Busy, busy, busy...

Life is what happens when you've made other plans.

Hello all. I’m back, much too late. I was dealing with a sick cat, various family issues (not all of them bad), one art show, two presentations, and the successful resolution of a small kerfuffle at Canada Revenue. They are very, very nice people. The first time they ever audited me, they were so nice that I was unaware that they were even doing it. This current kerfuffle was painless and is now over.

Anyway, one of my New Year’s resolitions for 2024 will be: WRITE MORE STUFF.

Speaking of writing, all of the comics are scripted in advance, as per Lynn Johnston’s instructions. This is usually a descriptive sentence or two; dialogue is sometimes included, but is often changed when I start drawing. I no longer indicate panels, I sketch them on the script. There is no formula for doing comics, any more than there is a formula for animated pictures (There will be a short pause for laughter)

I write monthly scripts and often shift stips around if an unscripted idea comes to me later in the month. Right now, I am approximately four weeks ahead of publication and want to keep it that way. I realized that most of my current cartoons did not follow their original scripts. When I start drawing the characters, they want to change things.

Someone asked me if I could print some of my script ideas. I declined. The only way to learn how to do it, is to do it. Every strip is different. FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE is tightly scripted since it is dealing with real life family situations. My strip is less structured and some of the characters are still developing.

The full moon of 11-27 is anticipated a bit on Sunday the 26th, and sets up the storyline for the following week.

Sometimes a story line can recur, as with the Sky Dogs storyline that started on Sunday the 26th. Originally, Shawm was going to explain the sky phenomena to Floof and Sirius, but he’s done this off-camera in earlier strips, and now they can interpret things for themselves.

An unscripted bit came when I found out that November’s was a “Beaver” moon. So, if a full moon turns people into werewolves, and Sirius is already part wolf, Floof reasons that he will instead turn into a beaver.

This works out of Floof’s character. She is a Big Sister, and Big Sisters tease little brothers. Little Brother Sirius was very annoying a few weeks ago, when he insisted on waking Floof up to tell her bad puns. He wants to be just like Daddy, and is still learning the ropes.

It’s a nice way to develop the sibling relationship. It never gets violent; they just tease.

I learned the hard way that I couldn’t even imply violence in FurBabies. I came up with an idea for Kate’s snow sculpture. She loves animals, so instead of making a snowman, she’d make a Snow Leopard.

Kate and a Snow Leopard, from a deleted strip.

I thought it would be funny to have the snow leopard chasing snow deer. This idea was disapproved by most of my test audience, including two respected cartoonists. Some things just should not be in this particular comic strip. The ‘feel’ of the strip is gentle humor, with animals as main characters. Even snow deer can be ‘alive’ in a comic strip. This was like putting a pickle on top of a Charlotte Russe.

CALVIN AND HOBBES featured ‘perverse’ snowmen in every year’s winter cartoons and we looked forward to them with delight. When I was a kid I made a few weird snowmen (I remember a beheaded one) when I was a kid. I am sure that Bill Watterson made them too. He took the idea to the Nth power. It’s hard to find a favorite strip although possibly my favorite is the one where a crowd of commuter snowmen at a crosswalk prevent Calvin’s Dad from getting the car out of the driveway. Some of the cartoons were extremely violent, with tennis rackets through snowman heads, car accidents with a snowman in pieces and a crowd of snowmen gapers, and so on.

Some of my test audience worry about a snow deer being attacked by a snow leopard, but accept graphic violence between snowmen sculpted by a six year old boy. I don’t argue about this, but I wonder.

The leopard has been retired, and the drawing of Kate will appear in a later strip.

Instead, I combine ‘teddy bear’ with ‘snowman’ and got a snow bear. That’s Optima ‘Poppy’ Populare walking past it, and you will have to wait until December 27 to see what happens next.

On December 27, there is a Snow Bear. It comes in peace.

I’ll close by thanking the reader/subscribers to this page and the GoComics page for getting FurBabies to the 1,000 followers mark as of today.

I was hoping that this would happen in December. For me, Christmas came early. Thank you again. I promise, there are fun things in store. I also promise to write more often. Enjoy.