3 Takeaways from November

What was I thinking when I did some of this stuff? Well, almost as important is what do I think of it now, too.

Key takeaways
- multiple panels can aid comedic timing. Don't restrict yourself to only single-panel comics.
- give yourself the space for artistic expression. You need space to tell your story.
- hand lettering can give you the specific intonation in each word and letter, leading to a more specific reading of your text.

Here's the rough work before I went on to finalize them, and you can see it was still back when I was just folding a page into four squares and restricting the work to the size of a quarter page. I've moved on from this and think it's going to rememdy some of my observations on past "work."

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Holy Guacamole was an indecisive spinoff of the silly things Robin used to say to Adam West's Batman. No particular gag was especially poignant when I was writing it, but it was easy to come up with a few different punchlines to hopefully make it worth the visit to read them?

No, it wasn't very timely, but I thinkthe artwork matched the original title sequence on the television show. The framing worked out well, too. The concept of finding a moment when these expressions would be a fitting pun for Robin to use was the basis --perhaps there was something more creative to be done? Now I'm second-guessing myself.

I really liked this joke, but it didn't get the response I thought it might. I guess so long as I'm happy with it - - validation is nice, too, though.

Ahead of Schedule is kind of based on a conversation I had with another couple at a wedding a few weeks ago. They have two kids, one about the same age as our first, and we were just commenting on how "busy" our kids are before they're even two. We figured they reached the Terrible Twos early -- though I believe the consensus was:

"If you think THIS is bad now, just wait another eight months and you'll be WISHING he was only 21 months old again."

I feel like I should comment on each joke, but I don't really have much to say about Work Those Gluts. I think the punchline "Soon you'll be able to rip a phonebook in half with your ASS" has great potential to be delivered with great effect, but I'm not sure it was captured here.

This might have been achieved with a few more panels building up to the punchline? I'm interested in doing fewer single-panel jokes - - telling a joke requires timing, and a single panel is very limiting, even if they're much quicker to produce.

Finally, Nice of You to Join Us is another example of a joke I personally enjoyed a lot, but may not have translated to the masses with much effect.

First of all, I think it was a lot of fun to conceive how Beard-o might cope without his beloved ducks. Obviously it would lead to substance abuse - - and that's how this whole story arc developed. Drinking toilet duck and having a stupid hallucination was a fun idea, and being able to draw King St. from a completely different prespective (a bird's-eye view) was intriguing as well. Plus, it set up nicely into the payoff at the end of the arc.

I'm still struggling to get the lettering and the word-balloons to look the way I think they should. By using larger panels when I'm creating the gags (though this is before I started doing that) I've got more space to write the letters by hand, rather than relying on the word processer to do the work for me. I think hand-drawn letters is more the style I'm going for - though don't expect that to happen for a few more weeks, as other items in my production schedule are coming up.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. If you've got any questions about how things are going / coming along, drop me a line.

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I Plagiarized a Joke From My Cat

I plagiarized a joke from my cat - - just another insight into the makings of some of these stupid jokes. I'll tell you more about the cat's joke in a sec.

First, here are a few more behind-the-scenes glimpses into the making of the King St. Capers and other terrible comic series.

Once again, this sneak-peek reveals my hopes to be efficient is drawing four comics on a single page, which keeps the images small, the resources small (fewer sheets of paper to sort) and the images small when I go to add colour in the final steps.

Plus, it saves on scanning multiple images, too. It's one sheet of paper, slipped into the scanner, and presto. Sort of.

Great Idea, Quarterly Review, Cat Sniffs, and Failed Bumper Sticker.

So, here you see the hilarious Caper that I've not released yet. There's no caption on the image, so you'll just have to wonder what on earth might be being said in that panel. Also, an illegible note for ANOTHER Caper idea is just sitting there on the page, but you can't read it!

So TWO Capers are potentially being spoiled early, but I trust they'll still be a bit of a surprise when they're finally released. Stay tuned.

Also on the page are three other comics which have all been posted now. I'm most excited to introduce "Business Man @ Home," which is a new series that's serving as catharsis in my continued observation of how a one-year-old is lacking any professionalism whatsoever.

I took a little time to do some product development, and drafted up a fun banner to include on each strip, and I hope people will enjoy it. I think there's plenty of material to continue the series for a while, plus they're quick and easy to execute, which is imperative!

