Funchy, Punjee, and Bob on Bear Shark Chariot!!!

Comic #46

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Here it is. Here’s my last comic for the Daily Barometer at Oregon State University… unless, of course, I manage to squeeze one more in on dead week. We’ll see about that…

Anyway, the caps and gowns this year are in fact biodegradable. There’s a running joke among my peers that graduating seniors should definitely wear something underneath the gown – just in case it’s defective.

Comic #47

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Well, it’s been FOREVER, but I finally made another comic – the first one not to be published in the Daily Barometer. Of course, it’s kind of late to be posting a comic about graduation… Oh well. It’s my comic anyway, right? So all you critics out there can just sit on it!

Comic #45

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A former roommate actually started one of his papers this way. He got an A. No, it wasn’t a history paper. It was one of those throw-away response papers we had to write for a class on sustainable practices. I won’t let him forget it.

Only one more comic after this, maybe two if I can manage. I’ll admit that it’s kinda bittersweet. It’s been stressful at times, but I’ve had so much fun drawing a new comic each week. Maybe I’ll put them together into a book at the end – all 46 or 47 off them.

Comic #44

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I find that women tend to ask me a lot of questions like this. Not any one woman in particular – just women in general. Sometimes it bugs me, but I suppose most of their questions are justified.

I give my “two weeks’ notice” to the newspaper after I submitted this comic, meaning that there will only be two more comics posted this term. Possibly three if I can submit one more for week 10.

Comic #43

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If I haven’t said so before, I get a lot of ideas for my comics from the people with whom I live. Just the other day, a bunch of guys climbed out onto the roof of our house armed with water balloons and started pelting other guys from the house as they were going to and from class. Being on the top floor with a window out to the street, I got a front row seat to all the action.

Comic #42

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As I stated in a previous post, I have been exceptionally busy with school work this term. However, I also have a tendency to exaggerate when I’m stressed.

My coop had an in-house game night a couple weeks ago on a Friday night. I chose to skip it because I had a lot of work hanging over my head. So, I went to the library.

Comic #41

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a long haul this last month. I’ve got lots of school work keeping me busy, so updates have been scarce. Still, I finally managed to squeeze another one in this week.

I got the idea for this strip when I saw one of the guys I live with reading a textbook in bed. I asked him if he was studying, and he told me he was just trying to put himself to sleep.

Comic #40

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I was walking to class one day and saw a guy wearing the kind of headphones that completely cover your ears. It got me to thinking about how isolated my generation is becoming – always walking around with buds in our ears listening to our own music.

Comic #39

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I guess I was a bit late in doing a comic about snow, but we almost never get snow in the valley anyway. At any rate, this comic was done in a relatively short amount of time – a rare commodity for me these days.

Comic #38

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I guess it’s possible to be a little too subtle with a punchline. Most people didn’t get this one without an explanation, and any joke that needs to be explained is doomed to failure. Oh well. You can’t win ’em all, I guess.

That being said, this comic was inspired by the dentist office next door to my college coop. Every fall, they send us a bunch of cookies. Perhaps you see where this is going.

Comic #37

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This one comes from experience. My first roommate in college, the main inspiration behind the character Jay, loved to drive fast. I rode with him a few times. It was quite like a rollercoaster, only it felt much more dangerous. We swerved around corners and jettisoned in and out of parking spaces. He would laugh and make light conversation while I tightly gripped the seat cushion for stability.

Interestingly enough, he had never been in an auto accident. He had plenty of speeding tickets, but he was at least safe.

Comic #34

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I sometimes wonder if professors feel the same way about reading our papers as we do about reading our textbooks.

For this comic, I wanted to avoid using standard panel borders. I used background colors instead to indicate that Bob and Professor Jones are not in the same room. It worked out pretty well, I think.

Comic #35

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This comic was supposed to be part of a storyline I had developed a while back. I may return to it when I get the opportunity to do a daily strip. For now, I can only manage one per week with my workload at school.

Comic #32

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

For this comic, I thought it might be funny to have Punjee go to the wrong class and have it be in a different language. Looking at it now, I don’t think that the punchline was that great, but I hope people at least get the joke – that is, that Punjee actually went to a Spanish language class instead of his math class.

Comic #31

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

It’s the start of a new academic year and I’m excited to be posting comics again. This year, I want to experiment with unorthodox panel layouts and color effects. Also, I want the content of my cartoons to have more substance. To me, there’s no real point in drawing a strip if it doesn’t say something meaningful. That’s my vision for Funchy, Punjee, and Bob. This strip was colored on a separate sheet of paper using watercolor pencils. It creates an interesting effect, but I think it came out a but too light.

