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Filmed before a live potted plant.
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For this strip, I wanted to introduce Jetfire's fascination with Pinball. Each of the characters represents a bit of me. Jetfire represents the part of me that likes to play games, especially pinball. My idea here was to show the way I feel sometimes when I talk to friends about pinball, where they think I'm just some sort of nutcase going on and on about table layout and such, and they get the glazed look in their eyes. Jetfire's playing with - and subsequently losing control of - the Powerball is a similar idea. He is holding onto an actual honest-to-goodness Powerball from Twilight Zone, which is a ceramic pinball that makes playing pinball a lot different. See? I had to throw in something about pinball even here.
Getting the Powerball to stay in Jetfire's hand was easier than I thought. Definitely easier than getting it to stay on the table. In both shots where it is sitting on the table, it was slowly rolling around. I tried using a dime to stop it in place, but the dime - or any other small object I used - was always visible in the final picture. Eventually I gave up and let it roll. In some ways I felt like Jetfire, chasing after the Powerball a few times as it rolled off the edge of the table.
Some people have asked how I got Jetfire to hang off the edge of the table. If you look closely, you can see the edge of a chair. Jetfire is standing on his head on the armrest. He wasn't happy with it, but trooper that he is, he went with it.
This is also the last strip for some time where I'll be using the "off the edge" gag. It occurred to me that battloids can fly, so why is it so terrible? What's down there? It might be the subject of a future strip.