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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.