Next is Most Interesting Thing in the Room, starring my cat Indy. She's been the artistic template I've used to create this cat. She also basically wrote this joke. Indy has discovered that my armpits quickly become a crack-heroine version of catnip to her, and she wants to rub, snuggle, scratch and claw at them whenever she can. It tickles.

Lastly, was just a dumb bumper-sticker idea I figured would be terrible. That's how my sense of humour/mind works, it flawlessly takes information and then finds the worst possible scenario that would create the most intolerant and awful outcomes ever, because for some reason I think that's funny.

It's never a constructive thought. It's never a positive thought. It's without fail, always the worst thing possible  - - and then I laugh to myself, and people ask me: What? And then I've got to change the subject instead of reveal my awful thoughts.

I figure one of the nastiest practical jokes you could play on someone would be to take a really offensive or dangerous bumper sticker and put it on someone else's car. Who knows how long they'd be driving around getting dirty looks and being identified with whatever dumb thing you've written on their car?

Hilarious, right? That and emptying a hot deep fryer on the hood of someone's car. I imagine that'd be pretty crazy, too.

I hate drawing cars, so I just stuck the sticker onto an existing image of a car. Man I hate drawing cars.

Production Notes | Spring Chickens and King St. Capers

What I'm sure nobody's wondering is: what do the comics look like before you're done with them? Well, to answer the question nobody's asking, HERE's what they look like.

Here's we've got the Silent Pirate fan art, kitty sniff, Call Me Gail and the neighbourhood cat's middle finger.

Here we've got Ignacio, from Silent Pirate; Call Me Gail which was my twist on an expression that's a bit of a pet peeve of mine; the Neighbour's Cat; and Fishy Smell.

All of these come from the time before I learned how to add colour to the strips. You can see that I try and speed things up by drawing a bunch on one sheet of paper, then scanning them all at once, and doing the finishing touches digitally. 

Indoor v. Outdoor cats, microadvertizing, laptop kitty and Fretting over brownouts.

In this image I squished two multi-panel cartoons into one quarter of a page - - this can significantly reduce the detail, and make the images small to work with when adding colour afterwards. A lesson learned. Plus, when deleting the whitespace before adding colour, the smaller the details and images, the more difficult.

Here we've got The Difference Between Indoor and Outdoor Cats; Microadvertizing; Cybercrimes; and Fretting Over Brownouts.

I've had the rough draft of Indoor v. Outdoors cats drawn for literally three years before I got to it. I didn't like how it looked, so had to completely redraw it -- and of course it's for the better. Adding colour has made a significant difference, I think.

The Dahmer gag was another joke that'd been in the back of my mind for years and years - - now that I'm drawing up a bunch of the comics, it was time to finally get it done.

When I'm finished with a page, I'll order them to be published with the what I feel is the strongest cartoon to go first. From the above selections, it went Brownouts, Cybercrimes, Indoor v. Outdoor and then Microadvertizing. How would you have ordered them?

Great work and Cuddling Experience

Here's a quick example of two images where I was still making the shift from heavily shaded images to clean outlines to simplify the colouring process later on down the line. It looks like I've left some notes on the page for me while in the digital editing process, too.

In Great Work, I was really pleased with how the shading in the boss's suit turned out. It gave me hope that this could have some positive returns going forward.

My wife is still haunted by Cuddling Experience, which is unfair, because it was more of a joke than a critique, but also an observation ;)

The Hot Tub Drops on King St.

For the Hot Tub story arc for the King St. Capers, I tried something entirely different than what I'd been doing with other strips. Instead of drawing an entire gag in one cell, I chose to draw strip elements that I could incorporate into a series of gags. In this case, the image of two people observing the hot tub can be used in any instance when these people are observing the hot tub.

In Someone Leave Their Hot Tub, panels one, two and three were used; in Hot Tub in the Middle of the Street, I used panel four and another panel from a second page (there were four used in this story arc); and I reused panel four again in What Could Be Worse Than That?

I have to say, adding colour to the Capers has brought a LOT more life to them, and I'm even more happy with how they're turning out these days. The digital editing is making a lot more interesting stuff possible, as well.

Just one further example is, I've only had to draw the barber pole outside Mr. Minestrone's shop once, and then reused it every time - which is much faster than drawing and colouring a new barber pole every time. Same thing with the pile of butts and the pile of empty liquor bottles.