Why the quiet time?

In case you hadn't been tracking all the links I've been posting on Twitter, I sold out to the furries over the last month so I could have a usable portfolio for Anthrocon.  Since the animal stuff doesn't appeal to everyone, I kept the finals over on my FurAffinity account.  Shoulda shared shared the Precocious pieces over here, but I was lazy and I still have some hangup about reposting my art instead of creating original art for each site.

Art on this blog could be scarce for June as well.  I'll be doing commissions at Anthrocon, and probably posting some photos of them here, but that's it.  June is my vacation month.  The second half of June will have me traveling all about, so I won't be stopping to make much art. (Precocious and Copper Road will continue to update regularly, of course, as I've built a sizable buffer for both.)

Still, the news posts will be coming. Yes, the big ones will go on the main page too, but other notes will be on the blog only.

I'm excited for this summer. July should be filled with various crazy projects, August will have another con and, wow, the book's official release!  There's some wild happenings predicted for September too!  I'll be posting news of those projects here when I can confirm them - and there should be a couple of those announcements in the next two weeks.

Commissionathon still going on!

To catch up those not in the know, I've been drawing a commission a day this month to build up skills and a portfolio for the summer conventions. I've based it over on my formerly-ignored FA account, since that's the con demographic I'll be playing with during my book push. There are still spots available for cheap commissions, ranging from $15 to $25 for 8.5x11" drawings. I'll draw Precocious or your own characters. I know this kinda conflicts with me also selling books, but it's my last commission drive for a long time.  If you want a sketch from me after May, you'll have to reach me at a convention.

Good thing it's warm out...

...because I keep drawing Ms. Monster without much of a top.

Here is the line art for the next belly dancer watercolor.  My big question here is the accessories. The cloth danging from the top was incorporated from the source pic, but it can go. The bracelets were mostly me seeing it they'd work.  (The original had patterned forearm wraps, but I didn't think they'd translate well.) For colors, I was thinking of borrowing a similar color scheme from the other Ms. Monster piece I did today. (Should I post the May commissions on this blog too, or keep them on my FA?) I'd aim for a deeper blue on this one - and I'm debating trying out going over the blue fabric color with a white ink pen and adding some designs.  That could work, or it could backfire big time. Maybe I'll do a test on a scrap paper when I'm working.

Belly dancing, take two

Here's Ms. Bard doing her belly dancing thing, this time in different colors! I hope this one is better than the first attempt. The scanner seemed to hate the lighter, subtle purples of the drapery and veil, but that's to be expected.

My work schedule is going to be shuffled yet again. First of all, I have to work around construction that'll be happening in my apartment next week. I doubt the workers will be here for more than a couple days, but for the duration of the project my coloring computer will be under a tarp. That means getting my comic work done this weekend instead of next week.  Next, it's putting the finishing touches on the book, which means some back and forth about design, drawing/scanning a few more pieces of art and writing some copy. (I am SO slow at copy.)  Everything else - commissions and one special project - can be worked on in my studio, so that stuff will be the priority when the workers are here. Yeah, I've been moving pretty slow - but I try to keep moving.

Grayscale forever!

Yet another blog post in this recent burst! Expect two more by the end of Friday.



I didn't get as much done today as I'd have preferred, what with the whole illness thing and all, but I tried.

While waiting for replies to commission emails I thought I'd settle in and do another marker sketch. So I got up from my computer, walked over to the studio, turned on a stupid basketball game... and immediately passed out. Seems walking across my apartment was too much for me in my weakened state. I got really dizzy, had to lay down and only got up when my phone alerted me to the B-52's concert airing on PBS.

After TV, internet, email and some false starts due to dizziness, I finally settled down and did a character study for another commission. This pose is rather static, because the focus was on figuring out the hair and the dress. I'm not sure how this sketch will match up to the final version, but that's why I'm doing the sketches. Gotta figure this lady out!

After finishing her, emails came in giving me the go to color the other two commissions. They'll take priority tomorrow. (Man, I hope I feel better tomorrow.) Since I don't want to ruin any coloring with woozy work, I may do another marker sketch as a warm-up. This time I should try drawing a furry dude. Any non-fox requests?

I can't stop playing with markers!

