Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

[gs_silva]

A new major plotline! This one will be a challenge to transcribe. But here goes.

Jon is having lunch with Sarah in the office cafeteria, joking around about math: "...and I said I graduated summa cum laude - I think I can do math in my head!"

Sarah laughs and then asks, "Have you ever thought of getting your Master's in computer science?"

He hasn't, but he doesn't relish the thought of sitting at a desk for the rest of his career. He wants something more active. Maybe teaching.

"Have you ever taught before?" Sarah asks. He hasn't. "You should volunteer at the Y. They'll take anyone."

Jon and Cathy stand on the sidewalk in front of a building with a big YMCA sign above the door. Jon is using crutches. "I have no idea what to say," Jon remarks. He turns away, saying to Cathy, "Forget it. Sorry I dragged you out here for nothing. Let me buy you lunch."

They go to a diner and apparently I have a habit of always drawing Jon on the left side when he's sitting down to eat with anyone. He kind of rambles about how hard it is to approach a stranger and ask for a teaching gig, especially while disabled. "Before, I could waltz in and everyone would hand me whatever I asked for."

"La valse?" Cathy picked up on 'waltz' (which of course is properly pronounced with a German W, or as we think of it, a V). She's surprised to hear Jon talk about the waltz. "You..." she tries, but she's not sure how to conjugate "You used to dance?" in English, so she switches to "Tu dansais?" in French.

***

Another cold and a rainy day. Where on earth is the sun anyway? (It's not on earth. That would be fatal. I like that song but it's logically unsound.)

I could really use some temperatures above 10C, for sanity's sake. I could use a few other things for sanity's sake too, but if I can only get that one, I'll feel several degrees better (also, cold physically hurts, like, a lot, and one thing a chronic pain sufferer never wants is more pain) (and now I'm gratuitously adding parentheticals) (because, why not, it's the end of this post anyhow).

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Jon is having lunch with Sarah in the office cafeteria, joking around about math: "...and I said I graduated summa cum laude - I think I can do math in my head!"<<

I think you've got the same panel twice.

>>He kind of rambles about how hard it is to approach a stranger and ask for a teaching gig, especially while disabled. "Before, I could waltz in and everyone would hand me whatever I asked for."<<

Yeah, that sucks.

>>I could really use some temperatures above 10C, for sanity's sake. <<

Yesterday went from 87F to 57F in an hour, then down to just below freezing. :/

Re: Thoughts

[gs_silva]

I fixed it. Thanks for catching that!

[hauntedrose]

I marvel at how you, and other webcomic artists, keep your drawings consistent! My style fluctuates so much. *sheepish*

And I wish you could send that weather over here! I wouldn't mind cold and rainy!

[gs_silva]

I wish I could control the weather like that. Instead, I'll continue to complain about it. (I actually don't complain about hot weather as much, so this is probably peak whinge for me.)

I'll tell you my consistency secret. It's very simple... but not easy. But if you complete this exercise, any subsequent drawing you do will be easier! Draw your character 100 times. I know that sounds like a lot, but if you draw them fairly small 25 times on a sheet of paper, you only need 4 sheets of paper and you're done. By the end, you'll have a style that you know you can continue consistently over a great many more drawings.

My other secret is that I still make multiple tries. I erase A LOT, and in digital it's even easier because I can C&P from previous panels. I usually don't, but I can if I want to.

:)

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm happy I could help. One cool thing about crowdfunding is that folks chip in to polish the work. My fans help me spot typos.