I over-write a lot of the comics. They start off as they long-winded scripts then I normally knock them down as I lay them out in Manga Studio. This time, I noticed that I had essentially two different jokes in one script. Today’s comic was the beginning of Friday’s comic, where Robyn and Lorraine play volleyball. But I was rushing the girl’s part to get this part in and was not doing either one any favors.
So, cut them into two, add a little more to each, and now you get a tad more content. Having written for video since… well, 1977, I have a bad habit of writing in a ton of stuff that would look great if this were live action, but for static comic strips, it’s too much.
And I gotta say this for the size of the beer mugs/steins overseas… Damn! They’re huge! Now I could have used those sorts of sized drinks back in the day! Actually had a good friend who simply ordered a pitcher of beer and no glasses. Now that’s drinking!
Ladies on the beach jumping on Friday! 🙂
Truly two different mediums. You might be able to get away with more than you think though. While you wouldn’t really want different plot lines in the same strip, the girls playing volleyball and the guys on the beach, multiple related jokes following the same plotline are great, especially if you alternate with straight (ish) lines. This increases your verbal density a bit, but it ups the perceived value of your strip by the end user, who feels they’re getting more comedy for the time they’re spending. Asides also work great for this.
All that said, this strip did make me glad I wasn’t drinking coke when I read it, or I’d have been spending the rest of the morning blowing my nose and cleaning my keyboard. (In the good way.)
Gotta get me one o’ them gallon-sized beer steins!
I was in Latvija shortly after it became free again (early 1990s). Sat down to watch some TV and there was some movie on. Funny thing was… The language the actors were speaking was English (sound was a bit muted)…. but there were subtitles in Swedish… And then there was some bored sounding Latvian guy translating it all into Latvian over that! It was the same guy doing all the voices of the characters in the film! It was REALLY wierd watching it!
Now that sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone or something… some guy is stuck doing translations for all movies/TV shows for eternity. How confusing too to have the original soundtrack then subtitles THEN the translation! Truly a stoner type event if I ever heard one… “Wow, man, I hear it too!”
I heard some time ago that this used to be common in Russia: a movie would be playing in a theater in English, and there would be someone present (usually a woman) translating the movie to the crowd as it went along. That would be surreal.