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

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.

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

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

I’m trying to exercise some discipline lately. If I’m not drawing, at least I’m doodling, because doodling leads to ideas which lead to drawings, which is pretty much what I need to be doing not to be miserable. Also, if I’m drawing I can’t pick on my cuticles because my hands are busy. everybody wins!

Anyway, with Holidailies I’m going to have to post something to this here blog nearly every day from Dec 5 to Jan 6, either 50 words or a photo (or in my case, a drawing). This on top of keeping up with the comic every three days, it should keep those art muscles of mine nice and limber. Here goes!

Tags: art, blogging, discipline, drawing, holidailies, snooglezoo

It’s not working the way it is. And I mean that in just about every sense. The gallery plugin I was using suddenly decided that it didn’t want to have anything uploaded anymore. I mean the link to the upload screen literally disappeared. In trying to fix it I almost killed the whole site, and had to revert to a couple of days-ago backup to bring it back up.

And in and amongst all this drama of trying to get it back up and struggling with the whole system I realised that organizing the site under a CMS was actually limiting what I could do creatively with SnoogleZoo in the first palce. For instance, I always had the intention to start a comic. And I was having trouble serving up the wallpapers satisfactorally, so I put story development on the back burner. Maybe the characters would just blog, or I’d do online storybooks?

So I was basically letting the Content Management System dictate the nature of the content, and that’s backwards! So I spent my friday night reading comics, drawing pictures and thinking about how to start the story. For now I’m going to leave SZ up the way it is while I work on getting the story and the first couple of comics together. Meanwhile I’ll be looking into a good way to manage a visually-based website with lots of extras (ComicPress is looking very promising!), and once that’s all ready to go I’ll do the official launch!

Honestly? I couldn’t be happier about the way this has worked out. I leared a lot playing with Mambo, even if I’m not ultimately going to use it, and now I have a laser-focus as to what I’m doing with SnoogleZoo. I’m so excited to finally get this party started the right way!

Tags: cms, comicpress, comics, snooglezoo, starting over, webcomics

I have, however been working on more cute t shirts for SnoogleZoo. Namely, these cute designs of muffins with faces!

Right now they come in two flavors: The blueberry muffin is cute and sweet, but the cranberry muffin is sassy and a little tart. Go take a look at the cute muffin section of Snooglezoo, and scroll all the way down to see the muffins together. I didn’t do it on purpose, but when I showed the muffin pair to Brad, he cracked up and said that the pair shirts would be bought by boys for their girlfriends. I looked, looked again, and then my ears turned red. It’s classic!

Tags: bursitis, cute shirts, cute t shirts, muffin, snooglezoo, t shirts

This is what I find myself working on in all of my spare time these days. I haven’t done anything with a CMS in something like 5 or 6 years, so this is a fun adventure. I can’t wait until I’ve got the new (and very permanent) SnoogleZoo fleshed out and ready for a real launch. This is just a tasty preview. I love that it’s looking more-or-less like my original design.

Tags: snooglezoo

My buddy requested I make a Yo Yo Neko that’s black and named Suki. I tweaked the kitty design a little, and I like this a lot better- not quite as husky looking as the earlier versions. I think I’m going to put this one up on the SnoogleZoo. I put up some things with this on SnoogleZoo last night!

Tags: snooglezoo, vector