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No. 280: Reformatting Tables

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Reformatting Tables

First | Previous | 2010-10-01 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/owls/?comic=280

Strip by: Robyn

Meridien: Hi Honey, watcha doin'?
Delkin: {working on computer} Reformatting tables.
Meridien: Sounds dull. How long are you going to be?
Delkin: A while. Maybe you can help.
Meridien: {leaning over Delkin} Do you want me to write a macro?
Delkin: No, that's not really what I need right now.
Delkin: {grabbing Meridien in a kiss} This is what I need.
Meridien: Ow! Del, the table!
{The table is tipped over and Meridien and Delkin are lying down behind it}
Voice from behind table: Here, let me reformat it for you.

The author writes:

This looks like I created MS Paint art to illustrate a geeky joke. But that's not how it worked at all.

I started off by drawing panel two. I had nothing in mind, just decided to draw Meridien as Caucasian, so she could have blonde hair, and I kept drawing Delkin the same way as I have, kind of half Caribbean or something, with the dreadlocks thing going on, because it's easy to hide his eyes that way. I put in some dialogue, and then decided to test myself by making another panel of the same people, and then another one with Meridien bending over to see what Delkin was doing. I put her arm up so I wouldn't have to figure out and draw what her dress does at the bustline in that position. That's on Delkin's side, so the next panel was his idea. At that point I was regretting making the table and part of Meridien's dress the same colour, but I didn't want a brighter colour table, and I didn't feel like mixing paint colours in MS Paint, so I left it.

Meridien did not at that point have any legs, so I went back and added them in all four panels and then stared at it trying to think of dialogue. I considered letting it stand on its own without dialogue. Guy working, girl comes and talks to him, leans over him in skimpy dress, they make out. It's not a story that requires a lot of explanation. It was about this point that I swapped panels one and two, giving the order you see now. I was really hating Meri's dress, and considering that perhaps it would look better on the floor, except that it's suppose to be a PG site, and that table was really in the way. That gave me the idea for the fifth panel, but after I'd drawn that until it was satisfactory, I still had to come back to the dialogue question.

I started with the obvious, to establish that Del wasn't seducing a random woman, but one that already called him "honey." And then I just picked "reformatting tables" as the most boring possible task Del could be doing. After panel two, Meri was starting to sound like a complete bimbo, so I gave her some Excel expertise in panel three. And then I realised what reformatting tables could be about.

I'm not entirely sure WHO reformatted the table in the last panel, could be either of them. But the joke was the very last part of the whole exercise. If that had been my intention from the beginning, I would have at least drawn a better table.

Also, I have no idea what the orange thing Delkin is sitting on is. Maybe a milk crate?