidate's character, to look for holes in the evidence, to argue that any miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent, etc. The Devil's advocate opposed God's advocate, whose task is to make the argument in favor of canonization.

These are two pieces of information, with the common factor being the Devil, right? Well, now I know where the Beast lives - as expected, in New Delhi. (Scroll down, I'm not telling you next time, mouth-breather)

Lawcifer?

No points to me for poor photography, but you can't blame someone for not taking the time to set up a tripod at the gates of Christian Hell.