The webcomics blog about webcomics

Like Morgan Spurlock, But With Less Risk Of Liver Damage

It’s turning into BLC Week around here: books by Howard Tayler, Kris Straub and Dave Kellett have arrived at my homestead in the past few days, which will have to be read and reviewed (big ups to Kellett who charged $4.25 for shipping/handling, and spent $4.05 of it on postage … you can’t get unskilled immigrant labor to do as much handling as he did for $0.20!). Interview soon with Straub and Scott Kurtz regarding the PvP animated series. And Paul Southworth went and got hisself invited to speak at Vericon, on the hallowed campus of Harvard University, along with such luminaries as R Stevens, Jeff Rowland, and Shaenon Garrity (who is mysteriously missing from the Vericon speakers page). Good times for the BLC crew.

But we’re here today to talk about Evan (no last name, sorry), who’s five days into being a webcartoonist. Normally, we at Fleen wait until there’s a bit more of an archive before we profile a new strip, but there won’t necessarily be a lot more strips, because Evan is only going to be a webcartoonist for one month.

As the second in a series of month-long challenges (in November, he ate $1.00 of food per day), Evan has set himself a goal:

For the month of December, I’m drawing a web comic every day. I’m not an artist, never wanted to be one, and have never drawn anything more complicated than a smiley face in my life. Still, I’ve always enjoyed comics, so this is my chance to try my own.

Each drawing is occompanied by a short description of what I was thinking while I was drawing it. I’m a pretty firm believer that over explaining a joke is the fastest way to ruin it, so read the comic first (click to enlarge) and then click on the comments section to read my thoughts.

For a self-described ‘not an artist’, Evan’s doing better than expected; he started off looking a bit like John Callahan (although presumably with a full complement of motor control), and by Day 4, he’s already as visually polished as, say, Scott Adams.

Lots of webcomics were started on a whim, out of malice, or a sense of boredom (possibly all three), so you can’t really say that Evan’s in bad company. We’ll check back on at the end of the month to find out if the cartooning bug bit, or if he’s going to move onto a new temporary hobby (maybe future ‘for a month’ reports could feature cartoons of the wacky misadventures?). In the meantime, check out Cartoonist for a Month to see how his skills evolve.

And on the off chance that they don’t, he’s convinced his friends Rob, Erin, and Tim to play along; at present, Erin’s in the lead (she’s already picked a theme — true life at a credit union).

[…] In other news, Pet Professional is updating every day this week to finish up its current story arc, and the ranks of those experimenting with doing a webcomic continue to expand. […]

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