The last family portrait.

Here's a drawing for the final family portrait: The chaotic Et horde.  While the first three family photos were all cordial, I doubt that would be possible for the Ets. Thus, chaos and stressed parents.

Some touchups are needed, mostly on the arms.  Gene, be lucky you have a left arm at all. I was almost done before I realized all I'd drawn was an empty shirt sleeve for him.  Actually, speaking of Gene missing body parts, I forgot to ink his tail. It's in the original sketch, so no worries. But, anyway, this is the foundation for the next step.

Color inside the lines!

It's time for the fun stuff with this Mothers Day card: The coloring! Here is attempt #1. (Click the images for larger versions.) Tomorrow I get to do this again and again. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but colored pencil is my old unruly friend. (It's a harsh, unforgiving medium - but I love it anyway!)

Oh, right, the blog!

Whoops! Sorry for disappearing unannounced. I'm doing another week in DC, and that means I'm mostly too busy with family things to do all the bonus stuff. I probably should have said something about that, but it totally slipped my mind. Sorry again!

Anyway, let me contribute something to this world: The *other* part of the Mothers Day card! Once approved, it will be copied and colored, making the world a better place. Enjoy!

If I was on the ball, I totally would be offering prints of this card as a donation incentive... but I'm not. :-( Oh well, I'll just have to kick the *next* holiday's ass instead!

A mother's work is never done

Here's some more sketch work on the Mothers Day card. The goal was to see how many mommy things I could cram into the relatively small space of a card. So far, splitting it into thirds has been the best option. Any more, and the details become hard to draw by hand. I will give the quadrants approach a shot, though.

I'm not very happy with this sketch, but this is how we discover and work out problems! One error I made was drawing Sky too large. The card would be much more effective if the shots were pulled back to show more of the scene, like I did in the bottom panel. The top needs to be pulled back to show a full stove as she cooks for a family of seven. If I do that, hungry Gene probably won't be necessary. The middle panel can work if pulled back slightly to show there's a washing machine there. The scribbly thing is my attempt to hash out where the caption would go. (Without Gene at the top, the caption could take his place.) I think the bottom panel looks the best at the moment. (That's supposed to be a fire extinguisher she's holding, by the way.) Overall, Sky has to look far more stressed out to make the punchline work.

Eh, it's a start. I'll keep sketching until things start to click!

What a mother needs

In a family of seven, you can keep your flowers, cards and candy - mommy needs some sleep!

This is a spec sketch related to the mother's day card project. Let me tell you, it's a pain in the rear to draw SEVEN characters together (this is why illustrators charge by the figure!) and get the proportions even somewhat right. What I have here isn't great, but that's what roughs are for - figuring out the basics and going from there. If all goes well, I might have something to sell down the road!

Look a gift horse in the mouth!

A momentous thing has happened: I may have a colorist! Matthew of Sometime Alone has offered his time to color my Sunday strips until I drive him batty with my corrections and nonsensical swatches. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to not abuse this generous offer. (It's not like I can *pay* the poor lad, as I have no income myself.)

Naturally, the second Sunday strip that pops up on the list is one that can be *very* elaborate, with lots of characters. (These sketches are me fleshing out ideas.) Hmm... what to do? Will this be the strip that drives him mad? LET'S FIND OUT!

Let's make a wallpaper!

My Precocious fans are so awesome, they have earned a new wallpaper from me. As the theme this week was on the Precocious families, that's the plan for this wallpaper. I am very open to feedback, though, so you squeaky wheels out there may get some grease.

Here are some early sketches, focusing on individual families. I went with the Ets and Ovens as they are the most colorful, but I'll try to mock something up for the tamer Pingos and wholesome Linkletters. I'm also not opposed to a group shot - in fact the Et sketch from below was taken from such a group sketch that may turn into the wallpaper.




This is your time to be heard, people! Any suggestions?

Strictly Business

Today's sketch is of our two Precocious parents in who work in the soulless business environment. Well, the ones who make it funny. Jacob's dad might qualify as he's a patent attorney, but he's so *sincere* - Sincerity isn't funny!

