Jay G

Of course. One of my biggest influences is the cartoonist B.Kliban. While best known for his distinctive cat drawings, most of his cartooning output was single-panel work.

Much of it is easily understandable language or visual puns, but many of his funny works are just unusual situations, with no obvious meaning:

(I think that "Household Hint" could be considered a spiritual forerunner of Tiktok ragebait food videos.)

In his 1975 collection titled "Cat," among many funny cat comics, there are several pages which are just drawings of his beloved cats.

I feel a strong connection to Kliban's approach: Direct contour-line drawing, mostly anonymous characters in novel situations, and few traditional long-term narrative stories. And yet, there are recurring visual trends. (Have you noticed that he only draws one kind of cat?)

It is said that we train our audiences, in form or content. Over time, the reader knows what to expect from an author.

I think that a lesson can be derived from this graphic design manual.

(from Notes on Graphic Design And Visual Communication by Gregg Berryman, 1979.)

I believe we can draw a correlation between broadly-defined "art" (comics, painting, drawing, sculpture, video, etc.) and logo design:

With low "abstraction" (depending upon references that many people will get, explaining things in extremely explicit terms), material will be readily understood, but it is hard to separate this material from other stuff out there. It's harder to have your individual voice known.

With high "abstraction" (sharing weird comics, but consistently over a long period of time with many people,) an artist can have their message understood- or at least received enthusiastically- even if they're weird.

I drew this yesterday. It is probably understandable as both a humorous criticism of gamer-centric marketing and also as a visual-verbal pun to most English speakers under 40. I'm not sure if "Gamer Butter" would be accepted readily without people being familiar with other drawings I've made which lampoon consumerism and gadget culture.

Anyway, she really, really loves it when I tell her stories. She loves stories anyway, and at first this manifested as "stories about Tad-Cu Bryn", aka my father (her grandfather) who died before she was born. This has been a lovely way to keep his memory alive, and she adores every story - she has her favourites, which she will request.

Then it became apparent that she specifically loves me telling her stories. She'll happily ask others for them too, but from me she just wants any anecdote at all; which of course is wonderful and demonstrates that she is a child of impeccable taste and wisdom and brilliance, but also she has ADHD and the energy reserves of a seven year old and so this gets Tiring very quickly

Yesterday, in the car on the way back from the wildlife centre, she asked for one of my longer stories, and I was like hey, how about we try something different?

And she was like, no, tell me a story about Tad-Cu Bryn

And I was like, this will be a brand new story and you get to play it and help me tell it

And she was like, explain

So I gave her three characters to choose from. The first was a warrior with a sword she could name, who was nonetheless dyspraxic. The second was a gymnastic elf who could commune with trees but was afraid of heights. The third was a dyslexic witch whose spells sometimes go wrong when she spells the words wrong.

She picked the witch. I pulled up an online d20 on my phone. I went to start, and she insisted my mother had to play as the elf.

So I told them that the new queen of the kingdom had called for them, because their palace treasury had been robbed - specifically, a single enchanted coin that brings luck and wealth to a ruler's reign had been stolen. And tales of enchanted coins were suddenly emanating from across the land, so each one needed investigating until the right coin was found.

It turns out kids who like stories will absolutely lap this shit up. She was enthralled. It was the simplest story - they had to get into a bank, revive some unconscious gnomes, then enter the vault, find the coin that had been deposited into it, then get back to the queen. Enough to fill a half hour car ride, basically, but she managed to fill it with all the wacky hijinks you get from a ttrpg, particularly when she tried to smash a door down with a hammer but rolled a 1.

We finished with the queen saying it wasn't the right coin, and then my niece demanded we go again, this time with her playing as a sapient reticulated python. That time we made it all the way to the final boss fight, which was a sorcerer who created a big coin monster out of loads of coins; I asked my niece what she wanted to do, and she described graphically how she wanted to constrict and eat the sorcerer and immediately rolled a 19. So, sure! Okay. The sorcerer is now very dead. The coin monster, though, was still there, and as my niece tried to say she would do the same thing, I was like, no, you're a snake and you just ate. You're now immobile.

At this point, my sister advised her to regurgitate the sorcerer.

Great! said my niece. I'm going to do it at the coin monster.

And rolled a 20.

So she projectile vomited a dead sorcerer into the coin monster, and won the day.

Anyway, today she immediately demanded we play "the game with the story where we choose", and my brother in law is now asking me how he can do this with her ("Are you making it all up as you go along??"). But yeah, turns out, this is a fantastic way to entertain a seven year old. Vague ongoing quest, then three steps: get into (place), resolve (minor puzzle), boss fight to finish. Boom. Easy.