Selkie

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.)

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

"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?

I've felt for awhile now that Tony has more of a "rival" feel than an antagonist. Time to step up his game.

The First Day of School arc, waaaay back when, underwent some re-writes midway through when the original ending I had intended stopped feeling "just right" to me. A consequence of this that I've regretted since then is a removal of the follow-up to Amanda's duo-prank on Selkie and Hamud. It's not a huge or important thing, but I hated that the incident just dropped off as a result of the rewrites.