(FYI, the next few days are going to be FILLED with posts over here, so keep checking back)



Same process as with the sketch in the post below, I did a simple Google image search for "cute cat" and turned it into a furry chick. BECAUSE. Once again, I had NO PLANNING at all in how it came out. Everything but the face in this picture was probably erased and redrawn three times.

Anyway, this is totally fun to do. I hope I can pull this off at the con.

Adventures in markers

So I needed to create some promotional art for my trip to FWA. I plan on having in my art book some watercolors, some colored pencil stuff, a few Precocious strips... and some examples of marker sketches.

Wait, I've never done a marker piece. These Copic gray scale markers haven't been touched yet. I SHOULD PROBABLY TOUCH THEM.

So, since furries like the cute, I went to Google and did an image search for "cute fox."

And.

Then.

It.

Turned.

Into.

This...



(Hey, it's another thing furries like!)

It frightens me that this is what happens when I start sketching without a plan... but it's kinda nice for not having a plan! Marker vets might cry at my horrid work, but I don't care. It's my first time using the darn things for a project and I liked messing around with them. (I also found out I bought the WRONG KIND of Copics tonight. Whoooooops. Oh well, these are fun too.)

I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING!

Dance for me!

While I don't have much time for commissions these days, I do still have a few obligations in my inbox. I want to be the best, so let's work on some today!

This project has a few of my ladies cast as belly dancers. I seem to recall the three being Bette, Mitzy and Deirdre... maybe I should have checked my email to confirm them before sketching? Eh, doesn't matter. I can swap some heads around if needed.


To start things out, I did searches for good belly dancing poses. The dresses can be finalized afterward. In this sketch of Mitzy, the dress from the photo would be practically impossible to convert to watercolor - but the pose was nice! By the way, forgive any shading discrepancies. They were not the priority during the sketching and, frankly, I haven't thought of how most of my cast would look with skimpy clothes on.

There's some dissonance going on in my head with my cartoony characters matched up with human poses and dimensions. I tried to "correct" the anatomy from correct human to way-off Precocious, but I definitely need to figure out how I will melt these two elements better.


I didn't think the pose would work out with cartoon anatomy, but it kinda does. I'd like to keep working with this idea.


Deirdre seems like a weird match for this hobby, so I wanted to make her pose a bit more unsure and less dynamic. I found a dress that was more conservative for her.

I've got a lot of work on this project if I want it come out looking grand. Getting the anatomy to look right with my undisciplined method of drawing is hard, and getting the dresses and veils to flow properly is a task as well. I hope to find some time during the next few weeks to keep sketching for this project, as well as the others in the queue.

Cameo rundown

Edit: New site upgrades means no more hotlinking, so this post was all broken images! You now have to click on the links to see the comic pages. Sorry!

For the city arc, now in its final stages, I decided to indulge my readers and friends and offer cameo spots for strips where background characters are needed. It made all that extra drawing fun! Here is a list of which characters were cameos and who was behind them.

Strip #786
The gray fox in panel one of this strip was by the request of reader Iron Ed.

Strip #787
Reader Roland requested a Eurasian Wolf. I put the gender up for a vote on the forum and the female security guard won.

Strip #791
The yellow dingo is a character belonging to reader Al S. Romero. My webcomicker friend Irene Pitcairn asked to be drawn as a calico cat in a strip, and I was happy to oblige!

Strip #790
The lynx was reader Cyfrostan's request. The husky was inspired by reader InsanityKangaroo. Reader mrgameandpie requested a Welsh Corgi. Finally, Roland gets another show with his suggestion of adding some labs.

Strip #793
I then turned to twitter for my museum curator cameos. The first two replies came from @psychocatboy (the cat) and @comicalpanda (the fox).

Strip #794
More Twitter cameos! The kitty in panel one was inspired by @kendrakirai, while the one in panel three is little miss @drillecat.

Strip #795
On the wall of bans, you will see Ruby from Code Name: Hunter and Blue from Namir Deiter. The colorful kitties in panel two are readers Cookie (blue one) and PurpleCat (purple one, duh).

Strip #797
Our poor crewman here comes from the Twitter volunteers, @granite_grizz. Yorkshire Terrier was actually his 4th preference of species, but I hope he likes it anyway.

