Questionable Content led me to referring to this trope as “Steve Eats Cereal”: a daily serialized strip that cuts to a trivial moment with an unconnected character or group of characters after the previous strip ends on a dramatic cliffhanger.
Depends upon whether this the General Education Requirement Studio Drawing 101 (never) or the art-major Life Drawing 201 (I’m surprised she’s not already weeping).
I remember that class. I’m already super uncomfortable ’cause my classroom has a naked person in it, and then somehow my drawing ended up as some cubist monstrosity, and the professor praised me for how expressive they were, and somehow that’s so much worse than being criticized ’cause I wasn’t trying to be expressive. I was trying to be realistic, but my hands betrayed me.
I feel like that’s how some of these styles came to be, some artist was trying for realism and screwed it all up, and said ‘Fuck it, it’s a new style now.’
True story: This is how we got Where the Wild Things Are. It was supposed to be Where the Wild Horses Are, but it turns out that Maurice Sendak couldn’t draw horses, so he redid it with “things”.
I was going to reply with, “He just wasn’t gay enough” in reference to this piece from the New Yorker, but then I remembered that he was, so I guess it’s just that horses suck.
I find that cartoon especially hilarious, because horses do seem to be difficult for a lot of webcomic artists. Comic will have wonderfully rendered people with emotion and movement spot on, and then a horse shows up and it looks like it wandered in from a different dimension.
And tack is even worse. They render vehicles and weapons so realistically you can almost read the serial number, but they construct a bridle the same way a first grader does.
So what is it with horses and cartoonists?
There’s a story with that I heard at a convention. The writer of “Pretty Deadly” (a magical western comic) gave the first script to her artist, and apologized because she HAD to include some horses, the setting being the Old West, and she knew much artists hate horses. The artist sent her back a giant file of all her horse drawings, and said “I LOVE horses.” The next script had 3x more horses, and the partnership was forged.
TL,DR; Even “regular” artists supposedly hate horses. But that might be a canard, and now I have a horse/duck joke in there…
I know that a lot of the artists who helped invent impressionism had eye conditions. No joke. When Monet had his cataracts removed and could suddenly see what he’d been painting all those years, he was horrified and tried to destroy several of his paintings.
This comment made me check the professor’s previous appearance… and he gives Mary the exact same praise, word for word, in his previous appearance. I can’t tell if that means he’s throwing extremely subtle shade like Malaya suggests…
Given that the immediate next line in that comic was ‘remember people: you need to break free of your artistic habits’ I don’t think it’s particularly subtle, all told.
I’m really hoping that it turns out that they’re supposed to be drawing a still life of a bowl of fruit, and then it turns out that the teacher is just a figment of one, or better yet, both of their imaginations, and so are the other students, and it’s just Malaya and Mary sitting in an empty, darkened room scrupulously not drawing the bowl of desiccated pears right in front of them, while they have a shared delusion about being in class drawing a live model.
Honestly I completely buy Mary sitting there every day out of spite/rivalry and Malaya just not caring. Alternately, Malaya didn’t care but started off as a somewhat weak artist, given the other time we saw the professor he mentioned improvement, Mary sat next to her to feel superior, and now the informal seating arrangements are set and changing them would be an admission Mary doesn’t have control over things.
Maybe Mary picks that spot because it’s her favorite, and Malaya picks it because whatever she doesn’t care. It’s cognitively easier to sit in the same place.
Even if she has a repressed yaoi fetish, I don’t think Mary would draw Marcie that flat-chested. Also, I’m pretty sure Malaya wouldn’t draw Marcie with a gut like that.
The model on my first lifedrawing class ended up being a teacher for me in another class two years later. We both looked at each other and could recognise each other but not from where. We had bonded more than the other students because he was a swede and I spoke swedish, in an art school in denmark. It wasn’t uncommon during lifedrawing classes, especially croquis, for artists and models to talk while working.
If course I said out loud “I didn’t recognise you with clothes on!” once we understood where we recognised each other from.
In that case that would also make Malaya the better teacher. But I think he’s just non-confrontational. Last time we saw him he word for word said the exact same thing followed by generally announcing to the class to:
“Remember, people, try to do your best to wrest free of your artistic habits and just let what you see flow through you to the page.”
But I think that was too subtle/passive for Mary to pick up on.
I think the professor has given up on trying to teach Mary. Notice how he actually makes an insightful comment/critique about Malaya’s drawing while he just says a generic comment about Mary’s drawing that as others have pointed out, he has said to her before word for word.
People are noticing Marcie tagged instead of Mary but I’m vaguely annoyed we can’t be certain that Hyde is the name of the professor because the same extra is clearly visible in both strips ‘Hyde’ is tagged in. It could even be the model’s name.
I’m going to assume that the art prof was hit with the full force of Mary’s targeted crazy too many times and now just gives her bland compliments instead of actually teaching her.
