Merry Holidaze!  I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable time.  In the past I have taken a hiatus and not published anything for the next week or two… this year is going to be a bit different.

I decided while I was on the road traveling, visiting relatives, and generally goofing off over the holidays (people in Indiana would call them “Christmas” and “New Years”) I would go back and look at some of the older comics so that your could laugh at me at even thinking that I could do something as daunting as a comic strip.  I’ll will use the magic of Hindsight-o-Vision (patent pending) to say a bit about what was going through my mind when I posted these and what I have to say now that over two and a half years have passed.  Don’t worry I won’t be waxing nostalgically forever we will start back with new adventures after the New Year.

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Today’s comic was originally published June 6, 2009 and  is an example of the work I did while in England… ugh!  I loved the trip had a wonderful time, & learned a lot, but it was an effort getting a comic out and uploaded.

I discovered when you sit back and take your time, try a few drafts, go back over things, it takes time.  Time you do not have when you are on a deadline.  While my daily readership at this point was about 40 people (actually it was just me checking the comic 40 times each day) I felt the need to make sure that something was up there in case someone stumbled upon it or the Endowment (who gave me the fellowship) checked on my work.

As I said on Friday one of my issues was trying to develop a consistent character design.  I really dropped the ball while in England, “Bruce” ended up with this comical chin that just seemed to be getting bigger in every panel.  I had listened to a podcast in which an artist was complaining and wishing he had drawn one of his main characters with a chin… I wasn’t going to fall into that trap!  So I went overboard.  While the secondary characters ended up not looking too bad, the main character looked horrible.  I could come up with a list of excuses, but really it comes down to I bit off way more than I could chew if I wanted to develop a solid comic from the outset.  If I were to do it again I think plotting out events, writing a script while in England and then drawing the whole thing up once I got home would have ended up better.  Then again it could have ended up just as bad.  The pressure of traveling, site-seeing, drawing & publishing a comic could drive someone mad.

It has been said that the creator of Tin Tin- Hergé actually had all of his original comics redrawn once he had developed a character design he liked.  He didn’t want anyone to see those original attempts while he was discovering his style.  Me- I just apologize a lot and move on.

While in England I had a G4 iBook, my handy dandy Canon scanner, and a whole lot of cardstock with a rectangle printed on it and the text.  All word balloons were hand drawn since I thought, at that time, my penmanship was neat – this would change, but not for a while.

Once MINI United was over I found it more difficult to come up with gags and the idea of a bio-comic just didn’t seem as good as it had when I first pitched the idea.  It did not take long for Cecil to make an appearance (Since the stuffed animal Cecil was with us any way), but not in the way you might have thought.  I made a decision that he would be a stuffed animal and could only communicate to the audience through thought bubbles.  I did not want to have a Calvin & Hobbes knock off.