Color means always having to say you're sorry

So now that I am playing with color, I got the idea of redoing the cast page with COLOR pictures! To do this, I'd need to make a new inked drawing of each character. That's easy enough, right? After all, I've only drawn some of these kids THOUSANDS OF TIMES!

Well, here's the thing. If you look over every strip, you know what my characters look like. If you look at each individual drawing, you'll see *something* slightly-to-majorly wrong with the drawing. All the drawings average out to the perfect character... but choosing one to stand alone as THE character is maddening. It's a lot of pressure to make that perfect drawing - that both captures the character's personality AND takes well to coloring - especially when I am still rapidly improving in my execution.

Anyway, I decided to ignore updating cast/banner graphics for now and just colorize the one Suzette drawing I had around that hadn't been scanned yet. Wheeee.

We're COMPATIBLE SPECIES!

Technically, that is true. But really, it's a "same planet; different worlds" sort of thing. What I like about the supporting cast of Precocious is that each is designed as a foil to my susceptible main characters. (Tiffany, being invulnerable due to spaciness, is "countered" by Roddy, a general irritant.)



Autumn is the bad kind of gamer - one who uses play to determine status. Each match is life or death because honor and social standing is at stake! She's been spoiled by a former life in which she dined on the weak and normal of a public school system. Now that she's among peers, it's natural that she'll test them to see where she stands.

Unfortunately for Autumn, she's the big loser in all of the intro arcs. The defeat that smarts the most is the one to Max. How can you compete with a person whose personality is so kind and innocent that competition means nothing to him? Autumn cannot comprehend how a person with Max's power - he has money, brains and superior strength - would never use it to push others around. Max thinks of Autumn as a good friend. Just like Ignatz throwing Bricks at Krazy Kat, Max's obliviousness only serves to make Autumn try harder to get him.



Bud has a nice thing going in Sapphire Lake. He's among like-minded jerks. They fight and war and joke about, but all do it with a spirit of fun! They can form all the supervillain unions they want, but in the end they're just playful in a convincing mean mask.

This is where Dionne comes in. She's *so* much better at the evil game than the rest of them, and she mops the floor with kids whenever she comes around. Bud, who is used to being the center and having control over his universe, is completely muted by the stronger predator. By the end of his visit to Dionne's in the pilot arc, Bud's reduced to the foolish straight man character. Later on, when he's about to lose the war before it begins, Dionne is the one that taunts him. Of course, just like with Autumn and Max, there is also a bit of attraction here. Unlike Autumn and Max, who are completely different, Bud and Dionne's connection is based on their similarities. One's greatest foe can be a great ally as well. (If you survive the partnership.)

The reason this one is holiday themed is because I decided to draw Bud wearing a coat instead of usual vest. Well, 'tis the season! I had an excuse to give Bud a hat *and* it allowed me to put Dionne in an ironic angel outfit!



Jacob, the pushover of the group, is the natural prey of Suzette, whose powerless feeling led her dominate whenever she gets the opportunity. All her perceived oppression is easily transferred to the hapless sidekick. Suzette is more than happy to beat up on someone her own size. Jacob is too nice (chivalrous?) to put up a fight. All the characters lead Jacob into doom, but Suzette does so with the most violence! Originally, the drawing was going to be an appropriate pose of Suzette dragging Jacob off someplace, but that proved too hard to draw so Suzette's hand was erased from Jacob's elbow. Instead of changing it to Suzette dragging Jacob on a leash, I went with the cop-out and mimicked the Bud/Dionne drawing.

If you're looking at all the images, you can see the battle I wage with cuteness proportions. Autumn and Max are a decent shape for now. Bud and Dionne resemble my former ways of drawing taller characters. (I shouldn't say "former," since it's more like the current habit I am trying to break - and it's still my default if I don't pay attention.) Jacob and Suzette are the Peanuts-ish big head approach I am trying to adopt - although maybe not that severe. Proportion is *my* nemesis.

