Shoulder Angels




Okay, so sometimes I just feel like drawing lots and lots of chibis. And coloring them badly in Photoshop.

Dave’s Common Sense is drawn very much like Mr. O’Malley, the fairy godfather in Crockett Johnson’s classic strip Barnaby, down to the pink wings.

Dave’s Left Brain and both Social Lives will appear in the strip much later. At the time I drew these sprites, I’d already thumbnailed the relevant daily strips, which gives you some idea of how completely out of order Narbonic was written. Right Brain will never appear, and was probably banished from Dave’s head long ago.

Helen’s Insanity looks like San Francisco street personality Frank Chu, mentioned in an earlier week of commentary. Her opposite number in Dave’s psyche is pointedly absent.

12 thoughts on “Shoulder Angels

  1. Something about the page setup prevents the side-scroll from appearing in Safari, so I had to open the image in another window to see it all.

  2. By the power of Fill Tool! These little psychodaemons are just beautiful.

    Two comments:
    1) One of Dave’s Common Sense’s wings is white.
    2) How could you forget Killing Urge? With just that one, you’d have all of Mell covered.

  3. I’ve waited until now to say it, but I’ve always loved that Dave’s inner teenager wears a Slayer T-shirt. That sums it all up.

  4. Some thoughts: 

    1) All of Dave’s sprites wear glasses (or in one case, an implant), but only about about half of Helen’s do.  Particularly interesting, given how Dave’s glasses take on symbolism throughout the strip.

    2) Dave’s Right Brain might not appear as such, but it does have some resemblance to his Insanity sprite (<a href=”http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic/series.php?view=archive&chapter=10983#strip5″>”What the hell are you?!”</a>) 

    3) With the close of the original strip, I imagined all these sprites hanging out with Morpheus’ handy-jack Mervyn.

  5. Bah, I’ve asked this before, and never got an answer.

    1) Leon, you just posted a link, which showed up correctly and worked.  Obviously, you know how to do so.

    2) Equally obviously, it’s not a matter of simple HTML, as you can see the results of that in my previous comment above.

    3) There is no button for links in the Rich Text editor I am typing in.  I have repeatedly gone searching through the Webcomics Nation pages, and have been flatly unable to find any page addressing this point.  I have also tried C&P-ing BBCODE from the old forums.

    SO:

    &pi;)  How the heck do you code links into these comments!

  6. I think the major prerequisite is being too much of a jerk to share the secret. If I knew, I’d tell you… therefore my links don’t work either.

    That, or lots of people post comments here but never return to read them. So what you need to do is constantly refresh around midnight in the relevant time zone until the new strip posts, add a “how do you post links?” comment before anyone else sees the strip, and repeat until someone bans you for being annoying. Then the question of adding links is moot, because you can’t even add plain text.

  7. For the three, I like Dave’s Common Sense, Helen’s Evil (she’s hot when she’s evil! 😉 ), and Mell’s Kill Kill Kill (this one I didn’t have a choice.)

  8. P.S: I think you post links by standard HTML. BBCode doesn’t work in Webcomicsnation. However, I can see no reason why your link didn’t work– I tried it and here it is.

  9. So It Begins:  WTH?  OK, I have now passed from frustration to astonished befuddlement. 

    One last idea occurs to me:  Are the folks who can post links, perhaps limited to the “premium” users of the site?  I’m still on a freebie account myself….

     

  10. I love that both Dave and Helen’s Left Brain sprites are Star Trek references – though the fact that Dave’s is Next Generation and Helen’s is the original series has to be indicative of something.

     #$(@ if I know WHAT, though.

  11. I wonder what it says about me that I find Helen’s Left Brain the sexiest of them all. I don’t even like Star Trek all that much.

  12. hehehe, Dave’s social life sprite is smoking a joint… the only one with rolled-up lines. Maybe his social life has glaucoma…

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