Comic #33

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

As always, ideas for cartoons tend to come from real-life experience. There have been times when I’ve been so tired that I start putting things in the wrong places – much like Punjee does here. However, this comic strip was actually inspired by someone else, and it’s not too far from reality… This strip was colored with watercolor gouache, which is essentially opaque watercolor paint. I think it has a better effect than the watercolor pencils I used for the previous comic.

Comic #30

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This is the last comic for the 2009-10 academic year. It’ll start up again next Fall.

Just about everyone I’ve ever met has had a dream like this. Perhaps it stems out of a general fear of looking stupid in front of our peers. Whatever the cause, it’s funny that so many people share this particular irrational fear. Seriously, you’d have to be pretty out of it to walk or drive all the way to school without pants on. It’s far more likely that, like Bob, you’d wake up from a vivid dream to the sudden realization that you’re late for something terribly important.

Comic #29

Wed, 26 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The idea that generated this strip came from a newspaper article I read about a month ago. It was about how yawning heightens the senses by cooling the brain. This means that it really has little to do with how tired or bored you are. The same article went on to postulate why yawning is contagious only among humans. One theory is that yawning was a way for a pack of hunters to heighten their senses all at once. While contagious yawning is seemingly unique to humans, domesticated dogs will also yawn if they see a human yawn. Interesting, no?

Comic #28

Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This comic was inspired by stories I heard from friends who had gone to another college coop for dinner (I won’t say which one). The drawings in this comic are less refined than in previous ones. It’s probably because I’ve been so hard-pressed for time recently. For instance, Jay’s yawn in the first panel looks more like a scream. The drawings of the cabinet are also a wee bit muddled. My goal for the next school year is to further refine my drawing.

Comic #27

Mon, 03 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first comic I’ve done in color. It was painted in Photoshop for speed’s sake. I’d like to color these by hand in the future.

The idea for this comic came from one of my friends, whose name shall remain anonymous. Admittedly, this comic may not be easily understood by people outside my own circle of friends. However, I couldn’t help myself. Bob’s mom was brought into this comic to tie it in with Mom’s Weekend at OSU.

Comic #26

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes it takes a few extra panels to get a joke across. I’ve been reading a lot of Calvin and Hobbes lately, and I’ve been inspired by Watterson’s unique panel layouts for Sunday comics. Part of what made his cartoon so successful, I believe, is the amount of space he gave his characters to have dialogue. After all, it’s hard to consistently come up with four-panel gags. This cartoon was actually inspired by a “conversation” I had the other day.

Comic #25

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This comic was inspired by one of the guys who lives at my college coop. As a matter of fact, most engineers I know have a strange fascination with LEDs.

Incidentally, this is the first strip I’ve inked using a brush. If you look closely, you can see the difference in line work. I’m new to this method, so I’ve got a few kinks to work out. Still, I’m pretty happy with the results. Keep your eyes peeled for a comic in full color – one of these days, that is.

Comic #24

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

For this year’s Spring Break, I went on a road trip with a friend of mine down to my uncle’s cabin in Northern California. We stayed there for three days and drove back up along the coast (through the Redwoods). This comic was partially inspired by conversations we had in the car during the trip.

Comic #21

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #22

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

My brother helped me think of this one.

Comic #20

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

When my brother and I first came up with these characters, all of them had weird personalities. Over time, Bob became more normal. Punjee developed into a naive, clumsy, yet endearing character. Funchy, who has yet to appear in any of these comics, is modeled after my dad’s quirky personality (No offense, Dad!) I’ll sneak Funchy into one of these comics when I get the chance.

Comic #19

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

After having worked very hard to finish two comics for this week, I’m starting to think that I need to streamline my process. As of now, all of my comics are entirely hand-drawn. In future comics, I might consider doing the drawings by hand and the text on the computer. My ultimate goal is to make this a daily series, but that is not realistic at this point. We’ll see. -Daniel

Comic #17

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #18

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #16

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #15

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #14

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #13

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #12

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #11

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

My first roommate was extremely messy. When he moved out, the new occupants repainted, re-carpeted, and reorganized the room to look much better than it did before.

Comic #10

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Yes. This is based on personal experience. In fact, pretty much all of these comics are based on reality in one way or another. Incidentally, this is the last strip for 2009. There’s more to come in January next year. Merry Christmas. -DH

Comic #9

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Comic #8

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

My first roommate maintained a massive pile of clothes near his dresser that seemed to spill further and further every day. One day, while sitting on his beat-up old couch, I noticed that ants were crawling around inside the pile…

Comic #1