Gene Et and Sydney Oven both give away their secret hobbies here, with the World of Warcraft wastebasket (no, I didn't bother looking up the logo for reference) and Pokeball decal. I love their looks, as if they know they'll be outed as big children at any second!

I really botched the original sketch, but decided I'd run with it. It's the spirit of business! "Fuck it; let's look busy!" It gave me an excuse to mess around in Photoshop and fix all the major proportion errors. I did a great fix job, so that makes the effort worthwhile.

My mind's on business because comic promotion warps the brain hard. I'm becoming accustomed to fighting and clawing for any attention. If I sit back and relax, down go the stats! Now, I don't really mind, since overall Precocious is doing great, but the mindset remains. Gotta be aggressive to move up, because the internet is a vast ocean of indifference, insanity and unrestrained malice. You have to be bold to get attention of the feed worthwhile folks who somehow ended up online, and it's ever more difficult with comics because you never can be sure who makes up your audience. It's never one set group, but a cross-section. Try doing targetted advertising for that! Gah!

That fight is still fun, though. It's not life and death, and I enjoy a challenge where the outcome is measure by how greatly I succeed. A fight without a loser is a wonderful luxury, and I'm glad to have this as my fun obsession.

With all the responsibility in real life, my fantasies turn to the ultimate luxury of being passive and having life come to me. I'm so used to scrambling for any attention that unsolicited niceness is a joyful shock. Being invited over to dinner on by birthday by Dana; finding an unsolicited endorsement of Precocious at the Belfry; learning that people were voting for my site every day - these are the things I cherish right now. It's fun to be selfish sometimes.

I'll be the grown-up. I'll be productive. I'll earn my spot in humanity. It's about time I face some adversity in otherwise blessed life. Still, I'm not going through life without a metaphorical pokeball decal on my metaphorical briefcase! That's how I do metaphorical business!

Edit: Despite the perfect timing of the pokeball metaphor, I had no idea the new Pokemon game was released today when I made the post. Looks like the universe is either being kind or fucking with me. I'm not buying it quite yet, but it sure looks shiny.

Et too, Michelangelo?

Enough about my damn paintings. This blog needs to get back to CARTOON ANIMALS! Family friendly and adorable cartoon animals happily working together. It's like a candy-coated Brad Bird movie!

This was the backup sketch for the Family Webcomics splash art, rejected because it was entirely unclear that they were viewing webcomics on a computer monitor. Hey, they could be a really warped family viewing hard-core pornography - it's just not clear!

I did feel bad about the cutting of two children from the FAMILY art, so I went ahead and inked it. I feel the worst about little Mikey, who was meant to be the primary Et young'un. The only line he's had so far was when he was off-panel, locked away. (And I can't even be certain he's the one speaking.) Most of the time, he's the innocent one who gawks at chaos created by other children. Granted, that's *kinda* his role anyway, but he'll eventually interact more. It's just not fair that Frida, the kid supposed to just be part of the crowd, got her own panel to shine - readers even learned her name! Frida is the one you *expect* to be cut, but she's fun to color and that keeps letting her sneak into strips. Oh well, Mikey still gets his time to shine in this summer's big storyline.

Anyway, I'm trying to get the most of this image. It's now a lame wallpaper on the Precocious site and available for order as a print and magnet and whatever on the DeviantArt page.

Fun for the whole family!

I was raised on newspaper comics, and I strive to make a newspaper-worthy comic. I'm talking figurative newspaper here, as currently most newspapers are in sad decline and no longer worth the trouble. Whatever, it's the TONE I want to capture, and the delivery method can change. Oh, and it has.

I've signed on with two groups, both in the family-friendly comic vein, and I am greatly enjoying this current goody goody mentality.

