One of the responsibilities of my job is to write comic dialogue aimed at the kids. The comics are supposed to be anywhere from 3 to 6 frames each. The big boss man wants the comics to be funny, and he hopes that the kids who read them will learn some English, think it's funny, and ostensibly be grounds for them to want to come to the camps. However, of his true reasons for the comics I am still unsure. Those hopes of big boss man were all supposition on my part. I have asked Sun Qiang why we are writing comics. He told me so that the kids will read them.
There is someone whose job it is to take the dialogue I write and create the artwork from it. Let me say that again, there is someone whose job it is, to take the dialogue THAT I WRITE and create artwork from it. Let me tell you something about comics I write. They are not very funny. I have no idea what I'm doing (which I have told Sun Qiang before). There is no plot line or character building. The comics are, in a word, uninteresting.
Sun Qiang just came by my desk to clarify what I meant in a couple of the comics that I wrote so that the guy who creates the comics can better understand what it is that he's actually trying to create. I listened to Sun Qiang repeat the a few of the comic strips back to me so that he could make sure he understood correctly what it was I was trying to say. All I could think was, 'wow, that's really not funny.'
This happened a few moments ago. This whole situation is quite hilarious when I take a step back and look at from a distanced perspective. It's also incredibly frustrating. I can see myself working towards tears of frustration as I struggle to create unfunny content, then laughing so hard at the ridiculousness of my job that the tears begin to flow.
Don't get me wrong though, writing the comics isn't all that bad, just... unexpected. I wonder if they think that because I can coach basketball that I can also write comics about basketball. I can now see where Mitch Hedburg was coming from when he said:
"When you’re in Hollywood and you’re a comedian, everybody wants you to do things besides comedy. They say, ‘OK, you’re a stand-up comedian – can you act? Can you write? Write us a script?’ … It’s as though if I were a cook and I worked my ass off to become a good cook, they said, ‘All right, you’re a cook – can you farm?’"
There is someone whose job it is to take the dialogue I write and create the artwork from it. Let me say that again, there is someone whose job it is, to take the dialogue THAT I WRITE and create artwork from it. Let me tell you something about comics I write. They are not very funny. I have no idea what I'm doing (which I have told Sun Qiang before). There is no plot line or character building. The comics are, in a word, uninteresting.
Sun Qiang just came by my desk to clarify what I meant in a couple of the comics that I wrote so that the guy who creates the comics can better understand what it is that he's actually trying to create. I listened to Sun Qiang repeat the a few of the comic strips back to me so that he could make sure he understood correctly what it was I was trying to say. All I could think was, 'wow, that's really not funny.'
This happened a few moments ago. This whole situation is quite hilarious when I take a step back and look at from a distanced perspective. It's also incredibly frustrating. I can see myself working towards tears of frustration as I struggle to create unfunny content, then laughing so hard at the ridiculousness of my job that the tears begin to flow.
Don't get me wrong though, writing the comics isn't all that bad, just... unexpected. I wonder if they think that because I can coach basketball that I can also write comics about basketball. I can now see where Mitch Hedburg was coming from when he said:
"When you’re in Hollywood and you’re a comedian, everybody wants you to do things besides comedy. They say, ‘OK, you’re a stand-up comedian – can you act? Can you write? Write us a script?’ … It’s as though if I were a cook and I worked my ass off to become a good cook, they said, ‘All right, you’re a cook – can you farm?’"
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