He said the exact same thing in his other strip along with a comment about breaking out of your style and drawing what you’re actually seeing to the class as a whole, so I think you’re right.
At first I was annoyed by the scene change, but I quickly realized that right now I WOULD rather see Mary get trolled than see Joyce get her heart broken.
Malaya should never be encouraged, even with someone like Mary. She will take compliments as insults, and insult you when you do great. Fuck those kind of people.
I find it interesting that Malaya feels the need to burst Mary’s bubble of complacency. Mary needs this if she is to improve, but I’m not clear on why Malaya is doing this.
Mary made herself a target in the previous class by assuming she was better than Malaya and asked her if she wanted pointers to get as good as her. Not Malaya is out to break that hubris down.
Bingo bango. Malaya’s generally awful to everyone, but she focuses especially on people she perceives as egotistical or acting superior to others, and Mary radiates that in spades.
You say “interrupting the big moment,” I say, “that moment in the horror movie where you spread the fingers in front of your eyes open just a little bit, knowing that a jump scare is imminent.”
I don’t think that Mary had quite the same sheltered upbringing as Joyce did. Conservative and religious yes, but not necessarily home-schooling.
Also there are those weird Evangelicals that, rather than completely cutting off anything not explicitly Christian, try and make everything about Christ, including the stuff that’s really not about Christianity, such as Anime. They’re the ones that make all those pictures of Sonic and other cartoon characters on their knees praying before the cross. Mary might have been part of that crowd.
It’s like in 80s and 90s kids movies when the junkyard dog would terrorize them every time they went by, but right before the bully/killer gets them during the climax, the dog breaks free and chases the villain away.
Malaya, you are an asshole. I mean, Mary is an asshole too, but I get extremely sensitive with people that mock my drawing style even if I try not to draw anime. I am tired of all the pretentious people that mock “anime style” or “cal arts style”. Try to draw for hours the same thing over and over and keep consistency! Not everyone can draw realistic stuff with the same energy!
I feel like you might be missing the fact that this is literally a figure drawing class that aims for realism using an actual model. Both Malaya and Mary are looking at the same overweight human model. Mary is drawing a trim anime person instead of the project…because she’s unable to draw anything else.
She hasnt even drawn the box the model is resting his arm on, not really having anything to go by on how to distribute the weight of the flesh. Shes just drawing the pose floating in space
Society and internet culture seems to have a belief that if someone is a shitty person, you have free reign to attack them for flaws that have nothing to do with their moral failings. If Malaya was telling Mary off for being homophobic, she would be perfectly justified, but it really isn’t her place to judge another classmates artwork.
I generally don’t like the current style of round, bubbly character designs with giant beads, jellybean mouths, and Gumby arms, but dismissing it all as “Cal Arts style” is just pretentious and lazy. After all, wasn’t that description applied to masterpieces like The Iron Giant before?
Despite its popularity Dumbing of Age was far eclipsed by the spinoff series Smarting of Mary. This has baffled webcomic historians, as Smarting of Mary ran for only 8 months, and the comments section for each strip literally generated no responses.
-from Webcomics, A Never Completable History, by AI Jeph Jacques 238, published Singularity +99
I’m kind of feeling called out, too (though I don’t do anime style, and I vary the build a bit, I a) almost exclusively draw women, because I am TERRIBLE at men, and b) have, like, 2 poses I use every time)…but I’m not an actual art student, so…like, whatevs.
… Heh, looking through the art tag on my tumblr (that’s here…fair warning, there’s some nudity, I actually do vary up the pose a lot more than I thought. (But, standing straight with hands clasped behind her is definitely the most common, followed by the same, but one hand out. Because hands frigging suck.)
In my case, it’s weird because I CAN do a fairly decent real life drawing, but my brain and skills are built more for mimicry, so when I do things wholesale, they end up kinda Pokemony. I’ve gotten better, but it still causes a lot of issues, especially if I don’t practice for a while because of, say, candle monsters all ending up too phallic it is hard to make a candle monster not inspired by anything else aaaaaaaaaaa
So yeah, Pokemon Anime style keeps creeping into my art and I have issues trying to beat that out of me
Ooooh! Now this is a change of pace. In previous clashes, Mary was the one who initiated the contact, either with an insult or an attempt to reach out (in her own Mary way).
This time, Malaya activally seeks Mary out to insult her. This is shaping up to be a nice little conflict 🙂
On one hand I absolutely refuse unsolicited advice, and have been accused myself of “drawing the same character over and over” when i’ve tried not to.
But on the other, she’s a month into lifedrawing classes and she’s still drawing anime boys without construction lines, having everything float since she doesnt even give herself clues over the surfaces the model supports themselves on, and places muscla just where she assume they go because of previous mention of no construction and not paying attention to what she’s actually looking at. She’s put more attention to a face that doesnt even exist than on getting weight in the thighs.