The Blue Period

With one sketchbook done, it's time to christen the new one!

Ok, so maybe it's not "new" new. The two Bud sketches were done on the 1st when I was trapped here and my sketchbook as in DC. As my trusty pencil was also in DC, the only mechanical pencil around was the one with the dark blue lead - a type I tried by soon found utterly unscannable. Then pencil sat around just in case and I figured it might be fun to make page one a blue affair.

The official start of the new sketchbook came with the Roddy army, done last night and today. Roddy is kinda hard to draw, since getting him slightly off makes him look like a Jacob/Max hybrid... which is bad news, since Roddy is a kitty. That's the consequence of the similar fluffpoints hairstyle. (I toyed with changing it up, but I'm sticking with the slightly-muted Jacob pattern at the moment.) I'm still scared to death of inking him regularly. I'll have to be inventive.

The shaded Roddy was just for style and practice. Here's the sketch all alone:

Lessons learned via aftermath

I decided to try another colored pencil sketch and the character of the day was the dreaded teacher, Bette Monster! Mwa ha ha!

This a rare casual shot. As we all know, seeing one's teacher out in the wild is a frightening experience. The whole authoritarian mystique is destroyed. Bette sometimes shows up at the Et house to hang out. The conflict has clearly left her psyche shattered.

In a class of genius psychopaths, Bette has learned the best she can do is let the kids go and try to nudge them in the right direction. Direct opposition results in war wounds. Using their personalities against them: Sadistically satisfying!

This was the first attempt at coloring, and only when I finished the drawing did I look up what collies actually look like. I have the coloring wrong! My god, if we can't trust walking, talking, clothed cartoon animals to have natural coloring... what can we believe in?

Just as I simplified my calico (Tiffany) and tabby (Sky), I'm going to have to let my inappropriate collie coloring to stand. That, or I can just not do my typical hatching in drawings to indicate shading in Bette. I guess we'll find out when I get to the comics.

My god, what have I done!?

The thing about designing unique characters with their own set of physical quirks is that, when one is not paying attention, doodles end up being some unfortunate hybrid that don't match anyone!

It's all about the fluffiness! My cartoon characters all have some sort of fluffiness represented in their cheeks. Some fluff points are rounded, some are sharp. If I'm not sketching with any purpose, I let the pencil decide what I'll do. I'll draw the basics of a face and then decide which character is being drawn. Buuuut, the problem with lazy drawing is muscle memory seems to even things out and make me draw a face that is between the pointy and rounded. It doesn't match up well with anyone, so I either have to force it to be someone, use the eraser to correct the sketch to death or draw a random character.

This sketch went wrong early. It clearly wasn't a Bud, and the face was too masculine to be turned into Tiffany... so I decided to draw the "missing link" character between the two families. Shortly after I started I realized the missing link is not supposed to look like the kids, but like their FATHERS. D'oh. So, hey, fuck it, LET'S MAKE A CREEPY HYBRID OF MY MAIN CHARACTERS! It's highly disturbing.

To blather on, let me explain the subtleties of cheek fluff:

The general rule is kitty cheeks are rounded and doggy cheeks are pointy. It's the degree of the point that subtly differentiates between the characters.

Bud: His cheeks are the most obvious, as they are very round. The fluff *should* point down.

Autumn: Her cheeks are pointy and wider. They can droop a bit depending on her mood, but the normally pointy personality means normally pointy cheeks. Over time, I've scaled her cheeks back for cuteness, but we'll see how that plays.

Jacob: In theory his cheeks are the same as Autumn's, but his varies far more often. This is partly because it's somewhat easy to force my accidental hybrids into Jacobs, and partly because Jacob's impressionable nature softens his facial features.

Tiffany: This is probably impossible for anyone but be to notice, but Tiffany's cheeks and jaws are drawn with a different motion than the rest. In theory, she is supposed to have an angular jaw with smaller-than-average round points. In practice, they look like every other kitty's cheeks. Both lack of technique and affinity for cuteness bring her more into the norm. This does explain why I keep screwing up Tiff's jawline, at least.

