208 - Cartooner
Is "Sub-textual" even a word?...eh, it is now.
Incidentially, as ridiculous as it seems today's strip comes from real life. Despite going to a school that offers a bachelor's degree in Comic Art and the comic students being a major part of the Design department, we still get a lot of shit from the Fine Arts kids. The word "cartoony" is spoken with great derision, quickly followed with a very fake "not that that's a bad thing" in order to seem cordial. And last week, during my Advanced Figure drawing class (one of the most pretentious classes I've had the misfortune of taking) one girl called me something I've never been called before.
She called me a "cartooner".
...Now, I know she was trying to call me a "cartoonist" (which I'm not anyway, I'm a comic artist) but somehow "cartooner" came out. Aside from being a funny slip of the tongue she said it with the kind of tone you usually reserve for a racial slur. "Cartooner" all of a sudden came to mean I was some kind of "cartoon nigger" or something. Like, I want to greet my fellow comic artists now saying "Was up cartoonah?" or "Cartoonah what?".
Now I'm not mad, in fact I got a bit of hilarious slang I intend to use whenever I get the chance. But my frustration with the fine arts world is growing more and more. I came to art school to focus on my technique. I felt I wasn't a good enough artist, so I decided to learn to BECOME a better artist. When I look at a piece of art, I focus on whether or not it's well done. If the proportions are right, if the perspective is correct, if the lighting is right, if the colors are complementary. But when I see soak themselves in a bath, lay on some paper while still soaking wet, turn the paper in, and get an "A" for it, I can't help but feel a little insulted.
But as I addressed in the comic, at least there's a big audience for comic books (and cartoons done by ACTUAL cartoonists). I dunno how you would market wet paper.