Normally i would snap back regarding Malaya, but i think her quip isnt so much to just generally be an ass, and more to put her down a peg after the previous class when mary immediately assumed she was better than Malaya and started talking about giving Malaya pointers. So she put herself on Malayas radar over people that “needs to be put back on the ground” due to the hubris of assuming she was better.
What’s so interesting about this is it looks like Mary started to draw the stomach of the model the way it actually looked, but then erased it and drew it flat, which means she’s just outright ignoring the actual shape of the person in front of her and just drawing her own “ideal.” Mary, you suck.
It probably depends on why? If Malaya was doing it to spite someone and it didn’t work she’d care. Or maybe if she thought no one was sleeping with him and did it to stand out and then Mike slept with everyone just to make her part of the trend.
Ho no. Malaya is good. But like really, really good. Is one of those cases when the person is heinous but is so good in art than you forgive it, at least when you are seeing them art. I’ve see too many situations like this. Unfortunately. But at least I hope than the rivalry between Malaya and Mary will brings to something good, for the Art and for them. Especially for Mary. She need to lost her certainties.
Current projections suggest a reinforcement of the centre party, but (thankfully) not so much that’ll result in a practical difference from the current composition, with them still needing extra-party backing to get stuff passed, and a high likelihood that any such backing would have to come from the left.
Interesting. Mary seemed for focused on getting the eyes and hair in place and trying complete the finishing details while Malaya seems looks to still be getting the reference ling for nose, cheeks, mouth, even muscles down. Correct me if wrong; Malaya is figuring out what the finished product will be as she goes. Mary already knows how she wants it to turn out
That teacher is garbage. Straight-up. Every life drawing prof I’ve ever known is not afraid to jump in and tell you what you’re doing wrong. They’re not necessarily rude about it, but they see it as a failure on themselves if they can’t break your bad habits, especially more than a month into the semester.
He’s not doing his job as a teacher. I dunno if he’s lazy or if he’s too non-confrontational, but both are bad traits in the teaching profession. Just going “oh that’s nice uwu” is entirely unhelpful and no art professor worth dick is gonna be like that.
I would assume he includes more detailed feedback as he hands back the assignments as comments and such. There’s nothing wrong with being encouraging as you make the rounds.
The cut, you see, is from one character being factually correct while engaging in unusually dickish behaviour, to another character being factually correct while engaging in her usually dickish behaviour.
Despite mary hating it that could really be the nicest thing malayla could do for her. If mary really wants this she needs to grow as an artist and nothing could be worse for her than being convinced shes the best when she has plenty left to learn
I know it’s weird to gripe about Malaya because it’s Malaya and it’s how she’s always been pretty much, but it just bothers me that she never really seems happy, y’know? Like she’s contrary for the sake of being contrary, an ass for the sake of being an ass. That’s her character, I get it. But even here, in an art class, where you’d think you’d be in an art class because to an extent you like art, and she can’t even be happy there. Unless I’m greatly misreading the situation and her responses to the teacher’s compliments to her work have been more of a “I don’t see what’s so great about my work.” But to me it comes off as “I don’t wanna be here and this is stupid.” But who knows, maybe being in an introductory class is stupid for someone who wants to do more. I dunno, it would just be nice to see Malaya have more personality than spite I guess. Or at least be doing things that make her happy.
After looking through all of Malaya’s art class strips, I’m getting a big “I don’t see what’s so great about my work” vibe from her. Especially in Professor Hyde’s first strip, where he talks up how much Malaya has improved combined with her facial expression(s).
Oh ok. I figured there was a chance I was misinterpreting her “mehs.” I still think I’d like to see Malaya doing something that actually makes her happy though, and not to piss off other people or make them jealous/hate her. Sal has hanging out with Marcie and playing 3ds with Amber and Danny, Amber and Ethan have each other and transformers, Dina and Becky have each other and dinosaurs, even Sarah has Joyce.
I guess she has roller derby, but it’s not like we really get to see her enjoying it. And she doesn’t outright antagonize Marcie.
Also, I am totally guilty of drawing in an anime/manga style 😛 I also would have loved to have been able to afford any and all art classes, so I could have the basics and know how to draw realistically and with correct proportions/anatomy, and then apply that to whatever style I choose afterwards.
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Hey look its the favorite character of the comment section, Mary!
Sometimes having the early shift is an advantage, not a curse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do_HpqILPLo
Scene change, as predicted by some.
Questionable Content led me to referring to this trope as “Steve Eats Cereal”: a daily serialized strip that cuts to a trivial moment with an unconnected character or group of characters after the previous strip ends on a dramatic cliffhanger.
Shouldn’t there be a reference to the cut? “Cut To Cereal” or “Cut To Steve”?
Doesn’t really take a lot to predict that, by now.
You know, I actually thought “of course” and hit the “Next” button before it dawned on me that it would not help yet.
Collective shit: lost.
HECK
The commenteriate’s pain it is. Though it’s always nice to see Malaya being helpful.