Suzette: Of all the doggies, her cheeks are the most rounded. The motions for the basics of Suzette's face closely resemble Bud's. Suzette is also a good default for when I screw up a face, since the bangs and ears override everything.

Dionne: Her face should be halfway between Bud and Suzette. Since I need more cheek space for spots, the roundness helps.

Max: His cheeks should have Autumn's width and Jacob's slight rounding. I should note here that all my best Max drawings are accidental and that it's very hard for me to draw him on cue.

Roddy: Initially, the hybrid cheeks were meant for Roddy, but I'm starting to sour on it. If I'm not careful, Roddy's face looks fat because when a black outline is filled with black it stops being an outline and just becomes thickness. I'm trying to get around this by drawing him with the Tiffany technique. I really won't know what works best until I've put him down in ink a few more times.

If you're still reading at this point, I'm impressed. I find it fascinating that so much thought was put into what are nearly imperceptible variations in features - but this might only because I find *myself* so fascinating.

Enter... THE MOTHERS!

I am at the point in the first storyline where the other moms appear. (Well, not Bud's mom.... she'll be here for the holidays, though!)

As any Precocious scholar can see, I have been deliberately trying to make my kids shorter and cuter. This small change is positive for the strip - the kid's arms can't reach the top of their heads, but the shortness allows for more adorable dialog - but it also means rethinking the look of the parents. For Sky, the change is beneficial because I get more face space for her cranial quirks. For Ivy... the bigger head makes he look really young. One think I'm trying to get around this is giving the adult women the almond eyes. It works when I do it right...but I rarely do it right. The other is to make the eyes proportionally smaller on the adults. This means I must counter all the muscle memory I build up - but correcting it is far easier when drawing the strip than with even-erasing-shows-up-when-scanned sketches. Finally, I could just alter the character design to suit the latest style.

Is it time to rethink Ivy's hair draping over her face? Maybe try shorter bangs? Maybe shrink the ears to a more natural size? Maybe stop worrying over a character who is obviously Autumn's mother? (In fact, Autumn looking like Ivy's mini-me is a key point in many stories and somewhat of a go-to gag.) In conclusion, I need to stop worrying and enjoy the cute.

(I may do a Sky-centric update tomorrow. Ivy got the nod today because I could just scan the sketchbook page I filled with her. Today, laziness won.)

Did you get my best side?

So I've actually started working on my comic again. Shocker, I know. What thwarted me this time was trying to draw Dionne (and, to a lesser extent, Tiffany) in profile facing left. For some reason I just couldn't get her to look right!

Flipping through my sketchbook, the vast majority of my left-looking drawings all feature a three-quarter pose at most. True profiles are few and far between. And all but one were doggy characters. (It's not surprising Bud is the exception, as he is the most drawn character and thus gets to try more poses.) Weird.

Edit: My own blog defies me, as the sketchbook page I posed a while back contains a left-looking Tiffany I missed - drawn only because she was looking left in the comic I was working out, which is the same comic I mentioned struggling with today. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy or something! Um. SO TWO KITTIES! That's it!

I guess it has to do being left handed. I naturally draw my characters looking right since the flow of drawing fits the hand position. I know back when I did the very first Precocious promo pic I drew a great Bud looking right, but Autumn was a disaster. I finally had to draw her looking right and reverse the image in Photoshop.

Reversing characters doesn't always work, either. What looks so natural can become bizarre when flipped. How irritatingly quirky.

With sketching, my tendency to draw characters facing one direction is all well and good - but the actual comic features characters, y'know, talking to each other. That means lots of folk looking left. Uh oh. Some of them are even kitties! THAT'S BAD NEWS! (My guess is that kitties have more subtle features with the curves of their heads while doggie muzzles and fluffy cheeks tend to point strait out.)

