Praising the Guest Artists!

I really hope everyone enjoyed diving into the multiverse again. Not only are these fun stories for me to write, but it's an amazing feeling to know some of the best people out there are willing to lend their time to make this concept work. Creating guest content is such a struggle - not just in the effort, but because artists are so nervous about trying to get the look/tone right. Some artists draw different styles of comics. Some draw different styles of characters. Some are just learning the ways of art. It's a huge undertaking, and everyone took an unreasonable challenge and made something spectacular. This is why you need to go tell them how much you appreciate them!  (Read the post below for more of my thoughts on that.)

The rundown:

Tourism Ads/Spaceverse - Erik Amill
-Erik draws the monsterliciously fun comic Biff the Vampire. You can sent him positive vibes over at his Twitter or Tumblr account. If you were at ConnectiCon last year, he was the poor soul I sucked into being my table servant! (Well, one of them. Hi, James!)

Mirror Universe/Evil Max - Rachel Edwards
- Since this project asked for a lot of work, I only went to one of my amazing crop of reader artists. I chose Rachel because I felt bad that her wonderful Halloween contest work didn't earn a prize, and because I've watcher her grow as an artist over the years. That's so special! You can follow her and send some cheer at her DeviantArt page.

Super Weird Crazy/Beyond Belief - Matthew Dawson
- Matthew is one who is well known for saving my bacon over and over. I wouldn't have survived without him. He's one of the most talented artists I know, and mind dreams up exceedingly clever things! Thanks to his excellent work in the first universe jumping story, I was inspired to re-use the artist so I could pull out further and show the hidden quirks. Follow him on Twitter and Tumblr!

The Kindest Tiffany of All/Impolite Conquering - Becca Hillburn
- If you're coming to Furry Weekend Atlanta this weekend, she'll be with me, so thank her in person!  Becca is one of the hardest-working and most benevolent artists out there. Not only is she working on family-friendly watercolor comics  - which is cartooning on HARD MODE - but she runs an art/resource blog with tips and essays for developing artists. She does so many things to make other artists lives easier. She is on Twitter, and her Tumblr is a must follow!

Becca gets a second paragraph, because she turn her guest comics into a learning experience and shared photos of the special process she used! It's really spectacular. See the making of "The Kindest Tiffany of All" and "Impolite Conquering" by clicking those links. Be amazed, and be sure to let her know how impressive she is.

The Weirdest Universe Yet/Attack of the Clones - Carl Sjostrand
- If you've been paying attention, Carl and I have jokingly crossed over with comics before. (You have yet to see what I have planned for all the random Gingerfoxes, by the way.) It's some weird similar-but-not-actually-them thing going on with our character appropriation, and because if that I *had* to make one Precocious universe one that is eerily similar to (but not actually) Carl's comic, Ginger's Bread.  Ginger is recently back from hiatus, so now's a great time to catch up and get on board. If you want to help Carl out, he does have a Patreon campaign going. Also follow him on Twitter and Tumblr.

Have Cola, Will Travel - Veronica Vera
- I know how busy Veronica is with her comic, Bittersweet Candy Bowl, so I tried to give her the simple one-shot transition page. BUT, I was so sick and incoherent when I sent her the script, she went and made something much more elaborate. Sucks to be her, but I WIN! (I mean, WE ALL WIN!) You can find her on Twitter and Tumblr and lots of other places if you click around the links on her site!

Polite Conquering - Mandy Seley
- Her reward for being such a clever and skillful artist is that we keep crashing her comic's website!  Fixes are underway, so go read Curtailed and enjoy every page of it! I am forever appreciative of Mandy for her friendship and her positive influence - I've been changing I draw tails because her art has inspired me! Like everyone else, you definitely should give her a follow and shout out on Twitter and Tumblr.

Cartooning is hard work, and cartooning with someone else's character is a big challenge. Everyone brought their A game and impressed me so much. When I was at my worst, they helped me put out my best! Bless them, every one!

What might have happened

When you write a story - especially a long on like the Birthday Bashing arc - some ideas change dramatically from inception to execution, and a good number of thoughts end up on the cutting room floor.