Strip #798
And we get to today's strip. The fox is reader @codefox. The bobcat mix comes from reader Adrik the Bat. The two ladies on the right are Sheana (yellow) and Celina (white) from The Cyantian Chronicles.

There's one more cameo coming up in the arc (Strip #802), from reader @JaxTracRat, but I didn't want to wait until his appearance on Saturday to publish this post!

If you want to get in on the reader cameo action, do know that a few more will be coming up in the next few weeks. Watch the forum thread or my Twitter account for when I open up for those requests.

More background characters!

As I continue to script strips that require background characters, I continue to indulge readers by letting them take part in the process. Presenting: The latest sketches of proposed background characters!



This was a request for a fox, using a source pic of the reader running. I tried to match this guy's markings to the fox in his avatar. While he wore glasses in the pic, I think I prefer the sketch without them for the final version.



Since I ended up with so many fox requests, this poor soul ended up drawing the short straw and had to alter his proposal. A Yorkshire terrier was his fourth choice, but I hope it looks good enough to please him anyway. In this case, my favorite sketch includes the glasses.



I had a request for a calico cat, and those are always fun! Alongside our darling calico is a quick refresher sketch of Shane the dingo, a reader's character I've drawn before on this blog.



Turns out Siberian huskies lose a lot of impact when drawn with the gigantic eyes of the Precocious style, but I tried my best. (Unfortunately for this fan, my struggle also meant a less-than-prominent placement in Monday's strip.)



This one was inspired by a good, old-fashioned cat girl pic. I like the results.



The character behind this one is a robotic kitty with a drill for one of her arms. I had to strip that off, but I wanted to hint at the drill theme at least.



I put out the call on Twitter for volunteers to have their characters in the role of museum curators, and here's one of the luck winners. I'd say he's *another* red fox request, but his was actually the first of those to come in - and his has distinct coloring to work with - so this one wins.



Here's the other curator, a potentially unstable kitty!

Finally, this one wasn't actually a request. When I asked the eventual-terrier to choose something else, I offered to switch breeds of fox to gray or arctic first. He didn't go that route, but it did lead to me doing an image search anyway - and I found the CUTEST arctic fox pic ever! I just HAD to try Precocizing her! I dunno if she'll make it to a strip, but it was a fun experiment.

Background characters, by request!

As hinted at in an earlier post, I asked readers in my forum to help design some background characters for Precocious' current big city arc. Now, the nature of background characters means they are, uh, in the background - which, due to perspective and whatnot, means they appear rather small. If I'm going through the trouble of creating this things for the readers, it benefits both parties to have something to show for it that doesn't end up 10 pixels high in the final product, so do enjoy these character sketches I made!



The next character that is needed for drawing the strip is a security guard. After reviewing the requests I had, it seemed obvious to give the Eurasian wolf request the job. I have two versions for you, the public, to choose from. Male or female?



Next up, we a Precocized version of a reader's former pet, a bobcat mix - wearing camouflage because he's a born hunter - and a less-threatening-but-still-lovable stubby corgi!



Two users wanted to use their avatars, which both happened to be unusually-colored felines (not that you can tell in pencil), so it made sense to make them a couple. (They are funly colored because they are crazy art students who dyed themselves. That work?)



Finally, I got a request for a lynx wearing something black, like a hoodie. Since I only had one background female (maybe two, if chick guard get public support), and this reader didn't specify, I decided to go lady lynx. The black suggestion made me think goth. That was the plan, at least. I started out by making the eyes a little flirty by accident, and then it all snowballed. My goth lynx in black became... kinda sexy lynx in white? Whatever, I kinda like it. (I'd like it more if my final attempt a tweaking hadn't derped her eyes up, but I'll live.)

Aside from the guard, who is popping up on Friday, I don't know where and how (or if?) these characters will pop up in the strip, but they are ready to go for when the time times! I'm still taking requests, so chime in if you want to design a petting zoo person and I'll do my best to accommodate!

(Note: Unfortunately for the first guy to make a request, I came up with this idea *after* his choice had been incorporated into a comic. But, hey, he got to be a foreground character in that one, so he get his time to shine!)

Ha! Ha! I'm drawing background characters!

