Deeper and Deeper

19. Deep

so tihs is lyk a foto i took of myself wich i fel is quiet deep and shows how sum ppl r vry dep an filed wtih powerflu emotons dat tehy haf 2 del wif in rl

This is pretty much the only Masterpiece where I feel like the stuff I wrote in the little deviantArt blurb thing is an actual part of the artwork, like it would be incomplete without it. I wanted to make the bathroom here look as perfectly normal as possible to give the feeling that this is the kind of kid who has a perfectly comfortable home life, yet likes to get on MySpace and bitch about his tortured soul. I think that's just an overblown stereotype, though. Even teenagers aren't that stupid.
 I'm not sure if this would be better or not with the camera changed to a mobile phone. I guess it works either way. The glare on the mirror, however, could definitely be a little neater. Also, I don't know where I would be without liquid soap.

Bloggio Commentary

Starting a blog was something I had in the back of my mind for a while, but I could never come up with a topic that would be able to constitute frequent postings. Something else I had been wanting to do for a while was make little audio commentaries for the Masterpieces and put them on YouTube. I never started doing that mainly because I didn't want to bother with the technical aspect involved.
 Then, just a couple of months ago, I had the inspired idea to marry my two problems into one beautiful and matrimonious solution. An additional plus of going in this text commentary direction is that I now have a blog available if I ever want to write about whatever (such as death, it seems), but not feel like I ought to do so regularly.

"This is a Quote from the Episode"

18. The Amazing Race

I love it when a joke can be delivered in an extremely efficient manner. A single panel, minimal dialogue, and a large visual element to the gag. It makes everything feel very slick and witty. Insanity Streak is a good example of a comic strip that does this as much as possible.
 I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I probably came up with this while watching The Amazing Race. Frank (who appears to have both eyes on the same side of his head) was named after the main character of the show Franklin.

Are You There God? It's Me, Atheism

Yesterday I learned that a girl I went to high school with was killed in a car accident. Emma was a triplet. I didn't know her as well as I probably could have, but I know she was the kind of person everybody loved, as are her sisters. The kind of people who are always considerate and understanding, with never a bad word to say about anyone. I remember receiving help from one of the girls on our final school photos day. Nothing life changing, but the kind of consideration you would expect from anyone, yet is so rare in a high school environment. And now I can't even imagine what Emma's sisters are going through.
 Nobody deserves to have this kind of thing strike their family, but does that stop it from happening? Of course not. And yet so many people believe that God loves us. I don't want to get into a whole religious tangent here, so I'll just say that I usually try to keep a firmly agnostic view of religious matters, but then I hear about things like this or that little girl who wanted nothing more than to see Up before she died, and I have to wonder how any kind of supposed omnipotent being could decide that some people don't get to see their lives through to the end. Nine years ago, so many lives were taken away. Why?

Am I Really That Fat?

17. Pixar Does Good Work

It's funny to think that both these movies were known to exist nearly two years ago, but I guess that's just the way Pixar does things. Well, Toy Story 3 was predictably amazing, but as of now, Cars 2 is still about eight months away. As the comic implies, I still don't see anything "important and worthwhile" about the film's premise, but that's certainly not to say I don't have faith in John Lasseter. He seems to have a lot of passion for Cars as a franchise, so I'm confident this movie will be entertaining at the least. My problem is that the movie sounds like a feature-length version of the Cars Toon series. Obviously it's not fair to judge a film by a two-sentence summary, so I'll just have to wait and see what Pixar comes up with.
 As to the Masterpiece itself, people seem to have trouble understanding what actually happens in this strip, which I think is due to the copied panels leaving all the acting up to the characters' faces. So, my bad. Here is how it's intended to be taken: Buzz has just mentioned Pixar's rule about having a perfect story for a sequel, when who should show up but Lightning McQueen, the guy with the seemingly frivolous sequel coming out, which creates an awkward moment where Buzz and Woody aren't sure what to say to him.
 Art notes:
- I increased the length of Woody's legs about three times before he looked the right height next to Buzz.
- Lightning's eyes are the same in both panels, but the altered mouth gives them completely different meanings.

Do You See What I See?

16. All You Need is Love

The Beat Panel Pals make their glorious return and establish their positions as pretty much the only recurring characters in the Million Masterpiece Project. The silent beat in this strip is interesting in that it goes out of its way to show that the characters stare into each other's eyes, since that's the part that the joke relies on, rather than the general awkward moment that a beat is usually used to convey.
 This Masterpiece basically came from finding the most cliche, sap-filled, Hollywoodesque line I could think of, and seeing if I could twist it into a joke. I was particularly attracted to this question because I personally think the concept is ridiculous.

Pink Walls Are So In

15. Roomies

I have no idea how or why I came up with this strip, but I did so here it is. And I think it's pretty good, personally. I don't particularly like this song, but since it's Beyoncé, it of course received a huge amount of playtime when it was at its most popular. Which I guess kept it in my head long enough for me to conceive an alternate scenario for the lyrics. Speaking of which, these lyrics seem really silly and oddly specific to me. I think must people would just say, "Your shit's over there."