First, as mentioned in the last post, is Kidjutsu, a site created to being comics to kids. When I was a kid, I spent my library time hunting down old Peanuts collections instead of blindly sticking with Judy Blume. I'll always claim I learned most of my vocabulary from reading Calvin and Hobbes. Comics are vital in getting kids to love reading, and Kidjutsu aims at providing kids a one-stop resource with tons of comic volumes to choose from.

Precocious will eventually join that line-up once I do some redrawing and reformatting. Finally, my tendency to create long story arcs pays off! I have issues - and they're not all mental!

The second site I'm pimping out is Family Webcomics, which does exactly what you think it does. It's very thorough in classifying and listing family-friendly comics, making it an excellent resource for parents. Precocious joined the list and I hope to be an active contributor there as well. It is my hope that when I am up against the wall, judged while a gun is held to my temple, I can point out I was a FAMILY-FRIENDLY guy. That could save my life! I'll admit that my family love might work more for a liberal family, but that's due to intelligence and being, you know, interesting. If a conservative mother is going to faint the second she reads the word "sucks" in her kid's comics, I can't really do anything about that. It's not like I could do or say anything to do more damage to her children than her anyway.

On the Family Webcomics forums, the creator, Mirz, put out a request for homepage splash art. This is something I can do! Here is my contribution to the cause:



Of course I had to feature my strip's giant Et family - with so many kids I can't fit them all in a square composition. I sorta felt bad about leaving Frida and Michelangelo out, so I started work in a second sketch:



This sketch hit a wall when I realized what a pain it would be to make it clear the object the family is viewing in the foreground is a monitor. But I did include all the children! Minor victory!

Hetero-Normative Behavior!

I'm am such a wholesome idealist. Well, in one subject at least. Since the foundation of Precocious is my idyllic childhood, that means the environment around my kids is extremely awesome! Gemstone Estates has just about everything a kid could ever want! Outside the houses we have lots of stimulation. Inside the houses... LOVING FAMILIES!

The Precocious parents are a fun bunch. They have happy, healthy marriages, do their best to motivate and encourage their children and they are delightfully insane!

I'm almost done drawing the Max's birthday storyline, so now the question is what to do next? I have a silly little brawl over dessert, or I can go back and do that much-hyped parents storyline. Ideally, I'll do both! If I built up a large enough comic buffer, then I have time to create the parents arc and just insert it into the archives. That's the dedication I have to you people! (I make no promises that will happen.)

Either way, it's time to practice my parent-drawing skills. I want to get the parents introduction into the archives soon, as they do tend to pop up in the strip. While I do my best to get their personalities across in their appearances, I want the chance to expand upon them. Once they are established, their lines in earlier strips take on new interpretations!

The only worry I have is that I naturally write more adult jokes for the adults. One couple met due to judgment impaired by alcohol and fatigue. Another punchline involves nudity, paint and the dining room. (I'll let you contemplate that one.) I love it, but such risky gags could hurt any syndication chances.

The humor is appropriate contextually, though. Insane geniuses don't just pop up out of the blue. I believe in nature over nurture. The environment may do some finishing in shaping personalities, but lots of my kids nuttiness is inherited. Each kid is the natural consequence of their parents spawning.

That is... if I don't blow the strips with a bad script. Before I draw anything, I've got to tighten up the story and connect the dots.

Blue is gray. War is peace. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

I didn't feel like working on the strip today (maybe later) and I had this new pad of Bristol board with a small selection of colored pencils. I've been wanting to see how Sky looked with her conceived gray tabby coloring. I didn't bring any gray pencils with me; nor could I find a pencil sharpener, which further limited the options. Fuck it, light blue is good enough!

Gene was added for balance and practice. Now that I look at him, I think his hair color needs to be changed. The joke is just a bit *too* obvious at this point. I guess I can play with various hair colors... or just continue to work in ink and ignore color completely.

The Et Family! *click* *click*

What can I say, crazy families are on my mind.

Drawing something like this is a MAJOR challenge, since every character (well, not the twins) are different heights and sizes. I can't claim the shot is any good at all, but anyone remotely close to accurate is wild success at this point.