With the current Precocious storyline, I'm starting to push myself artistically. By moving characters outside of the standard environments and into the big city, I can no longer rely on simple color schemes to indicate the settings - I need to draw some backgrounds! And once I draw those backgrounds, however simple they may be, I must then populate them with bystanders! Needless to say I am both excited and terrified. I need the challenge. I need the practice. I need to make sure I get strips done for every day. SO NO GOOFING OFF!

So far, I have put zero planning into what background characters looks like. I jump in with my pencil, scribble a body and fill in details on a whim. That works ok, I guess, but maybe I should try to do something will all these extras? I suppose this is a good time to hand out cameos, but I draw cartoon doggies and kitties. That greatly limits who I can show off. (Although I'm willing to furrify a person, if asked.) There's also the fact that my style is so simple, any cameo renditions would be largely unrecognizable - especially when those characters end up only being 10 pixels high in the final comic. Eh. Who knows?

You know what, this blog totally sucks. Blogger's constant glitchery has totally thrown me off of what was a rather weak idea for a post in the first place. I'm posting it anyway (assuming Blogger works) so it can count towards my blog quote, but I'm gonna feel bad about it. I'll need to make it up to everyone later.

At least this awful post is the product of lots of non-awful work and progress!

It must be that time of the year again

I have spotted another mouse running around my room! That means it's time to attempt another mouse girl drawing! It's my way of celebrating the fact that I apparently live in squalor.

I wonder if I can catch this one like I did the last visitor...

I don't know what to do with myself

I am now in DC, and will be here into the new year. I'm happy to visit the family people, but this place is always hard on creativity. All you ever want to do here is relax and eat fattening food! But I must fight on! I do this blog for a reason: The daily deadline ensures that I'm always creatively active! (Because the daily comic isn't enough?) The handful of you who read this are a bonus.

Today I sought inspiration by assaulting my sketchbook with adorable horrors. I had no direction, and nothing worth sharing appeared for quite a while. I cycled through characters, but none of them popped! Panic set in. I wasn't drawing poorly, but I wasn't drawing anything exciting. Oh, inspiration, where are you?

I started playing around, trying to draw "furry" instead of "cartoony" - and failing hard. Sorry, furry fans, but I'm not really that great at anthro art. When I set out to make a comic I had Peanuts in my mind - I wanted a cartoon style, so that is what I learned. I'm weird like that. Most people who draw similar things grew up with animals and slowly cartoonified them. I took cartoony drawing and added just enough to make the animals (kinda) recognizable. I wanted cartoony, with an adorable furry coating as a bonus!

While I do want to keep working on drawing anthro stuff, just for the challenge, I'm proud of the style I have. My big-eyed, fuzzy children are what I wanted to draw. In the end, they're not very "furry" - but that was never the goal. I'll just have to master that LATER. For now, enjoy my cartoony badassery!

I SAID, "Think unsexy thoughts!"

I've been whining about wanting Precocious to make it onto TV Tropes for a while, which someone finally did in order to shut me up. I'm on the notable furry comics page - even though the disclaimer at the top of that page points out that Precocious doesn't qualify. Basically, if a comic with walking talking animals exists, but it would work the same if those animals were swapped with human forms, then it's not furry. It's funny animals by definition! WHAT-EV-TO-THE-ER! More people pay attention to furry comics, so go ahead and classify me! If friggin Calvin and Hobbes gets classified as furry because of the whole tiger thing, then Precocious is fine with that. Yay furry!

Except that comes with consequences. Precocious now appears on a second TV Tropes page: The FETISH FUEL page. Do what now? Seems Tiffany is just so beloved, that love has turned to perversion. I think this was done just to mock me for all my whining, so I guess I deserve it. Still, DUDE, SHE'S NINE! I will say I laughed my ass off when I found this out. Then a part of my soul died. C'mon people - *whine* - let's get on some less frightening places on TV tropes! (I can only imagine what awful entry will come now...)

Act casual...

Today is an inking day. Inking is so... permanent! I'm making THE comic! If I screw up, well, sucks for me. Oh yes, and tension does up the chances of screwing up. I gotta relax.

