New Button ideas + Kickstarter info

Here are some button ideas that should eventually populate the Cupcakes of Bliss gift box, available through the Book 2 preorder on Kickstarter. I can still play around with ideas, but the current plan is three regular buttons and one papercraft button (probably of Tiffany). By the way, the red outlines and green circle on Quincy are guidelines on the template and won't be on the actual buttons.

And here's a reminder: While some items will be available in the upcoming Precocious store after the preorder ends, others will not. The Cupcakes of Bliss will be very limited once the campaign ends. (Well, they will become convention-only Precocious swag grab bags of random goodies, as opposed to gift boxes that always contain a doll and the button set.) Dolls, the new buttons and the "Two Sides of the Same Coin" charms will be scarce once the Kickstarter ends. Once they sell out, they might not return to the store for a long time. I will have a photo of Autumn and Jacob dolls soon! The prototypes are being worked on! By the way, all Cupcakes of Bliss will ship late August, as that's when I'm meeting with Duae Cat designs to pick up the dolls.

If you are part of the Kickstarter already and want to upgrade, you can do it via add-on. This means you add the total for the item to your pledge (plus shipping, if your're international), then let me know about the add-on when I send out backer surveys once the campaign ends. (You should always review the tiers first, to see if the option you want is available. You can also message me to asking about creating new tiers, or confirming the add-on is ok.)

Add-on options are:
$22 - One extra book. (International orders add $10 for shipping costs)
$30 - Cupcake of Bliss gift box. (International customers add $10 for shipping costs)
$16 - Complete the 'Two Sides' charm set. (Option only for those with an artist edition. International orders add $5 for shipping costs)
$5 - A sketched Precocious cast postcard. (All orders over $80 will get one for free. No extra international shipping charge.)
(If I told you a different international shipping cost add-on earlier, you don't have to update your cost. That was my bad math and I'll take the hit for it.)

If you are not part of the Kickstarter campaign for whatever reason, you need to email me with your requests so I can factor them in to my orders. Even if you've already informed me, a reminder at the end of the campaign will be handy.

Xander

So why was Xander put on a bus? Was I unhappy with his character? Was I looking to shake things up? Is this part of some grand future plan?

Nope. Not really. It's much sillier than that: I don't like his hair.

Xander played a good role in the Precociousverse, but I never did explore it deeply because I didn't find much joy in drawing the guy. He was the last of the original cast to be designed, and I deeply regret not spending more time working on him. I rushed him into a crowd scene early on, and that locked me into his design. (It was a strip that eventually got taken out of the archive, but the damage was done.) I had a loose idea for what I wanted, but my coloring skills were very primitive at the time and I played it too safe. Most of  Xander's colors are cheaply recycled from other characters, and it's pretty lazy to have a character's most defining trait being that his keeps covering up his neck.

While the readers may not mind, *I* mind. I've tweaked my characters' looks slowly as I've gone on, but Xander might need a drastic look change or recoloring to get me comfortable with him. I don't know how I'd fix his look. Never really tried because I knew reader comments over a big look change would be more trouble than it's worth. Instead, I decided to see what would happen if I cut him out.

He's not (necessarily) gone forever. While I don't have any immediate plans for bringing him back, there will be chances for Xander to pop in again. (I'll keep the old design, for continuity's sake.) It's not like he got much time in the spotlight before the chance anyway.

So, yeah. I *like* Xander, and I will miss not being able to use him to his full potential, but let's try something new! No grand plan in in place. (Although I obviously had made up my mind about him months ago.) I'm gonna improvise and see if it works!

Three guesses...

Take a look at my most recent sketchbook page. So which character will I be drawing as I make some comics today? ;-)

Shiny happy people holding hands

Why do I set myself up for this? This Sunday strip is expanding rapidly, now featuring a giant shot of the class - in what should be a full class shot. Oh, SCREW THAT! I have neither the patience nor the skill to draw 15 desks and 13 kids spread among the desks with a few in the center forming a discussion group. WHY DO I SCRIPT THESE THINGS?

So here is my first attempt at a compromise. Forget the damn desks - they pushed them all back so EVERYONE can join in the discussion group. And they sparkle, because in comic visual language, that means EVIL CUTE! (Because Bud and Kaitlyn holding hands isn't enough of a sign that evil reigns.)

Outside, but looking in

Continuing the outsider theme, here's the other half of the ignored part of the class. These sketches are not as good as yesterday's, which is a sign that maybe I'm moving back to work. I don't know why that balance exists, but there you go. Good productivity means bad sketches. Good sketches mean bad productivity.

I also don't feel like dying today, which is a bonus. While I'm not feeling great, this improvement means the culprit probably was stress. A few days of relaxation should help. Well, as much as I *can* relax...