When writing the water balloon confrontation, I took it through many incarnations before it hit its final form. At one point Suzette was the betrayer. (Or, rather, suddenly a "conscientious objector.") At another, Dionne tried to betray so much she asked for her own balloon to soak Autumn with - which promptly got HER soaked by the males, who weren't buying it. (Autumn was saved!) Finally, I decided to let Autumn have it again - since that seems to be how all gender wars end up.

Because I'm trying to streamline things to finish up the story, I tend to cut a lot of the non-essential connective tissue. The above scene is one of the many possible transition strips between the betrayal and Autumn's soaking. It's not canon, just a possibility, but do note how in the strip before (strip #964) Dionne and Suzette are positioned behind the two males most likely to chicken out. So much could have happened!

Alternate endings!

(click image to embigginate)

Mushroom cloud not your cup of tea? Have a look at the other possible endings to today's strip that were scripted. All are perfectly valid, so choose whatever ending your desire for the fuse tale... and imagine what might have been if you all had donated faster. ;-)

ONLY ONE DAY HAS PASSED!

I don't care what the calendar says! All that time simply does not count. It has only been one functional day for me. Everything else was a non-canon blur.

It's been a rough week or so. My sleep schedule went totally out of whack. I'd be up 30 hours, down 12 hour, up 24 hours, down 18 hours and COMPLETELY WIPED OUT the whole time. I haven't had a restful night of sleep yet this month. I hope to correct that tonight. If I was so tired I couldn't be productive, then that day didn't count. That week. That whatever. Anyway I hope the worst is over. At least the worst sleep-wise.

Now it's time to play catch-up. For the painting, I am now at the worst stage: Getting the final sketch on the canvas. I can break out the projector, but it's still a crazy hassle to get it PERFECT. And I demand perfection. That stunned Autumn sketch is going to cause some more problems before it's done. It's a long-term project, so I'm taking my time to get it right.

I'm still open for business with other commissions, if you'd like to support your local starving cartoonist. Despite disappearing for a while, I *do* stick to deadlines when it's important!

On the comic front, things are still good - so no panic is needed. I'm still mulling over the next story arc, but I think you guys needed some gag-a-day refreshers anyway. Copper Road is going to remain on hiatus while I burn off all my deleted scene incentives. Still gotta get my brain back in CR mode for scripting, but I'm not worrying about it yet. From where I see it, Precocious is the one that matters. Everyone else is a bonus, so I won't cry if I miss a vote incentive or fail to blog for a few days. The goal is to have good stuff when I present it!

OK, enough talking about work. It's time to actually DO the work. That pile of comics isn't going to ink itself! (Oh, but I wish it would...)

Closing out the storyline

Yes, folks, the current Precocious storyline is coming to an end! Can you believe this thing has been going on longer than seven weeks? Wow. It's going to come out *just* short of Gender Wars as the longest Precocious storyline, but I don't feel like stretching it out any longer to grab that title. I love you, peanut butter politics, but I won't drag this out.

Since I want to finish this up on Sunday - because the next storyline needs a Monday start - that means cutting a little bit of excess from the script. One deleted strip was converted into this weeks vote incentive. (Once you read it, you can see it was cut for a reaso - but, hey, it's still a bonus strip!) This image you see here was a punchline in search of a set-up. I never found a set-up that worked, so to the cutting room floor you go! You can see what replaced this strip in tomorrow's Precocious update.

The brain has experienced a problem and needs to shut down

You know, I can't even remember anymore WHAT I've been working on with web design, all I know is that this idea came to me at one point in the process. The thing about web design is that you shouldn't notice it. Good design feels natural. Problem is, every new feature added is another chance to make things clunky. Also, the more you do, the more improvements you see that need to be made. I'm doing the best I can, but it melts the brain.

As of now, I am not suicidally enraged by web design, but that may be due to repressed memories. The biggest annoyance I'm dealing with is that web design is TIME CONSUMING. I have drawing and coloring to do, dammit!

Fight the Power!

Man, I totally lost track of time today. I got caught up in a non-art project and that's a whole day...wasted? I don't even know anymore. Anyway, this is a joke sketch I drew of angry black(ish) cat that would ruin all things in the world should be in be in-canon. I mean, what would her name even be... Foxy Kitty? THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!