So I took a break! Gotta fulfill my blogging duties anyway. Today's sketch is of another buttoned-up character, Ms. Monster. She dresses frumpy and boring for her class - a "how not to be seen" experiment - all in a sick effort to keep her professional and private lives separate. It's kinda stupid, really. (I should note here that I've stopped the flimsy parallels to link the sketch with the day's theme and I'm on to just talking character.) Anyway, the point is that Bette hates having her worlds collide. (Tiffany seeing both Bette and Ms. Monster is an unfortunate exception.) For Bette to show up to class in short sleeves, something has to go horribly wrong.

So I course I made two Sundays' worth of strips about it! You'll see 'em come June. Consider yourself teased.

The winner?

Of the six votes so far (spread between here, Twitter and DeviantArt), number three here has four of them. Is this our hostess doomed to obscurity? If so, I'd better practice drawing her some more. (That, or trace for three panels. Mwa ha ha.)

People can vote and make their arguments until I get around to drawing the strip (next week, probably) so there's time to change momentum. Otherwise, I'm drawing this dingo-ish lass.

The Interactive Precocious Experience

I enjoyed letting people vote on which chick gets featured in a one-off role for a future comic, so let's keep going and narrow it down to one! The first vote eliminated three chicks - will this one settle on a favorite? (click the pic for a larger version.)

Each chick has been drawn in two poses, mirroring two of the three panels in which she'll appear. The redrawing also shows how good I am at drawing each particular chick. (If you care, #4 braid kitty is the easiest to draw and #3 dingo-ish chick is the hardest.) If there's any character tweaking you'd like to see - say you want a change in attire, shading and markings - you can suggest it. I'm not saying I'll make any changes, just that you *can* suggest something.

Yes, I am attention whoring a bit with something like this, but I *do* love getting feedback - even if I have to solicit it! Pay attention to meeeeeeee!

4/19 Update: Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Adding in Twitter and DeviantArt voting, here's the current tally:

5 votes for #3
3 votes for #6
2 votes for #2
1 vote each for #1 and #4

#5 has developed self-esteem issues.

People can give their opinion up until I start working on the strip, which should be later on this week.

Random Chick Generator

It's rare that I need to draw a character outside of the usual group of Precocious nutjobs, so I take the task of designing a random character as a fun diversion. One of May's random strips requires a random restaurant hostess and that gives me an excuse to play around. Anyone have a preference? (Click the image for a larger version.)

Speaking of May's strips, I've already bent the rules! The vow was to step back from storytelling and go with a true gag-a-day format. What I've written so far is a week of strips that stand alone - but they *do* have a common theme. After massive artists' block, I looked over what I had and saw half the strips written could be connected. Let's go with that!

I see it as having my cake and eating it too. A strip function best when there's a joke that can amuse fresh-eyed new readers AND give something extra to long-reading vets. These strips are a primitive form of it, but a good sign nonetheless.

I loves attention!

Someone out there reviewed Precocious! How cool is that? I'm still amazed anyone comes to the site without me paying them to do so. (Even Rhode Island sent a representative today!)

Since I don't have anything creative to show today (a combo of working on the actual comic and lack of motivation due to grim family stuff) I'll use today's post as a reply to the review. Don't worry, gentle reviewer, it's mostly agreeing and explanation.

I suggest you all go read the review. I will provide some quotes to give you context. Here we go. (Many the quote option doesn't differentiate it much. Time for mark up!)

"The comic started out in about 2008 on a date I for the life of me cannot discern because the author decided not to put dates."

Precocious was launched January 1, 2009, with the full Gender Wars arc completed. They have the 2008 copyright, since that's when they were created, but they weren't published until 2009. I wanted to storm out of the gate fully-formed, or at least as formed as I could be at that stage. It's still in the news items on the front page. ;-)

I intentionally kept from dating the strips. For one, the intro stuff takes place in the summer and the strip launched in winter. I didn't want it to be any more confusing than it already was. Plus, the intro arcs were created for the archives. They are meant to be read in one sitting. Considering the second intro arc came 50 strips into the regular run, the lack of dating lets me rearrange the archive to make it all flow together smoothly.

"Anyhow, What I find curious is how Paulsen decided to use Funny animals to portray the protagonists of this gag-a-day/story (Don't think He's quite decided yet.), but it was probably becuase he felt like it. though he may have a hard time keeping the furry-haters from beating him up."

