Nickelodeon Gag #7

This was the last of my 2006 gags, which were printed in Nickelodeon Magazine.  In my mind I always called it "Octagolie."

This one is a bit embarrassing for me to look at, because it's so obvious to me now how to make it a more exciting image...  but more about that NEXT week, when I'll talk about my big "gag epiphany" and we'll move on into my 2007 gags.

One small area of improvement in this gag, is that I finally reversed my signature out of a background area with pure color, instead of putting a white stroke around it, as I had previously done.  It's a small thing, but it makes the signature easier to read and a lot cleaner, graphically speaking.

The other big breakthrough for me on this gag was how to properly draw a soccer ball!  Before this drawing, I thought a soccer ball was a series of hexagons.  But after an hour of trying to make that work on the page, I finally looked at some reference photos and discovered that a soccer ball is actually a black PENTAGON, surrounded by white hexagons.  Who knew?!