by After today’s elimination show there are only six contestants left on Strip Search. That’s another 18 episodes which is about 9 more weeks. I guess that means we’ll have a winner in June or July (someone look it up on a calendar, okay?).
Tavis won last Tuesday’s convention sketching contest and so he had the dubious honor of picking the contestants for the elimination show. Without much to go on he picked Erika and Abby. Check out the episode; spoilers after the break:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdTzRIOR-sY?rel=0]
A pretty entertaining show today. Both Erika and Abby seemed to deal well with Mike and Jerry’s by now expected obnoxious questions. Abby did her entire comic by hand which is a first, everyone else on the show has used the Cintiq tablets. Erika spent the first 45 minutes planning out her comic before getting to work on the tablet. I was honestly worried for her but I’m not sure it had too much of an impact on her final comic.
Abby won. I was genuinely surprised because for the most part we don’t really know how good of a cartoonist any one is until they get into the elimination contests. Abby is really a good artist and while it wasn’t perfect, it was a very funny premise she set up in her comic. I laughed at seeing it — it seemed like the judges did too.
Erika also did a great job but like some of her work it was not a single funny gag but more of a series of things that were weird and unusual and interesting. This was one of those and in this kind of knock out format, I think single best moment is going to take it with Jerry and Mike. They could have picked Erika but I think Abby deserved to win.
Abby has a shot at winning the whole thing. I wonder if the other contestants realize that; after seeing her beating out Erika they probably do.
UPDATE: I checked out Abby’s comic, Junior Scientist Power Hour, and to be honest, it’s uneven. It has a loose, “throw whatever I want on the screen” vibe that feels more like peeking in on the artist’s sketchbook than a specific final product. Having watched Abby onscreen now, I hear her comics with her actual voice which helps a lot; I’m not sure she actually always gets that on the page itself. Still no question she has a good sense of humor and a decent sense of how to construct a comic.
I liked the very last one she posted, not only funny, but speaking as someone who is coaching one of my kid’s soccer teams, so true.