Oh man, you had to say "funny animals," didn't you? I just learned what that term meant last week, and now it can get me in trouble!

I went with the cute cuddly animal forms because I like them! When I read comics, I favor the "furry" ones (ok, many are "funny animals") because I enjoy the aesthetics. I think they're cuter than humans - and much more pleasing to the eye when an artist is starting out. We all know what humans look like, so a shaky cartoon style of humans just looks wrong. We've seen cartoon animals in so many forms, we naturally accept them much easier.

For me, the Precocious kids are technically "funny animals" - I concede it. They call themselves "people" and never mention species at all. They have hands and feet, not paws. They're cartoons. The only real animal quality they acknowledge is the presence of their tails. (How could they not?) That doesn't make me one of those fur-scared cartoonists by any means. As mentioned, I like furry comics, I welcome the furry and I'm happy to classify Precocious as furry. If that leads me to fursecution (I really love that word) then so be it. If the presence of an animal tail in an otherwise standard newspaper-style strip is enough to drive someone into a rage, then the problem isn't on my end. Like/hate something for its quality, not on account of who *might* also like/hate it.

"Problems with the strip would include the format. I mean, is it gag-a-day like a serilized newspaper (Which judging from the strip style is how it's supposed to feel) or story and arc based with the occasional filler."

You got me here. I do follow the newspaper comic format, and then I indulge in webcomic freedom. One premise often explodes into a meandering story that can span weeks. As a creator, I like to set the scene and let the characters take over - and they're as pompous and verbose as I am!

In the long (long) run, however, this should even out. The bulk of the archives will be story arcs for the first year, since I like to introduce characters as part of a larger story and the strip is still new. I think this is more rewarding for new readers when they hit the archives - and at this stage the readership is still actively growing. Despite my promise, I'm not changing my format yet. April is *another* long story. (It introduces a new classmate, naturally.) Another epic story is planned for the summer - still in its early stages, so who knows how long it'll go - but I've made a vow to make May gag-a-day! The ideal Precocious format, which I hope to establish for year two (I plan ahead) is to keep any stories between one and two weeks, like the dessert violence and Max's birthday stories, and up the one-strip gag percentage.

Having long stories is a bad idea for a real newspaper cartoon, but an online newspaper-style cartoon has the full archive - and any needed context - just a click away. I'd like to think online webcomic readers are a more dedicated bunch anyway.

"I'd personally complain as a fellow artist about his the eyes take up 90% of the characters' faces(Since, you know, ordinary people have FOREHEADS), it's probably a stylistic choice considering it's more cartoony than something meant to be anatomically correct."

Yeah, it's a personal choice. When I sat out to learn cartooning in 2004, I had an image in my mind of the characters I wanted to draw - and the Precocious kids are right in line with it. I like my kids to be cartoony and less realistic. I've turned against foreheads so much I stopped drawing eyebrows!

"The Kids are a bit... i dunno, Their personalities seem fine but they seem to be... Exaggerated versions of what they're supposed to be."

Would you believe this was intentional? And by "intentional" I mean in the same way a new skier says "I'm going wipe out!" and then does.

I refer to the initial Gender Wars arc as the "pilot episode" of Precocious - because it has the same format and pitfalls any TV pilot would have. This is THE first impression - you have to introduce your characters, summarize them, establish themes and move on in the limited time you have. The lazy way to do it is have them walk in, monologue about who they are, and push on - which is what I ended up doing. They most definitely are portrayed as exaggerations early on - although I do want to point out that smart 9- and 10-year-olds who latch onto an identity naturally exaggerate it. (I'm not sure Suzette will ever change.)

I lay down the characterizations and premises a bit strong early because once they're set, they're set. I have the rest of the strip's run to make the characters all nuanced and awesome!

So there's my reply. A bunch of "yup, you're right" stretched into a monster wall of text. It's my way!

In a day marked by bad news, it was incredibly uplifting to see that someone out there cared enough about my strip to write something that well thought-out. I really needed that today.

Hope you all forgive me for the self-indulgent post. It's Friday, so I assume you're all out partying anyway.