Flippin’ ‘eck. Now we have to go find it again.
Where the france…
( picks up shovel )
When is art school going to start “beating the anime” out of Mary’s work?
When Mary gets her first grades, at the latest.
Depends upon whether this the General Education Requirement Studio Drawing 101 (never) or the art-major Life Drawing 201 (I’m surprised she’s not already weeping).
Given Malaya is in it and she seems uninterested in art, I think it’s the first?
I remember that class. I’m already super uncomfortable ’cause my classroom has a naked person in it, and then somehow my drawing ended up as some cubist monstrosity, and the professor praised me for how expressive they were, and somehow that’s so much worse than being criticized ’cause I wasn’t trying to be expressive. I was trying to be realistic, but my hands betrayed me.
I feel like that’s how some of these styles came to be, some artist was trying for realism and screwed it all up, and said ‘Fuck it, it’s a new style now.’
True story: This is how we got Where the Wild Things Are. It was supposed to be Where the Wild Horses Are, but it turns out that Maurice Sendak couldn’t draw horses, so he redid it with “things”.
Moral: If you can’t draw horses, give up.
I was going to reply with, “He just wasn’t gay enough” in reference to this piece from the New Yorker, but then I remembered that he was, so I guess it’s just that horses suck.
I find that cartoon especially hilarious, because horses do seem to be difficult for a lot of webcomic artists. Comic will have wonderfully rendered people with emotion and movement spot on, and then a horse shows up and it looks like it wandered in from a different dimension.
And tack is even worse. They render vehicles and weapons so realistically you can almost read the serial number, but they construct a bridle the same way a first grader does.
So what is it with horses and cartoonists?
There’s a story with that I heard at a convention. The writer of “Pretty Deadly” (a magical western comic) gave the first script to her artist, and apologized because she HAD to include some horses, the setting being the Old West, and she knew much artists hate horses. The artist sent her back a giant file of all her horse drawings, and said “I LOVE horses.” The next script had 3x more horses, and the partnership was forged.
TL,DR; Even “regular” artists supposedly hate horses. But that might be a canard, and now I have a horse/duck joke in there…
Moral: If you can’t draw horses, draw things other than horses (or practice drawing horses).
I know that a lot of the artists who helped invent impressionism had eye conditions. No joke. When Monet had his cataracts removed and could suddenly see what he’d been painting all those years, he was horrified and tried to destroy several of his paintings.
When the teachers stop praising her mediocrity.
In his two appearances, he’s said exactly the same thing to her–word-for-word–and then praised Malaya’s work more enthusiastically with specifics.
The first time, before praising Malaya, he immediately gave the room some general criticism that he thought of after looking at Mary’s work.
Mary has evolved her own personal style.
Any resemblance to ‘anime’ is purely coincidental.
Also, accidental. And Occidental.
headcanon: the model is AFAB/nonbinary, so the prof is literally digging for inoffensive complements
(this is terrible, tho, my prof would do that and it didn’t help me worth shit not knowing what I was doing wrong)
This comment made me check the professor’s previous appearance… and he gives Mary the exact same praise, word for word, in his previous appearance. I can’t tell if that means he’s throwing extremely subtle shade like Malaya suggests…
Given that the immediate next line in that comic was ‘remember people: you need to break free of your artistic habits’ I don’t think it’s particularly subtle, all told.
Damn, Marcie looks really different.
It’s the glasses, like with Clark Kent
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT
(ah, memories of art class. maybe I should have kept that up.)
One is actually drawing what they see.
The other’s just drawing a cartoon in a pose that matches the model’s.
Yeah. I don’t know much about art, but I know which one of those is paying attention to what’s in front of them.
The rules of comedy dictate that we must now see the model, and he must look exactly like one of these.
I’m envisioning a naked guy with a beer gut if Malaya’s picture is anything to go by.
Malaya’s guy from the neck down. Mary’s guy from the neck up.
I’m really hoping that it turns out that they’re supposed to be drawing a still life of a bowl of fruit, and then it turns out that the teacher is just a figment of one, or better yet, both of their imaginations, and so are the other students, and it’s just Malaya and Mary sitting in an empty, darkened room scrupulously not drawing the bowl of desiccated pears right in front of them, while they have a shared delusion about being in class drawing a live model.
That’s what I hope for.
Wow Lawzio thats…dark.
And then the camera pans to a naked, reclining Rod Serling
Someone’s in the zone.
“Submitted for your approval…”
DAMN YOU WILLIS!
For not only the scene change, but seriously? These guys? Uggggh…
Willis right now.
“Gee, ain’t I a stinker?”
Alt-text is being sassy but these two have been some of my favorites honestly
There’s a few people in the comic where inflicting Malaya on them is not actually a bad thing, so Mary’s serving a noble purpose here.
Now if only Carla would pop in (and then pop off), Mary would really be getting what she deserves.
