Cartooning Like You Mean It

Cartooning, Teaching & Living – by Tom Hart

FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS, OBSTRUCTION THE THIRD

Posted by hutchowen on June 11, 2007

OK, now I’m under constraints of time and end-of-day loaginess, but
here’s what I’ve come up with for your third, three-part obstruction:

1. you cannot draw anything in this strip. You can only use lettering
(along with balloons, etc, and including sound FX), panel borders
(and shapes, but they can’t be representative), solid black (a whole
panel at a time, all or nothing), or emanata. The strip must have a
reason for not showing any figures, and it can’t be a snowstorm (the
classic cop-out for cartoonists on deadline).

2. Text must only use monosyllabic words. (You can use multiple words
but none can be more than a syllable.)

3. Since you mentioned Brian Eno in a recent post and since we both
share a longstanding interest in him (I believe he was one of our
earliest points of connection when we met in Austin back in the
mid-90s), I want you to incorporate a line from a song of his in this
strip. It must play into the narrative of the strip in some way and
it must also observe the mono-syllable rule (Ooh, I just thought of a
great one, but I’m not going to tell you). Whether you signal it as
an Eno quote or disguise it is up to you.

Buena suerte!

7 Responses to “FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS, OBSTRUCTION THE THIRD”

  1. Tom said

    This is awful!

  2. Derik said

    Damn!

  3. Isaac Cates said

    To write with such short words is not as hard as it sounds, to tell the truth. Take heart, Tom: it can be done.

  4. Yes, Cates is right. (Mad Ink Beard, too). And: does “King’s Lead Hat” ring a bell?

  5. David said

    Matt, you’re such a taskmaster!
    Good luck, Tom!

  6. Tom said

    King’s Lead Hat of course rings bells all across the land.

    4 turk(ey)s in a big black car…

    Also, from On Some Faraway Beach: “only one memory/a single syllable… lie lo lie lo…”

    This was almost

  7. Tom said

    (oops cut off)

    …-made for an Eno lyric

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