On last week’s Strip Search (a reality TV series about webcomics), the elimination comic challenge required the artists to make use of the themes “mystery” and “naughty.” I decided to try the challenge at home with jointed paper dolls.

Long before I ever had sex myself, I saw it in movies and read about it in books. In those imaginary settings, everything is always perfect. Nobody ever farts, no one bangs a shin on the side of the bed, and all the clothes seem to just magically slide off the perfectly sculpted bodies.

The comic below imagines what might happen if two characters from such an outrageous imaginary world suddenly had to contend with sex in the real world…

Click on the image to see a larger (and thus more legible) version.

Now, I have to admit that I in no way met the challenge time limits on this one. In an hour and a half, I got this far:

I still needed to finish the girl’s hair and actually pose and photograph the dolls for each panel, then photoshop in the text (I’d already composed it, at least). So, this sort of creating? Does not fit into a 90 minute time period. But I figured I might as well finish since I was halfway done.

One other thing I learned during this process is that posing jointed paper dolls just so, particularly when you’re trying to pose two of them interacting with each other. Because when you go to move one doll, it messes with the other one, and vice versa. In the end I think it took me about 30 minutes just to take the darn photos. It was a fun experiment though, and I think I’ll have to do some more craft projects with these jointed paper dolls! One could probably make some really great and detailed shadow puppets, just for starters…

I also did last week’s Strip Search ElimComic, which you can see towards the end of this post. I made it out of felt, and that one I did manage to complete on time! Barely. 90 minutes is just not very long…