Now, is masochism the reason they choose to sit next to each other, or is there a jerk section of the room and they have no choice?
Honestly I completely buy Mary sitting there every day out of spite/rivalry and Malaya just not caring. Alternately, Malaya didn’t care but started off as a somewhat weak artist, given the other time we saw the professor he mentioned improvement, Mary sat next to her to feel superior, and now the informal seating arrangements are set and changing them would be an admission Mary doesn’t have control over things.
Both of them are fully capable of doing things out of spite, but I think only Mary would genuinely give a shit for real.
But there is indeed a natural instinct to sit in the previously claimed seat, subsequent considerations be damned.
Also, Mary is only barely on Malaya’s radar (compared to, say, Sal.)
Malaya probably doesn’t especially care about Mary, and I don’t figure Mary knows enough about Malaya yet to try to target her.
The black dude in the background is sitting in the same relative position as he was last time, so maybe it’s assigned sitting?
Maybe Mary picks that spot because it’s her favorite, and Malaya picks it because whatever she doesn’t care. It’s cognitively easier to sit in the same place.
Habit, a stronger force than gravity.
Yes! Malaya plot returns! Suck it Mary!
Not that DYW needed the Slipshine idea, buuuuuuut . . .
… Wait, why is Marcie tagged instead of Mary?
Hmmmm
What if Marcie is the model
Even if she has a repressed yaoi fetish, I don’t think Mary would draw Marcie that flat-chested. Also, I’m pretty sure Malaya wouldn’t draw Marcie with a gut like that.
Is Marcie the model?
As I post this, Marcie is not tagged and Hyde is. Is Hyde the teacher, or the model? From the two posts so tagged, it could be either.
Glitch in The Matrix.
Which means Hyde is both the teacher and the model.
The model on my first lifedrawing class ended up being a teacher for me in another class two years later. We both looked at each other and could recognise each other but not from where. We had bonded more than the other students because he was a swede and I spoke swedish, in an art school in denmark. It wasn’t uncommon during lifedrawing classes, especially croquis, for artists and models to talk while working.
If course I said out loud “I didn’t recognise you with clothes on!” once we understood where we recognised each other from.
Just thought of that memory with that comment xD
Malaya’s a much better Professor than that guy, give her the job
Mary doesn’t seem the type to accept criticism well, maybe he tried in the past and just gave up.
In that case that would also make Malaya the better teacher. But I think he’s just non-confrontational. Last time we saw him he word for word said the exact same thing followed by generally announcing to the class to:
“Remember, people, try to do your best to wrest free of your artistic habits and just let what you see flow through you to the page.”
But I think that was too subtle/passive for Mary to pick up on.
I don’t think Malaya is trying to teach. She is just being her usual annoying self.
I think the professor has given up on trying to teach Mary. Notice how he actually makes an insightful comment/critique about Malaya’s drawing while he just says a generic comment about Mary’s drawing that as others have pointed out, he has said to her before word for word.
And the professor is much better than Malaya at avoiding the landmine that is Mary’s self-righteous ego.
And the Wind
Cries
MARY
Yay! Back to Mary!
…said no one ever.
… Mary getting Carla’d was a welcome reprieve from discovering Becky’s mom committed suicide http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/rube/
Yes good as an art school alum this has been the fight i have wanted to see
People are noticing Marcie tagged instead of Mary but I’m vaguely annoyed we can’t be certain that Hyde is the name of the professor because the same extra is clearly visible in both strips ‘Hyde’ is tagged in. It could even be the model’s name.
Also: yay, Malaya, boo, Mary.
I just checked the rest of that scene and that extra’s visible but untagged in later strips. So it’s probably the professor, maybe the model?
Can’t find Marcie. Panic. Assume Mary’s “anime man” is Marcie. Profit???
Then feel silly for missing the missing tag.
Now I want to filk “Anime Man” to “Particle Man”.
I’m going to assume that the art prof was hit with the full force of Mary’s targeted crazy too many times and now just gives her bland compliments instead of actually teaching her.
He said the exact same thing in his other strip along with a comment about breaking out of your style and drawing what you’re actually seeing to the class as a whole, so I think you’re right.
Last time he said those words, he was smiling.
At first I was annoyed by the scene change, but I quickly realized that right now I WOULD rather see Mary get trolled than see Joyce get her heart broken.
Malaya is just being helpful by translating for Mary. She’s decided to follow Mike’s example and help people.
Goddamnit Mala…….
You know what? It’s Mary. Keep it up, Malaya. You’re doing the Lord’s work here.
Malaya should never be encouraged, even with someone like Mary. She will take compliments as insults, and insult you when you do great. Fuck those kind of people.
Even if it weren’t Mary, Malaya is actually right in this instance. I’m not sure that has happened before, but here we are.
She’s right, but she doesn’t have to be a jerk about it. Mary had it coming, but that doesn’t mean Malaya’s in the right.
