I don’t think I’ve wrestled this heavily with the decision of whether or not to actually go through with a particular scene since the shirt theft.
The background kids on the playground should PROBABLY be included for continuity's sake, but I feel this works better if Selkie Amanda Tony and Tommy the Truck are... isolated.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (See you Monday). Oh and also, I am giving Adsense another try for ad space, but I am not sure yet how to filter out the ads with embedded audio. So if anyone runs across an ad with embedded[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Paul Griers is the fourth member of the supporting cast to be a repurposed character from a superhero story I have had bouncing through my head ever since high school. The other three are Ricky (the orphan with the triangle hair) Marta (Selkie's aunt) and Alexis (Jessie's ex-girlfriend).
Okay so, as you may be guessing, today is a “lineart now colors later” day. Basically, I had this update penciled and ready to ink like normal, then looking over it realized a lot of pacing and story issues it[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So, as the regular blog post mentions, the strip shown here is not the original scripted installment for today. It's actually very very different. The original version of this strip focused pretty heavily on Moonsong. I've had him planned out from the beginning as being blind in his left eye (hence the bangs covering it), but initially and for the past three years up until now I had intended for him to have a false glass eye, not just a blind eye. The original script for today had Moonsong take a snowball to the back of the head which popped out his false eye. While he was scrabbling on his hand and knees to find it and trying to call a Time Out, Michael made ready to lob another snowball at him, only to be stopped by a barrage of snowballs from Keisha Heather and Ricky. Sandy runs up to Moonsong expressing concern over his false eye being popped out and the action sort of pauses while he looks for it. Ricky finds it in the snow and picks it up, only to be grossed out by the residues left on it ("Eeew! It's all slimy!") Moonsong snatches the false eye out of Ricky's hand angrily and glares at him. With his hair being blown to the side and his empty socket exposed Moonsong retorts to Ricky, "Of COURSE it's slimy! It's been in my head!" I've had that scene and the "Of COURSE it's slimy! It's been in my head!" line running around my mind for almost as long as Moonsong's been around. In fact, the original draft of this snowball fight arc was ALL ABOUT the reveal of his false eye and Moonsong's "origin story" before I rewrote it to focus on Selkie. But as the snowball fight built up to the "Moonsong loses his false eye" moment, I started thinking about all the complications it brought up and it felt less and less like a good idea to have included in the arc. Even if I chose to ignore the fact that the whole scene is unnecessary and does nothing but add ANOTHER character thread to the arc, the whole image of Moonsong having a false eye pop out and run around with an empty socket has a lot of squick and gross-out factors involved that would only detract, and not add, to the whole. And I had already been drawing his "false eye" as if it were a "blind eye" anyway, so taking the extra time out of the arc to emphasize and draw attention to it brought nothing to the table. In the end, I chose to re-draw and re-write this strip to focus more on the group as a whole galvanizing and banding together. Which has the benefit of greatly shortening the time away from Selkie's crisis. And as for the false eye, since I was already rendering it as a blind eye anyway I decided to null the false eye premise and just leave it exactly as it appeared to be: a blind left eye. Second Longest Commentary Ever.
Heather does not mean that last line literally. I don’t think… Psycho Heather, Qu’est Que C’est. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Heather. (sketch is not canon, btw. ;P)
For today's commentary, I wanna talk Ricky. Even though he's been part of the Orphanage Crew since the strip's inception, I feel like Ricky's never really established much of a role for himself. He's Tony's friend/hanger-on, he likes roughhousing, and... that's about it. Of all the kids in the Orphanage Crew (and I include Selkie and Heather in this despite their adoptions), I feel Ricky is the weakest link story and character wise. What made me realize Ricky had this problem? Two strips ago, I forgot to draw him. The last panel, the overhead shot showing the entire snowball fight skirmish breaking out. I drew it, I inked it, I even did a head count to be sure, and yet somehow it wasn't until I had gotten halfway through coloring the strip that I realized I hadn't included Ricky in the cluster. I "fixed it in post" by drawing him in with my tablet, but I felt bad that I had completely forgotten to include the guy in the group shot. Fast forward to this strip. My original scripts had Chanelle talking with Keisha and Heather in this strip. But while thinking about Ricky, and reading over Giselle's "Smear the orphans!" line I got to thinking... Ricky is one of the orphans too. He's part of the group as much as any of the others. Does he hear this comment and just not care? That's dumb. Yeah he'd care. So why are Keisha and Heather the only ones getting mad at it? I rewrote the script and replaced Chanelle with Ricky for this part. I'd like to give Ricky a chance to grow a bit more and find a stronger place in the story than just Tony's hanger-on. Plus, Ricky is part of the Crew. He should be more involved. This means downgrading Chanelle's role in the scene a bit, but she's a "school friend", tertiary support cast. Ricky can and should have dibs on "screen time" over a character who basically disappears when the kids aren't at school. And if you were wondering, the final panel's dialogue was VERY different when Chanelle was in the scene. Went something like this: Keisha: Oh HELL no! Heather: Right?! Chanelle: But, I thought Heather had parents? Keisha: Yeah, but she USED to be an orphan. Same thing. Heather: [scoops two fists full of snow and lofts them over her head] SOLIDARITY! (I like the idea of Heather yelling "Solidarity" at the top of her lungs, but I'm not convinced she would know that word unassisted.) (Longest commentary ever.)
Something about the final panel of today's comic made me think of the confrontation between Atreyu and Gmork from The Neverending Story. One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies.
Selkie is making a very rude gesture that would be inappropriate to draw if not for the mittens.
I'm still figuring out Truck's design. His first appearance looked too much like a taller and fatter Young Todd. Tweaked his head to emphasize the unruly hair a bit more, and now he's basically a fat Goku. XD
I feel like Selkie’s move to get a teacher is the right idea executed for questionable reasons. XD – – – – – I thought I’d take a stab at selling the ink-and-paper lineart used to make the last few[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I tried putting Tony and Amanda in the background of that last panel, but something about it looked really off. *shrug*
So, here’s a fun background production factoid you may not be aware of. From strip #301 onward, I made a change to my production system for the comic which I am really liking the feel of. I’ve brought a little[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
"Snowmageddon" comes from my cousin, who used it to describe a 10-inch snowfall blizzard we had in my area a couple weeks ago. Which turned to warm sunshine in less than a week. What the hell, Midwest?
While sketching out the character, alternate nicknames for "Tommy the Truck" were Brick, Tank, and (briefly) Block. I chose his real name (Tommy) after I settled on his nickname, for alliterative reasons. If I had settled on Brick or Block, he would have probably been named Barry.
