Design & Execution

When I was seventeen, I filled a one-month vacancy at a historically-themed boardwalk called Alaskaland .* All the shops were housed in reclaimed pioneer cabins, and I was required to wear a very Presbyterian-looking calico frock to maintain historical authenticity. My job was to man the counter in a historically-inauthentic soft-serve ice cream establishment called Frosty Paws. Frosty Paws' owner was a stickler for consistency. Our flavor selection ranged a whopping six flavors, and never more than four at once. The owner required that I weigh my sweet creations after dispensing them in order to assure a standard 8 or 16-oz. serving. Before the month was out, my cone-holding wrist could count to 8 oz. as well as any dealer of addictive substances. Furthermore, I had mastered the symmtrical twirl of the cone to create a regular spiral, an art which later, in the college cafeteria, lent me that charming, robotic air that every freshman covets. How would I have reacted if Ralph Wal...

There'll be no more further personification of typefaces as NPR-style voices in this entry. You have my word. The next few illustrations for Lucy's Dance will include gift-gathering montages that focus on one or two characters at a time. This can be refreshing after drawing a large crowd scene, which takes significantly more attention to detail. Here I have more room to play with texture and visual style. Each two-page gift-gathering spreads combines several action scenes that overlap a bit. In each, I show insets of the gift being gathered or earned. Lucy's brother chops firewood with boots floating above his head, showing his intent. The story calls for store-bought boots. I think I loosely and subconsciously based this pair on my dad's army surplus boots, also known as "bunny boots." The boots contain insulation coated in rubber, and are extremely heavy. My siblings and I used to lace my youngest brother into them when he was four to keep him from wanderi...

In the SG definition, "Such arguments (also called teleological) are based on a reversal of cause and effect, because they argue that something is caused by the ultimate effect that it has, or purpose that is serves." As the White Stripes put it in their song, " Effect and Cause ": "first comes an action, and then a reaction, which you can't switch around for your own satisfaction." Another fitting example from the song: "if you're headed for the grave, don't blame the hearse." I've decided to be a bit abstract in my interpretation of the fallacy. Normally, the negative space , or the space around the snail shape, is an effect of the snail. In this drawing, I have shifted the negative space to the foreground, allowing it to cause a shadow. I have effectively cut out the negative space and placed in front of a telescope. The fallacy is sometimes called the "teleological" (end/purpose) fallacy because it makes effects, o...

At times, the Wikipedia list of fallacies seems endless, as though it will take all the snails in French butter to illustrate. Recently, I noticed that the Skeptic's Guide contains a list of its "Top Twenty" fallacies , worded in new and precise ways. This delighted me, as cross-referencing is a mischievous habit of mine. My eye landed on the false continuum. It seemed to lend itself to illustration, and at very reasonable rates, so I complied. The SG defines the false continuum as: "The idea that because there is no definitive demarcation line between two extremes, that the distinction between the extremes is not real or meaningful." Wikipedia offers the example of baldness and non-baldness. We know a bald man (or woman) when we see one, though he/she may still have a few hairs left. We probably can't name the minimum number of hairs a person can have before qualifying, yet the distinction exists. For a colorful, Grecian example of this dilemma, see the Sor...

Snail shells are almost identical in shape to cinnamon rolls. As I tweaked away at the vector art, I could almost smell those puffy confections that beckon across malls and airports with their buttery, come-hitherish aroma. I colored these snails in orange, which reminded me of the kind with orange-flavored icing. Now if only I could cause a bakery fragrance to emit from my blog, readers might associate my writing with delicious baked goods. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc , like pareidolia, deals with illusory connection. The Latin translates to "after this, therefore because of this," a phrase that nicely sums up the logical snafu. Post hoc reasoning occurs when I perceive that because one event follows another, the first event must cause the second. My favorite example of this fallacy is the restaurant bathroom visit; the waiter always arrives just after I've excused myself to the ladies room. So can I command food to arrive by visiting the ladies room? More importantly, do...