It’s always nice to see how these two sweet little ladies are doing.
I’m fine with these two characters as long as Malaya gets to keep dunking on Mary.
I find it interesting that Malaya feels the need to burst Mary’s bubble of complacency. Mary needs this if she is to improve, but I’m not clear on why Malaya is doing this.
I think she just likes to criticize
Does one really need a reason to burst Mary’s bubble?
I think you are reading too much into Malaya’s actions here. I think she just likes to tell people how they’re wrong.
Mary made herself a target in the previous class by assuming she was better than Malaya and asked her if she wanted pointers to get as good as her. Not Malaya is out to break that hubris down.
*now, not not
Bingo bango. Malaya’s generally awful to everyone, but she focuses especially on people she perceives as egotistical or acting superior to others, and Mary radiates that in spades.
I love when Mary gets Malaya on her case. God DAMN, does Malaya shine.
Alt-text sarcasm is on point with how I feel, two of my least favorite characters interrupting the big moment? Painful.
You say “interrupting the big moment,” I say, “that moment in the horror movie where you spread the fingers in front of your eyes open just a little bit, knowing that a jump scare is imminent.”
I am curious where Mary got her art style from. If she had a similar upbringing as Joyce, I wouldn’t think her parents would let her watch much Anime.
They say that when some church girls rebel, they do so by sleeping with the bad boys, maybe Mary chose to rebel by secretly watching “Annie Mays”.
What’s anime? Mary clearly draws in the Superbook style. Haven’t you seen Superbook?
Modern CGI version, or classic?
Yes, sleepovers with Catholic kids suck that bad.
If you want a genuinely entertaining CGI Christian cartoon, check out Donkey Ollie. You won’t regret it, Stranger.
There’s a modern CGI version? Lol, of course there is.
Did they keep the dated 80s “kid gets stuck inside a computer” thing for the second season? Please tell me they did.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve only ever seen stills from that series, and never had an interest in watching it.
She must not have. I’ve met plenty of people with devout Christian upbringings who were still allowed to consume the same anime as everyone else.
In fact, I think all the devout homeschooled Christians in my old youth group were big into anime and video games.
I said same anime but meant same media
I don’t think that Mary had quite the same sheltered upbringing as Joyce did. Conservative and religious yes, but not necessarily home-schooling.
Also there are those weird Evangelicals that, rather than completely cutting off anything not explicitly Christian, try and make everything about Christ, including the stuff that’s really not about Christianity, such as Anime. They’re the ones that make all those pictures of Sonic and other cartoon characters on their knees praying before the cross. Mary might have been part of that crowd.
Evangelion. Christian symbolism.
I feel like ages ago Willis said that Mary’s parents probably aren’t so bad but she learned the wrong lessons.
Yes, it’s everybody’s favorite character … Hyde! (Is that his first name or last name?)
Last. First name is “Nauga.”
Is it bad that I don’t mind Malaya as much when she’s making Mary the focus of her comments?
It might be bad, but I feel the same way, so if it is, I don’t want to be good.
Same here. Mary seems like she was a bully when she was a kid, and stuck with it because no one ever knocked her off her pedestal.
Likewise, I despise Malaya except for when she’s going after Mary.
It’s like in 80s and 90s kids movies when the junkyard dog would terrorize them every time they went by, but right before the bully/killer gets them during the climax, the dog breaks free and chases the villain away.
“Good” Mary is so happy with that when Malaya got “Great” and “impressive”
Question: Is Mary drawing anime-style or realistically?
And if she’s drawing realistically, what the fuck is Malaya drawing?
let_them_fight.jpg
Jeph might disagree with you about that last f-word.
Slipshine subscribers might as well.
Whoo….that would truly be the most epic of hate-fucks.
Malaya, you are an asshole. I mean, Mary is an asshole too, but I get extremely sensitive with people that mock my drawing style even if I try not to draw anime. I am tired of all the pretentious people that mock “anime style” or “cal arts style”. Try to draw for hours the same thing over and over and keep consistency! Not everyone can draw realistic stuff with the same energy!
I feel like you might be missing the fact that this is literally a figure drawing class that aims for realism using an actual model. Both Malaya and Mary are looking at the same overweight human model. Mary is drawing a trim anime person instead of the project…because she’s unable to draw anything else.
She hasnt even drawn the box the model is resting his arm on, not really having anything to go by on how to distribute the weight of the flesh. Shes just drawing the pose floating in space
She’s also missing perspective, so it looks like the anime guy has a malformed hand with stubby little fingers.
Society and internet culture seems to have a belief that if someone is a shitty person, you have free reign to attack them for flaws that have nothing to do with their moral failings. If Malaya was telling Mary off for being homophobic, she would be perfectly justified, but it really isn’t her place to judge another classmates artwork.