One of these things just doesn't belong!

Let's take a closer look into the class roster posted today. Not only is this the first view of THE OTHERS, but it's in COLOR! What have I learned and what will change?

In the comic, we see 12 kids, with one obscured by Ms. Monster. That must suck for him! Who is it?



It's Xander, of course! He hates being seen as one of the smarties, and it's entirely possible he placed himself there JUST SO no one could see him. What a jerk! He deserves to not be shown!

Aside from it being in character for him to resist appearing with the rest, there was also a question of Xander's coloring. He was conceived of as a white cat, but the thought behind it was racist. The theme is supposed to be CLASSISM! Racism with dogs and cats just makes things confusing! Roddy got SOCKS'D (R.I.P. , former first kitty) *and* IRISH'D to sweep aside the "black cat" thing. Kaitlyn is a Siamese kitty with an Asian last name, putting my race-neutral stance in jeapardy. I'm not changing Kaitlyn, because she's awesome, so I have to be careful of the race card. Xander cannot be the rich white boy!

But he does have money! As a classism-themed strip, this is where I go for gusto! My rich kids are high-end creatures, with Dionne a cheetah-panther mix and Max the alpha wolf. Almost everyone else is a domestic cat, or basic-level dog. The exceptions are Kaitlyn* and Autumn, who are noticeably Siamese and fox, respectively. Both are fairly common in the world, just cooler. Kaitlyn is the leader of the others. Autumn's family is a series of oddball clones; plus she's the outsider in most of the early stories. In both cases, the specialty works.

(*Kaitlyn is actually a Siamese *mix* - meaning she's back to the basic level. Since the reader might not ever be shown this, I'm counting her as special anyway.)

So Xander cannot be white, but he CAN be a high-end cat. He can't be too high-end, however, since he's adopted. (Again, this may never be shown, but the WORD OF GOD says it's true.) The issue tackled is predestination. He was bred to be a rich kid, and he had to discard his birth parents to achieve the goal! So what cat is a known commodity, yet still classy and elite?



How about an Abyssinian?

As the sketch I shared is the same ol' Xander, you can rightly conclude that I haven't actually sat down to alter the character to LOOK Abyssinian yet. And that would be the REAL REASON I hid him behind the teacher!

And now... the rest of the class!

Overall, it drives me nuts how the image looks different on every monitor. I made it using the HDTV, and it looked great on it. On my desktop monitor, it looked darker and muddier. On my laptop, it's clear this screen leans to the blue. Max and Yvette went from gray to PERIWINKLE. Dionne, Bud and Vincent all had their colors annoying altered by the blue love. Kaitlyn also went more gray than maize, but she still looks good on this screen so I don't mind. On the other hand, Jacob was intentionally de-blued when I colored him, so the addition of blue here gives me the color I wanted... meaning he's too light on all other screens. Argh!

Tackling the visible class...

Yvette is jarring blue on this screen, which makes her look even worse. She already suffered from a strange expression ruining he facial balance, a simplified dress that screams "lack of effort" to the heavens and hair that may be too dark. I wanted her to be a real gray tabby, as opposed to Sky's "phoning it in" tabby, but I'm not sure I have it right.

Jacob's problem is that I sucked on his drawing. Hey, it's hard to draw 13/14 figures in one panel and make them all good! Since he looks good on my laptop's screen, he's almost certainly too light or warm-colored on every other screen.

Tiffany is a strange child in many ways. No matter what the screen, he coloring always looks right! Why is my most unreliable child the most reliably colored?

Dionne's color looks dirty on this screen, but nice everywhere else. I don't see enough wrong to merit changing anything.

Roddy is black and white. AWESOME!

You'd think I would have Bud's colors set, considering he's, like, the main figgin' character! Nope, I try new things every time. I want to make his browns a bit darker, but that would color him too close to Suzette. The Bud version shown here is probably the best of him so far.

Kaitlyn's coloring was WAY too monitor-dependent. While I love the drawing, I have to change colors in the future. Her lighter fur needs to be a step or two lighter and should be more yellow. Her hair and extremities color are NOT the same. Either the hair needs to be lightened, the dark needs to be darkened, or both.

Suzette has a good color balance, but I bet I could make her a bit darker if I wanted. Probably not worth changing.

There's a reason Max usually wears a red shit. I gave him blue for balance, and MAN did that screw things up! So blue! I do want his gray to be cooler, but not to such an extreme!

Autumn is notable for being the only BRIGHT character in coloring. Best part, it's not too far away from real foxes. Foxes are unnaturally adorable. Autumn's colors will stay.