So I went through my sketchbook counting figures facing left. Most were Jacob and Suzette. Jacob, being who he is, tends to be the character reacting to the more aggressive characters, so he appears more on the right side of panels. Suzette is easy to draw. The sketchbook is littered with aborted Autumn sketches, all given up when it came to drawing her hair.

What's pictured in this post is the one left-looking Bud in the book along with the better of the two fully-drawn Autumns. To show the crazy mirror effect works both ways, I flipped the image. Autumn especially looks distorted when facing right.

Oh well. It's just another hidden obstacle that keeps me from being a real cartoonist. Now that I recognize the problem, I've got to spend time trying to correct it in my sketchbook. This will not be fun.

The joy of belt sanders?

Here's an almost finished Maggie for ya! She needs some touch-ups in the skin department, but otherwise things are going well. The painting is not exactly depicting the canonical Maggie, but that's a good thing as the story Maggie isn't nearly as cute. Yes, friends, I sanded down the Bai Ling "character" blockheaded and sharp features a bit too much. She also got fuller lips due to a gruesome painting accident in which I unknowingly nicked the black paint when I thought I only head maroon. The only solution was to give her a fuller, more seductive pout. Oh noes! Who would ever want to buy a cute chick painting? Answer: Still no one. :'-(

As always, the pic isn't the best due to crappy lighting, but you'll have to deal.

You can't handle the hotness!

If the video was not clear: I am wondering if the video I am trying to post is working. Is it working? IS IT WORK-

GODDAMMIT, webcam! Or unreliable hijacked internet connection. Or blogger. Or me. Whatever. Fail all around.

Anyway, I remembered I have a webcam on my laptop. What's more obnoxious than a blog? A VLOG! Total douche: Blogging with vlogs! (Or, I can try to take grainy still shots...)

Oh, I am *so* going to do a self-important video about my sketchbook in badly out of sync audio now. It's why my friends invite me to parties with their other friends. MY PERSONALITY IS ADORABLE!

One bonus: My voice doesn't sound nearly as annoying on video as it does in my head.

Two bonus: Here's an ultra-sexy and not-at-all-psychotic still taken from the webcam:

Such commitment I have to my public

Hey, Dana! Whaddup?

So there's an option on this thing to set a post date and time. Since I'll be out of town without the internet, how can I meet my goal of one worthless post per day(-ish)? Let's see if this feature is purely cosmetic or not!

The sketches I'm sharing are for an idea for a Halloween strip, in which the kids swap their trademark looks. The best Halloween costumes are so in-jokey that those not in the know think you are either a fool or are not costumed at all!

Up first is the boys trading off. Who would think the swapping of hair styles would cause such massive cognitive dissonance. Bud's hair spiked and Jacob's part is just... unnatural!



Not pictured: The paintbrush my blank canvas characters used to paint my spotted/blotched/freckled characters' conspicuous traits.

Time to hit the "publish post" button and see when this thing appears. It it pops up tonight... eh, fuck it.

Nothin' says Luvin' ...

...like Joe and Sydney Oven!



Why do I enjoy drawing characters who rarely appear in the comic? Alright, so I only enjoy drawing Sydney, but I need practice on Joseph. As I've mentioned before, it's far easier to draw chicks. A few curves and eyelashes and everyone knows it's a babe. For dudes, I have no easy shortcuts. Joseph is even scarier - he's all big and burly! How do I draw furry muscles? At this point... Popeye arms?

While I like these sketches, there is a major flaw with 'em: They look waaaay too young. It's the big, adorable eyes. Both these darlings are over 40, and I am not getting that across at this point. So...uh...this is a portrait of the two from when Bud was just a baby? If Precocious starts with Lost-style flashbacks, I'm set!

Seriously, I need to control my eyes when I draw parents. A subtle shift in eye size makes all the difference. It requires finesse and control...something I lack, considering I very rarely sketch the parents. Oh well, maybe it's good that their arc had to be cut. It takes place in August, so that ship has sailed. I'll have to do it and insert it into the storyline at a later date, I guess. This is what I get for having a breakdown and losing three months of work. The first arc (which I am not even halfway through drawing) takes place in July. The second arc takes place in August. The regularly-updating strip was supposed to begin...uh...in three days. Yeah, I'm missing that deadline. My kids are going back to school starting in October, I guess. Whatever. I am numbering my comics sequentially and not by date. I'll retcon when the time comes to post things.