I generally don’t like the current style of round, bubbly character designs with giant beads, jellybean mouths, and Gumby arms, but dismissing it all as “Cal Arts style” is just pretentious and lazy. After all, wasn’t that description applied to masterpieces like The Iron Giant before?
*Giant heads
Despite its popularity Dumbing of Age was far eclipsed by the spinoff series Smarting of Mary. This has baffled webcomic historians, as Smarting of Mary ran for only 8 months, and the comments section for each strip literally generated no responses.
-from Webcomics, A Never Completable History, by AI Jeph Jacques 238, published Singularity +99
I don’t like Malaya, but I do love seeing her trash-talk Mary.
Enemy of my enemy, lesser of two evils, etc.
Ow, I feel called out. I think I need to do some new from life drawings…
I’m kind of feeling called out, too (though I don’t do anime style, and I vary the build a bit, I a) almost exclusively draw women, because I am TERRIBLE at men, and b) have, like, 2 poses I use every time)…but I’m not an actual art student, so…like, whatevs.
Jpegs, or it didn’t happen.
… Heh, looking through the art tag on my tumblr (that’s here…fair warning, there’s some nudity, I actually do vary up the pose a lot more than I thought. (But, standing straight with hands clasped behind her is definitely the most common, followed by the same, but one hand out. Because hands frigging suck.)
In my case, it’s weird because I CAN do a fairly decent real life drawing, but my brain and skills are built more for mimicry, so when I do things wholesale, they end up kinda Pokemony. I’ve gotten better, but it still causes a lot of issues, especially if I don’t practice for a while because of, say, candle monsters all ending up too phallic it is hard to make a candle monster not inspired by anything else aaaaaaaaaaa
So yeah, Pokemon Anime style keeps creeping into my art and I have issues trying to beat that out of me
Ooooh! Now this is a change of pace. In previous clashes, Mary was the one who initiated the contact, either with an insult or an attempt to reach out (in her own Mary way).
This time, Malaya activally seeks Mary out to insult her. This is shaping up to be a nice little conflict 🙂
I mean it’s a NICE anime man.
Two of my least favorite characters, about to have at it.
….
I am conflicted.
Cheer for Malaya. She at least has potential for being reformed
Malaya hates “fakies” and Mary is a major one. Can’t wait to see where this scenario goes.
On one hand I absolutely refuse unsolicited advice, and have been accused myself of “drawing the same character over and over” when i’ve tried not to.
But on the other, she’s a month into lifedrawing classes and she’s still drawing anime boys without construction lines, having everything float since she doesnt even give herself clues over the surfaces the model supports themselves on, and places muscla just where she assume they go because of previous mention of no construction and not paying attention to what she’s actually looking at. She’s put more attention to a face that doesnt even exist than on getting weight in the thighs.
Normally i would snap back regarding Malaya, but i think her quip isnt so much to just generally be an ass, and more to put her down a peg after the previous class when mary immediately assumed she was better than Malaya and started talking about giving Malaya pointers. So she put herself on Malayas radar over people that “needs to be put back on the ground” due to the hubris of assuming she was better.
well said.
Malaya seems to have this need to make people feel bad. Maybe she’s just channeling Mike, who knows.
What’s so interesting about this is it looks like Mary started to draw the stomach of the model the way it actually looked, but then erased it and drew it flat, which means she’s just outright ignoring the actual shape of the person in front of her and just drawing her own “ideal.” Mary, you suck.
I think the drawing in Panel 1 was Malaya’s
Theres a cut in the line of Mary’s drawing over the stomach, so she have made an edit
Gad damn scene tease, i knew we would jump to another scene and not know Jacobs response.
Frankly I appreciate the scene change as I do not like where the Joyce/Jacob plot seems to be heading one bit.
Damn you Willis for jumping to another scene right now. I was so curious as to what Jacob would say!
If MIke and Malaya hooked up, would either one care afterward?
Judging by Slipshine Malaya wouldn’t care during the sex, never mind after.
It probably depends on why? If Malaya was doing it to spite someone and it didn’t work she’d care. Or maybe if she thought no one was sleeping with him and did it to stand out and then Mike slept with everyone just to make her part of the trend.
I demand that that Anime Man gets a character tag!
I fear not the artists who has practiced 10,000 drawings once, but I fear the artist who has practiced one drawing 10,000 times.
My dad once referenced a colleague; “He doesn’t have twenty years of teaching experience; he has one year, twenty times”
Ho no. Malaya is good. But like really, really good. Is one of those cases when the person is heinous but is so good in art than you forgive it, at least when you are seeing them art. I’ve see too many situations like this. Unfortunately. But at least I hope than the rivalry between Malaya and Mary will brings to something good, for the Art and for them. Especially for Mary. She need to lost her certainties.
Meanwhile, the black guy in the background is just staring into your soul…
You joke, alt-text, but Malaya is one of the few characters whose appearances I consistently enjoy.
Also, PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION DAY, WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Which parlaiment?
