• A week-long sitting-and-waiting marathon, wherein the Newton, Marie, and Conrad find out Steve got the job in the very last panel of the last day.
• A week-to-two-week-long kung fu battle to decide the winner after Sunrise Ultra Mega Corp melds their three ideas into one and pays out to none of them.
• A bag of walnuts.

Whenever I meet people who visit 36 Point, I ask if they enjoy the strip. I'm sure this comes across as fishing for compliments, but when I'm targeting such a specific niche I really need to hear about what's working and what's not. It's always fascinating to listen to which strips in particular people get a kick out of. For instance, not one of my local friends understood this strip when it first came out, but I just met two designers who told me not only did they get it right away, but that it was one of their favorites. Impossible!

On a side note, I'd like to say that I'm finally honing in on a working hairstyle for Marie. It's been different just about every time I've drawn it, to a degree, but something about the way it turned out in Monday's strip really clicked for me. For reference, it originally started off based on a student designer I met in Colorado (from Chicago -- you know who you are), morphed into a quasi-final-fantasy-hero-do, and then finally hit on some cross between the original and yet another student designer I know. Small things, I know, but you wouldn't believe how much drawing that hair has perplexed me.

--nv--