May the Ring Be With You

Today ends the Sight vs. Write event that was conducted by myself and the fellas over at Enliv Comics. This week we tackled the "Write" portion of things by creating a comic that depended solely on the writing for the punch line.

Like many of my comics the idea for today's strip stemmed from real life. I'll leave it up to you to connect the dots as to which parties might be represented, but suffice it to say that the next time emily and I have 28 uninterrupted hours with no plans, we'll be watching a few trilogies to make sure everybody has their o' so nerdy ducks in a row*.

And thus concludes Sight vs. Write. Which was more difficult for Wheezy?

Although the write side had its difficulties, mainly in thinking of a decent idea that translated directly into word bubbles and still made sense, the art end of the deal presented a greater challenge. In part because it was a forced limitation - but doing the setup, follow through, and punch line for a gag with no words at all was difficult. I was constantly battling the urge to throw a clarifying label on different areas of the art (like "Testing Facilities" or "Urinal Cake Holders Inc."), just to make sure that the audience understood what I was going for.

Did I mention that I've done something similar to this before? That idea lent itself to a "no-word" strip (unless you count the webbed "BFF"). Last week's was a little forced.

With the writing, the biggest challenge was due in part to an oversight when we thought up this whole sight vs. write thing. By limiting the art to "eyes in a dark room", it really pigeon-holed the comic into something involving two people in a dark space. In retrospect, I think that a rule of just "two people talking" using simplistic characters would have opened up the playing field a bit. That being said - this week was awesome for me because it took like, ten minutes to "draw."

And now I'll leave you with an ADDITIONAL comic. Two Wheezy originals in one week? What is this, 2004?

This was an alternate idea I had for this week's strip, and since this is really the only time I'll be able to get away with the lack of art without it being considered a lazy complete cop out, I figured that I'd just double your comic pleasure for the week.

Last week there was some good discussion in the comments with regards to the Sight vs. Write concept - what do you guys think of the results for myself and Enliv? Was one method preferred over the other?

See ya on Thursday for another Featured Animation.

*In the interest of full disclosure, emily didn't confuse "Star Wars" with "Lord of the Rings", but rather mixed up a few plot elements of "Star Wars" and "Space Balls", referencing the "schwartz ring" when discussing the "force". I thought she was talking about the One Ring to Rule them all, and thus the muse of cartooning struck.