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I didn't feel like Strip Search was a particularly effective way of finding the best cartoonist in the group. Contrived challenges like copying Barack Obama's s

I didn't feel like Strip Search was a particularly effective way of finding the best cartoonist in the group. Contrived challenges like copying Barack Obama's signature 10,000 times or setting up a convention booth really had nothing to do with drawing a comic. Even the comic-drawing elimination challenges seemed like a poor fit for some of the cartoonists due to the extreme time constraints.

pyrocat 13y ago
Cons are where web comic artists make a LOT of their living. Setting up the convention booth so that you minimize theft and maximize sales is going to come in very handy later (and probably did this weekend, when some of the Strip Search contestants had a booth at Emerald City Comicon). The signature challenge was because you're asked to sign things many times in rapid succession at cons as well, but is probably less useful than learning how to set up your booth. The time constraints are relevant considering how hard it is to draw a comic strip on a regular schedule, but granted 90 minutes is pretty extreme.
- daemin 13y ago
  I thought Strip Search was about the contestants learning about how to run a web-comic business, not necessarily learning to draw comics.
  - pyrocat 13y ago
    Exactly
michaelt 13y ago
I didn't feel like Strip Search was a particularly effective way of finding the best cartoonist in the group. Typically for reality competition shows the goal is to produce programming that draws in viewers, rather than to find the best competitor. If 'survivor' wanted to make a show about survival skills they'd use a bunch of ex-marines, mountaineers and woodmen. If 'dancing with the stars' wanted to show the best dancing, they'd get rid of the celebrities and just have professionals. If 'the apprentice' wanted to find people with business skills they'd get candidates smart enough to realize infighting isn't a useful business skill. I'm not saying I like it, but 'so you think you can dance' certainly has more viewers than the Prix de Lausanne youtube channel. And what's the point in making ideologically pure TV that no-one wants to watch?
- brianpgordon 13y ago
  It's still a competition to find the best candidate though. They said that over and over during the show. Dancing with the Stars finds the best dancer out of the group, even if they're not pros. Survivor ostensibly finds the best survivor out of the group, even if they're not true outdoorsmen.
  - michaelt 13y ago
    They say over and over in The Sopranos that Tony Soprano is a mobster. That doesn't make it so in reality - that's just the fiction presented to us for our entertainment. To maintain the fiction, the show doesn't wildly contradict it. Reality TV is the same - except the fiction is the competition isn't rigged and its primary goal is to find the best candidate. The show doesn't wildly contradict it, it's just not true.
  - glenra 13y ago
    It's a competition to entertainingly find a best candidate. The core mechanic was the elimination round. Anyone who could consistently beat others given a random topic and limited time was likely to win regardless of what happened in the leading-up rounds. Looking at the strips after the fact, Abby and Katie pretty obviously are writing the best strips. And sure, Abby's is the better of the two, but her concept is harder to distill down to its essence and present - Katie was the only one of the three finalists who was able to competently and interestingly introduce her new strip with just a few sample pages. If you think they picked wrong, who should have won instead? (Note that several of the other cartoonists have been hired by Penny Arcade for other tasks such as doing The Trenches and designing pins. So even if you ignore the publicity aspect there were still multiple winners.)
    - brianpgordon 13y ago
      I didn't see enough of their work to judge the early eliminations. They could have been great, I don't know. Of the last two, Abby should have won IMO.
  - ertdfgcb 13y ago

pyrocat 13y ago

Cons are where web comic artists make a LOT of their living. Setting up the convention booth so that you minimize theft and maximize sales is going to come in very handy later (and probably did this weekend, when some of the Strip Search contestants had a booth at Emerald City Comicon). The signature challenge was because you're asked to sign things many times in rapid succession at cons as well, but is probably less useful than learning how to set up your booth. The time constraints are relevant considering how hard it is to draw a comic strip on a regular schedule, but granted 90 minutes is pretty extreme.

daemin 13y ago
I thought Strip Search was about the contestants learning about how to run a web-comic business, not necessarily learning to draw comics.
- pyrocat 13y ago
  Exactly

michaelt 13y ago

I didn't feel like Strip Search was a particularly effective way of finding the best cartoonist in the group. Typically for reality competition shows the goal is to produce programming that draws in viewers, rather than to find the best competitor. If 'survivor' wanted to make a show about survival skills they'd use a bunch of ex-marines, mountaineers and woodmen. If 'dancing with the stars' wanted to show the best dancing, they'd get rid of the celebrities and just have professionals. If 'the apprentice' wanted to find people with business skills they'd get candidates smart enough to realize infighting isn't a useful business skill. I'm not saying I like it, but 'so you think you can dance' certainly has more viewers than the Prix de Lausanne youtube channel. And what's the point in making ideologically pure TV that no-one wants to watch?

brianpgordon 13y ago
It's still a competition to find the best candidate though. They said that over and over during the show. Dancing with the Stars finds the best dancer out of the group, even if they're not pros. Survivor ostensibly finds the best survivor out of the group, even if they're not true outdoorsmen.
- michaelt 13y ago
  They say over and over in The Sopranos that Tony Soprano is a mobster. That doesn't make it so in reality - that's just the fiction presented to us for our entertainment. To maintain the fiction, the show doesn't wildly contradict it. Reality TV is the same - except the fiction is the competition isn't rigged and its primary goal is to find the best candidate. The show doesn't wildly contradict it, it's just not true.
- glenra 13y ago
  It's a competition to entertainingly find a best candidate. The core mechanic was the elimination round. Anyone who could consistently beat others given a random topic and limited time was likely to win regardless of what happened in the leading-up rounds. Looking at the strips after the fact, Abby and Katie pretty obviously are writing the best strips. And sure, Abby's is the better of the two, but her concept is harder to distill down to its essence and present - Katie was the only one of the three finalists who was able to competently and interestingly introduce her new strip with just a few sample pages. If you think they picked wrong, who should have won instead? (Note that several of the other cartoonists have been hired by Penny Arcade for other tasks such as doing The Trenches and designing pins. So even if you ignore the publicity aspect there were still multiple winners.)
  - brianpgordon 13y ago
    I didn't see enough of their work to judge the early eliminations. They could have been great, I don't know. Of the last two, Abby should have won IMO.
- ertdfgcb 13y ago