I still love how varied the Et family is, even if it means more trouble than it's worth when cartooning. Gene is a buff-colored kitty, Sky is a gray tabby, Tiffany is a calico, Michaelangelo is an orange tabby, Frida is a tortoiseshell and the twins are white. This counters an earlier Et family breakdown, but now that all of them have been drawn in the comic, the current roster is more or less official. (I can still alter colorings if I want, but thinking of doing the strip in color makes me cry in fear.)

Oh, yeah. In case you're wondering, eight new strips are done (nine if you count the Black Friday one) and progress continues. 24 strips to go before Precocious BECOMES REAL!

Articulate Friday

Rant post has been put off again due to good things. Yay!

So, with my DVD player dying... I feared I might have had to brave the frightening outside world on this soul-destroying shopping day. Then I remembered Amazon.com! I found the DVD player I wanted on sale *and* it'll be shipped to my doorstep for no additional charge. Yay internet!

This bonus holiday strip is the result of my joy. The poor parents must brave the brutal shopping environment... except for Sydney, who is rewarded for her laziness!

Fathers Day

As promised, here's another Precocious parent. Originally Harvey Linkletter was also going in this post, but his sketch was lost to a tragic Photoshop accident. Oh well, gives me time to make better sketches to share. (It'd been about a year since I last drew Harvey.)

Gene Et, Tiffany's dad, is a blessed soul. His unnatural good luck has allowed him to find success without even trying. Currently, he's a VP in some big corporation and lost in the bureaucracy. He's too highly ranked to take the fall for small mistakes and not ranked high enough to take the fall for big ones. In truth, he has no clue what his job actually is! All he does is show up, play online for eight hours and go home with glowing performance reviews. Sitting a desk with nothing to do may not be your definition of blessed (it's not mine either) but Gene makes the best use of his time. Oh, and pay is excellent! Like any blessed individual, Gene tends to be more fun-loving and irresponsible than most. Still, things always work out in the end for him.

Gene is a character I struggled with in designing. It would be a cop-out to just make him an older, male Tiffany. Yes, it's cartoon logic to have parents look exactly like their children - and, yes, I know it's the other way around, but in these cartoons the kids are designed first - but it bugs me so. When taking on Precocious, I wanted to mix things up. In fact, the idea of family likeness is the center of Precocious' second story arc.

When it comes to kid/parent clones, you have the Pingo family. As they are red foxes, there's only so much wiggle room there. At most I will play with the coloring of each individual Pingo, but their similarities are something I will use in storytelling. Autumn is the spitting image of Ivy as a child, much to Ivy's chagrin.

Harvey and Deirdre Linkletter also have a clear resemblance to their child. To illustrate how well they match up, each parent has one floppy ear. Their son, Jacob, has both. Physically, Jacob and Harvey are both cream-colored mutts. The difference, non-floppy ear aside, is that Jacob is far fluffier. Said fluffiness comes from Deirdre, who is modeled after a border collie. The family ties are visually obvious, but the characters still have their unique looks. I'm happy with this balance.

Both of my kitty families were modeled after actual kitty genetics. We all know that house cat litters can contain several coloration varieties. In the Oven family, Bud does have a clear resemblance to his mother, Sydney. (The Scottish fold ears go a long way.) Joseph Oven, however, is a giant, hulking white feline. Father and son look like they have nothing in common - but that's kitty cats for you, right?

For the Et family, I went for the general mix. Gene is a buff-colored cat. Sky is a simplified gray tabby. (I refuse to draw all those stripes!) Tiffany is a simplified calico, who might get more noticeable patches of color on her paws/tail as time goes on. The rest of the Et children will be traditional cat variances. While they haven't been designed yet, I'm thinking one will be a tortoiseshell and the rest will be a mix of gray and orange tabbies.

Have I put too much thought into this stuff? I'm sure. Still, I hope that by planning things out like this I can create a rich strip with more sophistication and depth. Only time will tell if this strange ambition pays off.