Once more unto the breach

The first page of the new sketchbook is done. The cherry is popped. It is defiled by my pencil. No self-respecting collection of paper will have her now. Mwa ha ha ha.



There's nothing truly special about this page, but any artist would know you don't want to waste page 1 on something...experimental. You experiment in sketchbooks so you can keep your failures HIDDEN - who wants to be reminded of the sucking every time the book is opened?

Sure, I played it safe, but at least it's not *too* painful. Hey, even if the page is unremarkable, I still know what book it is because I wrote the date on the page! (What an auspicious day!) It only took me, uh, four years before I took my professor's advice to start dating my sketchbooks... even if I still only note the dates the book were started and finished.

My sketchbook etiquette overall is far improved. Last night I did an inventory: 17 sketchbooks completed in this modern era. I thought it would be more, but then I realized I had drawn on the front and back of pages for the first dozen books. (Revisionist history: I am now working on skethcbook #30!) This is an artist no-no - it's very hard to scan pages when they have the impressions of the next page on them. When I was still developing my style, this was helpful. It was like a slash and burn effort, obliterating my early work as I moved forward. Now, it would just be sloppy. It's still best to scan pages fresh, as graphite is a smudgy thing. This is such an uninteresting paragraph to anyone but me, but I made you read it anyway. Sucker.

Aaaannnnnddd... since I'm covering sketchbook pages, I would like to revisit one I posted for the heck of it a while back. Mostly I want to put proper labels in the post so someone could do a character search on this blog and find the image. Hey, I was on fire that day! Let the people know my awesomeness!



The mission of the day this page was created was to go Charlie Brown on my characters: BIG HONKING HEADS! My character proportions are already wildly inconsistent, so no one would know I did it on purpose. Now, if you're looking at the sketches and thinking, "their heads don't look so huge to me," that's the POINT! It ups the cute factor if done right. It's creepy as fuck if done wrong. Lord, I hope these kids are cute. The parents, I admit, are bit much, but it was fun to experiment.

The strip that broke my brain

Since my work area is currently plunged into darkness, I'm going to combat the situation with something that won't solve anything: WORDS! (And, later, sketches!)

There was a reason the first batch of Precocious strips ended right before things got complex. Not only was I about to take on complex perspective, but the hard-to-draw Dionne was about to take center stage. When it came time to rise to the occasion, I instead ran and hid in my sketchbook. Awesome.

During the gap caused by fear, I took time to reevaluate the whole of the first storyline. While I'm still very proud of it, I wasn't satisfied with the transition between the recruitment of Suzette and the soliciting of Dionne. Originally, after Suzette signed up and I would cut to Bud and Jacob peering out a window at the scene, alarmed to see the enemy's numbers growing. It was fine, I guess, but it felt like it came out of nowhere. *I* may know Jacob's house is located in the center of the neighborhood, but a reader doesn't find that out until later on. (Yes, since this storyline is meant to establish the characters and settings, there is a strip devoted to where everyone lives in the neighborhood. I am awesome like that.) Abruptly showing the boys in a house without any establishment seemed like lazy writing. To add to the confusion, Jacob's mother pops up for one line later on in the story without any prior introduction. It became clear to me: I needed to add in a strip to establish Jacob's house.

The timing wasn't going to be a problem. The new strip would appear before the girl's recruitment drive, establishing that the boys were watching Autumn's effort with puzzled curiosity. By introducing Jacob's mother at the same time, not only do we establish the house as Jacob's, but we know who she is when she leans out her window later to ask why Autumn is trampling her petunias. ("Collateral damage, ma'am!") Even better: By having the eternal optimist that is Deirdre Linkletter point out that the neighborhood is full of children - they're just not students of the Poppinstock Academy - I get to reinforce the insular and elitist nature of my children. Perfect!