Vincent was the big color change of the group. He was conceived as darker, but balance dictated that I needed a lighter character. I wasn't attached to the old look, so I waited to color Vincent last. At first, he was REALLY light, being white with Dionne's fur color for his darks. That failed hard (white backgrounds tend to screw that stuff up) so he fell back to what he is now. Not bad, but I'm not set on him either. Also, no pink shirt in the future. That was purely for color balance.

Quincy avoided the Kaitlyn curse and actually looks pretty good. The two are best friends, and they look like the same coloring with the species and gender switched. I wanted to dimish that gag a bit, since I have no intention of dealing with that concept, so the two got different colors. Quincy always gets the red lightning bolt shirt, although I did downgrade its intensity a bit. The green pants were an experiment, but they look tackily great!

Finally, I deliberately darkened Ms. Monster. She appears to be standing in shadow on my laptop, which I suppose is fine... but it's a mistake. Both her colors were simply darkened, but they NEED to have some intensity added back to them. I would have faired better if I used Dionne's fur color and pants color. Next time, I am trying that!

In the end, it was a time-consuming venture, but ultimately rewarding. I enjoyed paying homage to the Far Side (if you don't know the original strip, you fail at life) and it was fun to toss the other kids out there for once.

The Boys Wanna Fight

But those girls? They appear ti be happy to dance all night.

While they average out to a combative group (Bud, Roddy, Quincy, Xander = Fight. Jacob = Toss Up. Vincent = Space Cadet. Max = Filthy Pacifist.) the title is just me reaching for a song with "boys" in it to match the girls post below. Since I have been on a Garbage binge today, it was all too easy. Note to world: Version 2.0 is one of the best albums EVER!

The boys of the Poppinstock Academy 4th and 5th grade class, clockwise from top left: Bud Oven, Roddy Finnegan, Xander Upton, Jacob Linkletter, Vincent Iddenstein, Quincy Wozwax, Max Zeit.

Unlike the girls post, this was not an inspirational page where everything went right. Instead, my sketching has been rather icky the past few days, so I had to cherry pick. Xander and Vincent are OK (both sketches done the same night as the girls post, of course) and Bud and Jacob are within the standard deviation; but I'm unhappy with the other three. For one, Roddy is rarely that pleasant. I went through a day where I drew all my characters chubby for some damn reason, and this Roddy was the only one thin enough to scan. Quincy is *almost* there, but his nose should be shifted more to the right. He's a German shepherd but the nose placement makes him look somewhat feline. For Max, star of the current strips in production, I had tons of better sketches for him due to relevance. This one is rather weak, but the others were too good to fit in with the rest of this wonky crowd.

One thing I tried to do with this crew is line up the kids according to height. This mandated the separation of doggies from kitties due to ear discrepency. (It also meant using photoshop to shorten some sketches.) Bud's Scottish fold ears means he'll be the shortest no matter what, even though body-wise he's taller than both Jacob and Vincent. Roddy and Xander are average height for cartoon kitties, whatever that may be. On the doggie side, Max should be the clear tall one. Quincy is a bit too tall, but I was too lazy to fix it. Jacob and Vincent are both tiny (they're 9, while the rest are 10) with Vincent coming in as the shortest in body. Luckily for Vincent, he is a fluffy dude and his ears give him a boost.

Yes, this post is filler done only to keep the streak going. That is, unless you really wanted to know about cartoon animal height. If so, I guess it was fascinating.

Lucky number 13

13! 13! 13! Yes, I am re-watching Rome!

Yes, September is clearly the month of cursing, crying and bad omens.

Presenting, for the first time ever, Xander Upton: The 13th member of our class o' smarts.

His last name is no coincidence. Xander is not only emotionally distant, but he lives the farthest away as well! Even so, it's just not enough for him. Xander does not see his brain as an asset. By attending the Poppinstock Academy, he is kept away from social circle back home.

And don't you dare ask him to make friends with his fellow...NERDS! Xander is preppy snot through and through and wants as little to do with his classmates as possible. He caucuses with the outsider crew when push comes to shove, but that's it. Like the rest, he's an elitist...but not in the zesty way. Xander is a fiscal elitist - part of the country club set. My darling hellions believe in elitism through quality - a meritocracy! It's the same rudeness to others, but this way it's justified!

I've scribbled several Xanders over time, but this was the first I liked enough to scan. I think the preppy, shirt-tied-around-the-neck look won me over. Also, the slicked-back hair is a lot less forgiving to draw that my usual floppy or fluffy hairstyles. His normal look is not so wide-eyed; instead, his eyelids tend to sit at an unamused half mast. But that's not as cute!

Don't expect Xander to do anything but sit unhappily in the background for a long time. Even when he's discussed (which is rarely) he doesn't speak. He just glares. Then he leaves as soon as he possibly can.