14 January 2007 - Original Character Design

Once upon a time, dinosaur ruled the land, we had to walk barefoot 5 miles in the snow to school, and a friend and I wrote a comic strip for our college paper. It was called "Terminal Degrees" and followed the adventures of a couple of graduate students trying to get their doctorates. My friend did the artwork and I did the writing. At least I call it writing when in fact it was more like snarky pop cultural references, surreal ramblings, and jokes cribbed from Monty Python (some of the writing I've recycled in my strips at Stripcreator.com). We did the strip for one semester because: 1) the editor thought the strip was a little highbrow for undergraduates and that they couldn't relate to our material, and 2) it is HARD making with the funny five days a week. We were replaced by a badly drawn, poorly written, and very unfunny strip about the adventures of a couple frat boy trying to find titties and beer.

Today's sketch was one of the few contributions to the artwork I made for the strip. This is a character loosely based on me. The character design was greatly influenced by Picasso's cubist period. (I only steal from the best). We used a much simpler design in the strip.