#45: Love and other stuff

Hello dreamers,

Hold onto something, it’s time for another set of cartoons.

This week we take a look at love gone wrong, and take a glance at love gone wonderfully right.

Gearing up and heading out,
Chris

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Caption: “Looks like someone might be destroying a city alone tonight.”

Love is hard. For you, for me, and even for Kaijus.

What did they do wrong? I’m not really sure. But what I suspect is that destroying a city can’t be a whole lot of fun when you’re doing it solo.

If you know a Kaiju, be sure to check in and make sure they’re okay.

A little artist’s note: This is a weird one, even for me. I’ve sat on it for a while, but I keep coming back to the silliness of it.

Of course, it does take a little suspension of disbelief. You have to believe that Kaijus are hanging around the mountains. You have to believe that people have just accepted that they will destroy a city, and you have to believe that they have meaningful relationships, just like you and me. Can this cartoon do all of that? Well that will be up to you to decide.

But looking at the artwork itself, other than the weird subject matter, one of the reasons I sat on this one was because I just couldn’t get the shading right. The challenge was to show perspective, and to show the mountains in the distance, but to do so without having to shade the entire cartoon. The result is the best I could produce with my skill set, and within my style, but I suspect if I shaded it this time next year, I would do it a little differently.

Caption: “ ‘til permadeath do us part.”

There’s death, and then there’s permadeath.

In games, you can die, but maybe you had some extra lives and you’ll come back to play again. But then, well then you run out of those lives. And it all comes crashing down. And you go from death, to permadeath.

Wouldn’t you want that in your nuptials?

A little artist’s note: There are times when I’ve been a real gamer. But I feel like, as I find myself sitting in the early 40s bracket, that my gamer status has gone from complicated shooters to whatever I can fit in a 5-minute window. And, even then, it may not reach 5-minutes.

But I’ve always been struck by the word ‘permadeath’. It’s simple enough, permanent death, but it’s also a concept that we wouldn’t need at all if it wasn’t for the fact that you could ‘die’ multiple times in a game. And whether that be a video game or a tabletop, the rules still apply. There’s death, and there’s permadeath, and there’s this cartoon.

Overall, visually this one is fairly simple. Two people, all dressed up, a clergyman (with a beard but no moustache to mix it up a little), and an arch. And it was the arch that actually took the most work. I initially played with a rounded one, but it just didn’t look right, so I instead ran kicking and screaming to the embrace of the square one. I also added some flowers to make it look a little more wedding-like, and to give it some character.

Anyway, this cartoon is a deep cut, but I quite like it.

Thanks for reading MiddleSquiggle!

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