Spotlight: Octopus Pie
From Octopus Pie:
I've been meaning to link this one for a while. Meredith Gran and I go back a ways-- her Skirting Danger was one of the founding strips on Graphic Smash. I lost touch with her after the strip moved to Keenspot, and it bogged down in the middle of a storyline and never really developed the promise of its premise. Mer resurfaced a year later with a thoroughly charming animation thesis project, and now she's doing a new series which, really, puts her pre-grad work to shame. In fact, it puts a lot of other people's current work to shame, too. It's the kind of good that makes me look at my own work and say, "am I worthy of being on the same Internet as this?"
Eve and Hanna are preschool pals reunited as young roommates in a New York apartment. Mer is definitely working with the "odd couple" archetype here, but she's not a slave to it. Eve is a fussy superego, a little bit repressed and quick to scowl, but she can get wildly creative, as in her design of a theft-proof bicycle and later abandonment of same. Hanna is mostly id-- she doesn't seem to have changed much since kindergarten, to the point of going around topless for the sheer joy of it. But she does worry about losing toker cred, and even into her carefree life, some rain must fall.
The current strip, a response to the imminent closing of Coney Island's famous park, shows off one of the best things about the art: its sense of place. Backgrounds are backgrounds, and spatial relations relate, playing nicely off a style of cartoon facial expression that I'm used to seeing in "flatter" work. I'm really really sick of New York City (and its clones) as a default setting for every superhero story ever made, but I'll visit Meredith Gran's New York City any day.
There are a few issues with the site design, but nothing that can't be fixed in a day, so I'll just e-mail Mer about those privately. It'll be good to have an excuse to get back in touch. Kudos to Dumbrella for following Graphic Smash and Keenspot's lead and giving her hosting. Y'know, you guys could do worse than actually bringing her into the fold...
I've been meaning to link this one for a while. Meredith Gran and I go back a ways-- her Skirting Danger was one of the founding strips on Graphic Smash. I lost touch with her after the strip moved to Keenspot, and it bogged down in the middle of a storyline and never really developed the promise of its premise. Mer resurfaced a year later with a thoroughly charming animation thesis project, and now she's doing a new series which, really, puts her pre-grad work to shame. In fact, it puts a lot of other people's current work to shame, too. It's the kind of good that makes me look at my own work and say, "am I worthy of being on the same Internet as this?"
Eve and Hanna are preschool pals reunited as young roommates in a New York apartment. Mer is definitely working with the "odd couple" archetype here, but she's not a slave to it. Eve is a fussy superego, a little bit repressed and quick to scowl, but she can get wildly creative, as in her design of a theft-proof bicycle and later abandonment of same. Hanna is mostly id-- she doesn't seem to have changed much since kindergarten, to the point of going around topless for the sheer joy of it. But she does worry about losing toker cred, and even into her carefree life, some rain must fall.
The current strip, a response to the imminent closing of Coney Island's famous park, shows off one of the best things about the art: its sense of place. Backgrounds are backgrounds, and spatial relations relate, playing nicely off a style of cartoon facial expression that I'm used to seeing in "flatter" work. I'm really really sick of New York City (and its clones) as a default setting for every superhero story ever made, but I'll visit Meredith Gran's New York City any day.
There are a few issues with the site design, but nothing that can't be fixed in a day, so I'll just e-mail Mer about those privately. It'll be good to have an excuse to get back in touch. Kudos to Dumbrella for following Graphic Smash and Keenspot's lead and giving her hosting. Y'know, you guys could do worse than actually bringing her into the fold...
Labels: Webcomics
Posted at
11:22 AM
4 Comments:
What if she didn't want to be in Dumbrella? As much drama-laden fun as it is to assume she was left out without asking anyone.
It would be silly to say Meredith was "left out," because Dumbrella was founded long before Octopus Pie got started!
And I assumed nothing like that. "Bringing her into the fold" could mean either persuading or allowing her to join, depending.
Right now, I don't really feel comfortable e-mailing up Meredith or anyone in Dumbrella and asking them to divulge that kind of future plan. So I'm content to make an outside observation.
Maybe Meredith is married to her independence, maybe it's impossible for other reasons. Whatever. All I'm sayin' is, Dumbrella could do worse!
Wow, you were right, that website needs work. Using Firefox I got nothing.
But at least I didn't need to restart my computer.
I'd personally love to have her on board for many reasons, but can't fairly even entertain the idea of adding a strip that's less than a year old to such a tight family!
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