A longtime fan of Doctor Who; a dream came true when the Eleventh Doctor was chosen and happened to share his name. Currently studying engineering at Edona College. Fun Fact: He wears the costume of the current Doctor, and has done so since the Seventh Doctor.
I was proctoring a test and got really bored, and the end theme from Avengers: Endgame was stuck in my head. I realized that my main cast was six, and there were six original Avengers in the original movie. I hadn’t drawn these goofballs in a while and I had some scratch paper, so this happened. (And yes, that’s elf-Nikki from Percy’s mind.)
I’m also going to link this, just because I love it.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Anthem by Ayn Rand, the post-utopian story starts off with first person completely eliminated from language, and as time goes, “I” starts to be developed again. I found this interesting, but much like Percy’s speech, I felt that it is importnat to not discount the efforts of the group as a whole. Hence, the basis of this arc and the twist I added today.
Also, aging is fun! Can’t really see much with Nikki or Jorocks, but you can tell Sally dyes her hair and poor Chris is balding. Percy hasn’t really grayed that severely yet, but he’s using the transformative formulas to appear like Santa (although he apparently dislikes being fat). Matt seems to have acquired some way to resist time, much like his namesake’s species…
This is like a triple dip of fan squee today! The most important of which: the switching of “we” to “I”. If you’ve read Anthem, you can see where this is going. Matt of course continues to geek out with Doctor Who, which as you can see fits perfectly with the Santa Claus mythology (and who says he isn’t, red bicycle when you were twelve). It’s been established that Percy isn’t a Doctor Who fan, but apparently he knows enough Star Trek to paraphrase a quote. I myself am not a Trekkie, so I had to ask friends for a technobabbly Star Trek quote about time travel. Chris gets awesome points for providing me with the quote below:
“A black star of high gravitational attraction began to drag us toward it. It required all warp power in reverse to pull us away from the star but like snapping a rubber band, the breakaway sent us plunging through space and time, out of control to stop here, wherever we are.”
It’s hard to show flight and driving at the same time… And yeah, backgrounds are kinda lame for two reasons. Reason 1: they’re in the Arctic. Not a huge amount of scenery. Reason 2: I don’t have a SketchUp of it.
Don’t worry, Chris has long underwear. Looks like Matt has another similarity to his Time Lord namesake: resistance to cold. Percy and Nikki’s coats have been seen before, as has Jorocks’. I researched women’s coats for Sally’s; most of what Google Images gave me would not do very well in the “keeping warm” department in a Nebraska winter, let alone the Arctic. (And yes, I’m aware that they would probably need heavier coats than that. ARTISTIC LICENSE.)
First of all: CELEBRATION!
*dances to fun music*
…Erm, where was i? Oh yes, the comic. This one was hard to draw, but fun as well because I get to draw my characters growing up. Graduation hats were invented for the sole purpose to drive amateur artists insane drawing them, I swear… Jorocks and Holly in Panel 2 were also quite difficult, and I actually had my wife look at several different sketches to help me. I also had a hard time with Nikki and Ella; at a wedding girls often do something special with their hair, but how to show that without it looking like a different character in my simple drawing style? Ella in particular; this is actually the first time she hasn’t been drawn upside down in the comic! Eventually I just went with straight hair for Ella and had Nikki let her hair down and curl it a bit on the end. The dresses were also difficult; Nikki’s original dress was hard to tell that it was a nice dress and not just what she would normally wear (the fact that you don’t see the bottom made that difficult), so I made it single-strapped. Matt also almost didn’t make it in the comic (hence why he’s off in the corner) as I accidentally forgot him. Recall that Holly graduated last year and Chris is a year younger.
Graduation cord info: Nikki and Percy both graduated with honors (the medallion), as they are the two in the group that are the most book-smart. (Well, and Nikki was an ed major. And before any of you yell at me, I was an ed major. It’s a lot of work, but most of my ed classes were completion grades.) Sally has a stole from Germany; when I graduated, Doane was trying a new thing of wearing a stole from the country you studied abroad in (this would also explain Sally’s prolonged absence in the comics). I quite enjoyed this, as I studied in Wales and therefore I got to wear a stole with a DRAGON on it. Academic honor societies: Nikki has the education one, Sally the business one, Matt the physics one, and Percy has the biology one and two academic honors ones. Jorocks has none, as his academic progress had some problems… Fun fact: I was supposed to graduate with the education honor cord, but I misplaced the letter saying I could get in and didn’t actually open it until months after graduating. Oops!
My wife and I pulled Nikki’s trick when we got engaged. We got engaged shortly before Doane’s Relay for Life event, so we were with our friends for EIGHT HOURS before we finally decided to tell them. (We were also really tempted to elope while going through the wedding planning process, but what couple isn’t?)
Jorocks in a tux still amuses me. And I couldn’t resist the top hat.
Finally, if you haven’t read Ayn Rand’s Anthem, go to your library and pick it up. It’s a good read, and while this final arc is understandable without it, it will carry more significance if you’ve read it.
The final chapter is starting! This splash page was a lot of fun to do, going back through the archives of the past five years. There is one comic from each story arc in here, as well as a couple bonus things like SR: Scouting. Can you name them all? (I decided not to include reference links on this one a) so that you could try to find them all, and b) ’cause I didn’t want to link to each one.)
This is what I was drawing in reference to last week’s sketchbook. Can you name them all without looking? I think I got all of the protagonists except Megan and Chad, but let me know if I forgot anyone else.
I attempted to translate every page of my scrapbook into Japanese. My results may be questionable. I know on my business cards, it says I teach at Johnson Little Bear School. Oops.
And thus ends Percy Shrugged, the penultimate chapter! Sketchbook Wednesday, then another Intermission Thursday before the final arc begins! We’re so close to the end!
