Slackbot draws stuff

[Slackbot]

Li'l Boober as he appears in (yawn) Runt. He's a little sensitive about those ingrown eyeballs of his. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to snitch his hat.

He may be a weird-looking little kid, but check out that baloobius!

 

[Gonzo's Hobbit]

Li'l Boober as he appears in (yawn) Runt. He's a little sensitive about those ingrown eyeballs of his. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to snitch his hat.

He may be a weird-looking little kid, but check out that baloobius!

That's so great Slackbot.

 

[Slackbot]

The Runt: I originally planned to give this story a framing sequence. Sidebottom discovers, far back in the cavern of Boober's mind, a second alter ego, a silent child. This turns out to be The Runt, custodian of Boober's past grief and fear. I decided against it because Boober doesn't need any more alters; he isn't Crazy Jane. And Sidebottom carries the traits Boober supprsses--goofiness, humor, spontaneity, et cetera--but since when does Boober suppress grief and fear?

This is my usual crosshatchy B&W style, with no Photoshopping whatsoever. (Well, OK, I did crop it.) After spending hours on Photoshop for all those other pictures, it was a nice change to just use pen and ink.

 

[Gonzo's Hobbit]

Oh look, it's a whole family of Boobers (which is a little weird but since when is anything normal around these guys)

As much as I like the picture I think you've got a point about Boober not needing another personality. Besides, I feel like past griefs and fears aren't something Sidebottom should be digging up. But it's a nice picture.

 

[Slackbot]

In the idea I was playing with, Boober finds The Runt and leads him out of the darkness. Who is this? Boober doesn't want to tell Sidebottom, but Sidebottom persists. And soon regrets it when he finds out what a sad tale it is. Sidebottom doesn't do depressing, fun is his specialty! Boober tells him to siddown and shaddap; he's inflicted his fun on Boober, now it's time for Boober to bring the clown down to earth. Besides, The Runt is part of Boober, which means he's part of Sidebottom too.

I thought it was an interesting idea, but, again, not a good fit to the situation, and a bit too melodramatic even for me.

 

[The Count]

Mmmm... This idea reminds me of what they did to Harvey Dent in one of the later episodes of BTAS. As if he wasn't already sufficiently fractured with his Two-Face persona, they divided him even further by having Harvey develop a third character known as The Judge completely foreign to either of his other halves. Talk about our own TogetherAgain's signature ringing true about one's mind having a mind of its own.

 

[Slackbot]

I can't speak about BTAS, me being the kind of person who is bored silly by superheroes. I tend to look at anything involving the deeper workings of the mind, particularly dysfunctions, in a very clinical way. Sometimes I have to throttle back on that when writing Muppet fic, heh. That's why I threw out another idea: showing Sidebottom's creation. In the end I decided that he had to have developed over time, and only started making a fuss when Boober repressed him be refusing to let himself have any fun. Before that, Boober would only notice that he was "losing time" now and again. As with the Runt framing device, I decided that this was better not written, especially since it started sounding like Sybil to me.

I love having enough ideas that I can throw the lame ones away. At the moment I'm concentrating on writing dialogue in Mock Swedish and making vegetable puns.

 

[The Count]

Ah... Then you'd better go before the tomatoes ketch-up or the cabbages get too far of a head.

 

[Slackbot]

Oh, the veggie puns are going to get a lot more esoteric than that.

I hope people know what artichokes are...

 

[The Count]

You got Artie Choke! Ooh, maybe the next guest star will be Melon Bawll. C'mon Haas, let's go get some napples, you know, those things they put in pies.