I made my little owl  buddy out of polymer clay today. He’s tilted at an such an angle that he’s looking right up at me when perched on my tilted drawing board.

I also did a bunch of drawing for SnoogleZoo today.  I have a one-off, and part of a longer story arc in development, and I just need to get them out on paper. It’s hard starting over, but I’ve missed those little guys and I only ever stopped because I set the bar a little too high to begin with. So I’m taking more of a quality-over-quantity approach this time, which means I probably won’t manage a regular update schedule for a while, but at least each strip will be something I can be proud of. I’m working on drawing everybody consistently, and trying out a couple of different ways of inking- I think it’d be neat to ink SnoogleZoo with a brush because it seems like all the fur on the characters would work well with a fluid line, but then there are small details like the little round eyes that I’m worried I won’t be able to pull off with a brush. Plus, technical pens are just so darn comfortable. But really, how am I supposed to get comfortable with a new tool without using it?

I have to be careful about letting all this noodling get in the way of my actually moving forward with the project. I can keep practicing forever and never get a strip together If I’m not careful. So I’m aiming to at least start posting little paintings, if not a proper strip, by May 3rd. Yep, that’s  a week from tomorrow! I’m going to be pretty busy this week making that happen.

Tags: art, comics, doodles, drawing, owls, polymer clay, snooglezoo, works in progress

The day after Christmas brought a gnarly cold that had me curled up under a pile of blankets for two days. I’m still snarfly, but I feel better. But drawing, blogging, comicking? All that stuff went by the wayside.

Not that I didn’t agonize over all of it, though! I’m taking a month off the comic proper to do some development work on it, so I’ve begun at least thinking about what I want to do. My original goal was to get through three months- the comic didn’t have to be funny, or particularly consistent, just updated three times a week, full color for three months, just to answer the question of whether I can even do this at all, will I find it worthwhile? Yes I can, and yes I do. Now it’s time to think about what I really want this to be.

• I absolutely don’t want to half-ass it like I have been. As it is right now, I wouldn’t read my comic if I weren’t producing it myself. I’m pretty sure I want to do less strips a week if it means I can make them of a higher quality.
• I don’t want to be stuck with the core characters to the exclusion of the rest of the world. I have a ton of notes and sketches about things that have nothing to do with the core six characters, and I want to explore that stuff. But I don’t want to confuse people.
• I want this to be fun. Although the December strips are some of my favorites in terms of writing and character development, getting them out on time was really starting to feel like homework, and I think you can see it in the drawings. This ties in with my first bullet- If I’m only doing two strips a week and they’re great and I can make the drawings really really good, not only will I enjoy it more, I’ll enjoy showing it to people more.
• I want to get the characters’ looks solidified. I need to spend some time with each character and really nail them down. Pan has evolved so much from where he started (I’d say he’s probably the most well developed character at this point, too. He’s certainly the most fun to write!), but I don’t even really have control over the kitties yet.

Lots to think about. Lots of drawing and notes and writing to do.  Can’t wait.

May I now direct your attention to episode #36 of SnoogleZoo.

I promise I am not making fun of hobos or freegans. I do not promise that this character has nothing to do with the Laugh-out-Loud Cats. Scruffy is fun to write for, but hard to draw fast.

My blog posts will occasionally suck so that I can manage to get an episode of my comic out on time:

Today’s comic is kind of related to today’s Holidailies prompt; my family never did Advent calendars when I was a kid, but a lot of my friends did. I think they’re neat, particularly the ones that are permanent and meant to be refilled and reused every year. Someday I want to make one!

Tags: advent calendars, comic, holidailies, snooglezoo

Now that my comic is well underway, the mechanical act of producing a strip three times a week is starting to feel easier. That seems like I’ve gotten over the first hurdle on a project like this and I can start tackling other aspects like good draftsmanship and storytelling.

I’m thinking about closing the comments because I don’t want to feel like I have to answer to my readers on the decisions I make. This isn’t in reaction to anything that happened over at my site, or any of my readers’ comments; it actually has more to do with the way I react to the discussions in other comics’ forums. With the example I just linked to on XKCD, I noticed comments like “you’re insulting your audience! How dare you!” and “I don’t think you ended the strip right. Here, I photoshopped it better!”  I love having people participate, and it’s wonderful that they’re in to it enough to take the time to write a reaction to what I’m making, but It’ll hurt my ability to tell a story if I’m worried about what they think the characters should do in addition to my own thinking about what they should do. I don’t want to write a comic by committee. And I’m not saying that people who have forums like this do that- to the contrary I see that the comicker hard ly ever participates in those threads. But I know myself and I know how self-conscious I can be. I also know that when I post my comic to the cartooning forum on LiveJournal for exposure, and get feedback, I am compelled to respond to the positive and negative, and the negative will tweak me out for longer than it should.

But really, that’s what this project is all about. It’s practice! I’m practicing the act of comic creating, storytelling, ink and color, building traffic and handling feedback appropriately. It’s all part of the process of making and maintaining a webcomic.

Tags: forums, negative feedback, snooglezoo, webcomic, work