Here is where my brain exploded. How the heck do I cram all this into four panels? We need the establishing dialog to cover all the pertinent points, but no so much it obscures the complex perspectives this strip requires. Draft after draft went by where something was just missing. I debating splitting the topic into two strips, but there really was just one worthy punchline. The current version works well enough, but it's best told with five or six panels. Too much for one strip; too little for two. I think I can do it, but it requires masterful use of space and perspective. So, yeah, a master cartoonist could pull this off. I am decidedly a n00b here.

Here's the current incarnation:

Panel 1:
(Jacob and Bud peer out a window in Jacob's house)
Jacob: I'm confused.
Bud: What are those girls doing?
Deirdre (entering): What's wrong, boys?

Panel 2:
(The boys and Deirdre look through the window to see the girls in the foreground working on the booth.)
Jacob: They've set up a booth, mom!
Bud: There's no one to recruit here!
Deirdre: Actually, the neighborhood is full of children your age.

Panel 3:
(Back to the interior of Jacob's house)
Deirdre: Just because they don't go to your school doesn't, heh, mean they don't exist!
(Bud and Jacob give her a blank stare)

Panel 4:
Bud (turning back to the window): What are those girls doing?
Jacob: There's no one to recruit here!

Ok, it's not the strongest of strips, but it's vital connective tissue. I *should* just plow through and get it done, but the perfectionist in me is both frightened of failure and unsatisfied that I couldn't solve my problems with more grace.

My solution to everything is MORE SKETCHING and MORE PRACTICE - which is great but also means NO RESULTS! Below I share a bit of the sketchbook effort to solve my brain rot.



This is a rough of how the first panel will look. This is doable - speech bubbles and character heights align perfectly.



This sketchbook page chronicles a few failed attempts. Panel two is friggin' complex and I can't even set up my characters in their window yet. The stare down - which *should* be its own panel, but can't for space reason - shows how I still lack a full handling on my characters' proportions. Bud's feet appear while Deirdre's body continues. That, frankly, will not fly. Only time will fix that problem, but that is just not soon enough for me! PRACTICE IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE PERFECT! All I'm doing now is unlocking more and more ways to vary how my characters look, thus muddling the issue.

Let me also point out that I draw one lousy water balloon, which is also a bad sign as this storyline revolves around a water balloon fight.

I know what you're thinking. Filtering out the insults about my character, you're wondering why I don't just skip the strip and move on to easier tasks. Well...

1. It's not like the layout is getting any easier. I've been quite ambitious with my design.
2. Since I'm still relatively early on in development, my drawing technique is still changing with alarming frequency. It's been a few months since I last drew a strip already, should I press on and come back later, the stylistic evolution would be alarming clear. When one works with cartoon animals, one should avoid doing something that will jar a reader out of their suspension of disbelief.
3. I'm crazy. Rationality has no impact on me!

There. Another inspirational post from me. YEEHAW!

A Bud for all seasons

When I talk about how I'm still inconsistent with character proportions, this is what I mean. (Click the image to get the full Bud experience, of course.) Like, well, ALL early comic strips, this is something that won't be standardized for quite some time.

I'm not even sure yet which Bud is the best Bud. The one on the right is EXTREMELY adorable - so much that it melts my cold, shriveled heart - but once I reach that range things can easily fly out of, uh, proportion. (I didn't scan the extreme hyper-cephalic Bud I drew once, as it scares even me.)

Another thing that messes with proportion is the size of the drawing. The second from the right is an example of a smaller drawing - which is cute and compressed. The larger the sketch, the longer (or wider) the sketch can get. All the sketches (except the one noted) are between 2.5 and 3 inches tall, if that is enlightening.

Sure, I can get annoyed that my cuteness is not consistent between characters... OR, I can look at every sketch as a happy surprise!

IT'S OPTIMISM, PEOPLE!

*sob*