Portuguese.
Current projections suggest a reinforcement of the centre party, but (thankfully) not so much that’ll result in a practical difference from the current composition, with them still needing extra-party backing to get stuff passed, and a high likelihood that any such backing would have to come from the left.
So, y’know, worse but at a “meh” level of worse.
Sounds exciting. I hope you and your chosen candidate best of luck!
Mary didn’t even draw the box the model’s arm is resting on, so her anime guy has a case of stubby-fingers hover hand.
okay but Malaya is actually my favorite character
also if somebody makes fic about these two they better call the ship M&Ms
Would Sal and Malaya be S&M?
Interesting. Mary seemed for focused on getting the eyes and hair in place and trying complete the finishing details while Malaya seems looks to still be getting the reference ling for nose, cheeks, mouth, even muscles down. Correct me if wrong; Malaya is figuring out what the finished product will be as she goes. Mary already knows how she wants it to turn out
That teacher is garbage. Straight-up. Every life drawing prof I’ve ever known is not afraid to jump in and tell you what you’re doing wrong. They’re not necessarily rude about it, but they see it as a failure on themselves if they can’t break your bad habits, especially more than a month into the semester.
So, he’s garbage because he’s letting the weeaboo freewheel until she actually decides to learn?
He’s not doing his job as a teacher. I dunno if he’s lazy or if he’s too non-confrontational, but both are bad traits in the teaching profession. Just going “oh that’s nice uwu” is entirely unhelpful and no art professor worth dick is gonna be like that.
I would assume he includes more detailed feedback as he hands back the assignments as comments and such. There’s nothing wrong with being encouraging as you make the rounds.
The only possible duo worse than Blaine and Toedad.
Ryan and Leland.
Which one is Leland?
The one who beat Marcie’s voice out of her.
Man I miss lifedrawing classes.
So what’s Sierra been up to lately?
The cut, you see, is from one character being factually correct while engaging in unusually dickish behaviour, to another character being factually correct while engaging in her usually dickish behaviour.
That man, Willis, I tell you. He knows his stuff.
Mary needs her secret hentai….
Despite mary hating it that could really be the nicest thing malayla could do for her. If mary really wants this she needs to grow as an artist and nothing could be worse for her than being convinced shes the best when she has plenty left to learn
I can count at least 9, maybe 10 separate “layers” on Malaya’s, while the anime boy tops out at 5.
This professor is a lot nicer than the one I had. He would called Mary’s technique crap at least 8 times by this point in the semester.
I know it’s weird to gripe about Malaya because it’s Malaya and it’s how she’s always been pretty much, but it just bothers me that she never really seems happy, y’know? Like she’s contrary for the sake of being contrary, an ass for the sake of being an ass. That’s her character, I get it. But even here, in an art class, where you’d think you’d be in an art class because to an extent you like art, and she can’t even be happy there. Unless I’m greatly misreading the situation and her responses to the teacher’s compliments to her work have been more of a “I don’t see what’s so great about my work.” But to me it comes off as “I don’t wanna be here and this is stupid.” But who knows, maybe being in an introductory class is stupid for someone who wants to do more. I dunno, it would just be nice to see Malaya have more personality than spite I guess. Or at least be doing things that make her happy.
After looking through all of Malaya’s art class strips, I’m getting a big “I don’t see what’s so great about my work” vibe from her. Especially in Professor Hyde’s first strip, where he talks up how much Malaya has improved combined with her facial expression(s).
Oh ok. I figured there was a chance I was misinterpreting her “mehs.” I still think I’d like to see Malaya doing something that actually makes her happy though, and not to piss off other people or make them jealous/hate her. Sal has hanging out with Marcie and playing 3ds with Amber and Danny, Amber and Ethan have each other and transformers, Dina and Becky have each other and dinosaurs, even Sarah has Joyce.
I guess she has roller derby, but it’s not like we really get to see her enjoying it. And she doesn’t outright antagonize Marcie.
Also, I am totally guilty of drawing in an anime/manga style 😛 I also would have loved to have been able to afford any and all art classes, so I could have the basics and know how to draw realistically and with correct proportions/anatomy, and then apply that to whatever style I choose afterwards.
I think a big part of Malaya’s problem is that she never is happy.
Malaya calls this class a ‘dumb elective’ in one of the bonus strips so she probably wasn’t super enthused about it.
Ah, ok. I had hoped it was something she’d be interested in, but I guess not D: Just something she’s good at but doesn’t care about.
I mean, she might also just deny caring about it because caring about it would make her a nerd and we all know Malaya hates that. 😛
Trying to complement Malaya is like trying to push a string.
I like the cute little blush she gave the drawing. “Oh no, I’m naked!”
So the artist model is Winslow? Is that what he is doing now that Hanners has returned?
We now return to our scheduled match of two heels meeting each other; thus forcing one heel to become an anti-hero for the remainder of the storyline.