This is the picture

The post title is a Peter Gabriel song, for those unhip to the awesome.

I've been churning away at the comic in between my online Precocious promotional flailing. The strip I just did was scripted to have Autumn showing her parents Polaroid shots of other characters. Well, I couldn't just make them static shots! I had waaaay too much fun with them, so I had to make more!

This one is a bit cheesy, down to the weaksauce caption, but it was lovely distraction. Also, a snapshot motif would totally make a good Precocious book cover.

Edit: I totally forgot to give Bud his freckles. D'oh.

That teenage feeling

You know those sketches withheld two days ago? The ones I thought had the potential to destroy ones faith in a just and loving universe? Well, I redrew them... and I'm still rather uncomfortable with the concept. BUT, this is one of those cliches. If you have a comic with kids, you have to draw them all grown up. So, I present to you... PROM-AGED GENIUSES!

This is all TOTALLY non-canon, of course...



So here we have our heroes... fairly unravaged by age. It's not like I could augment Autumn much, since the joke is that she'll grow up to look EXACTLY like her mother. Autumn's distinguishing characteristic in her family is her strong "bends like copper wire" hair. At 18, she likely wants to restrain that a bit - resulting in a bulky Tiffany-esque braid.

Bud's sketch here isn't as good as the first one I did. But that one wasn't as large, so I had to go with this. The premise here is that, although he's identified as the independent character formed by an absence of parental supervision, he cannot escape genetics. He's hit a growth spurt, making him the tallest of the six pictured here, and he might just end up closer to his daddy's size than anyone could expect. (At this point, my 5'11" self would like to give those doctors, who said I'd never top 5'7" because I was too tiny as a kid, a hearty IN YOUR FACE!) The earlier aged Bud sketch gave him a more teen-friendly hairstyle and it had more of the "maturing male cat" feel to it. (In a non-creepy fashion.) It was already obvious Bud's hair and ears come from his mommy, but the secret specter that haunts him now is her love of video games! Bud fought against it all his life, but that's her old DS he's playing! Mwa ha ha!



Now things get slightly odd. Roddy's no surprise, since he appears to have just grown in size and not matured in personal style at all. How, uh, creative of me. No, his distinguishing look here is his football uniform and clipboard in hand. Anyone who knows the game knows what that means: Backup quarterback! On a likely-weak high school team! Oh, destiny!

Jacob. Oh my. The poor child has finally snapped and gone... emo? There was a time when "I live in a spiritual vacuum" was a punchline and not a tedious and oft-repeated conversation filler/killer. His outfit is meant to look like a hybrid between militant religious garb... and a fast food restaurant uniform. Is there no better symbol for high school "philosophers"?



And here I am both amused and disturbed. I enjoy the neckline reversal on display here. Dionne now wears the bell collar and Suzette sports the heart on her... uh... suddenly ample chest. (You are allowed to shudder here.) Yes, the joke here is that Suzette grew up to be tall, shapely and sexy... SO FUCK FEMINISM! Everyone pays attention to her now! The joke is funny enough to me that I went ahead and drew cleavage on a character normally drawn as a 9-year-old. Oh yeah, she's only 17 here; so if you like the sketch for any reason other than humor, that's one more personal problem you can add to the list.

On the other side, Dionne hasn't taken up the militant mantle. I think she wears the bell just to point out the Suzettian Hypocrisy. Otherwise, I gotta admit the 18-year-old Dionne turned out to be extremely adorable. This is the sketch that made me toss aside a loss of youthful magic and go ahead with the sharing.

So where are Tiffany and Max? For Max, I ran out of sketchbook space. (Unfortunately, drawing older Suzette took multiple tries.) Also, Max isn't a character likely to change over time. He'd still be bigger than the rest, just with more adult proportions. Ooh! For Tiffany, I know her future fate in this decidedly non-canon world... and I'm not telling! It's something so funny that I won't let myself treat this post as a purge... instead there's a VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE this could just be a staging area. (If my strip has a long run, I've debated having "non-canon weeks" when I could toss out all my normal discretion and brutally drop the fourth wall on top of my unsuspecting cast.)