new characters for new year

Kate gets a couple of friends.

I’m planning out action for the first half of the year and am already about 2/3 done with the March strips.

The FurBabies characters plan to keep their New Year’s resolutions. The Dog Family have just had their shots and gotten their licenses. They will begin a Canine Good Citizenship test that is required for Therapy Dogs in some locations.

Kate wants to play pickleball, and she can’t play with Optima Populare and Iris, who are not her friends. So I gave Kate some new friends.

The Furr Twins materialized just before Christmas 2023, exactly the way most of the rest of the cast did on Christmas Eve 2022. Someone gave me another present. If I can’t ‘see’ new characters, I can’t draw them.

Arturo “Arf” Furr had been in the back of my mind for some time, but only came to life once his sister Barbara (“La-VA”) Furr joined him by a mysterious process that I still don’t fully understand. The twins, unlike Kate, came with fully developed personalities (possibly because they are supporting characters and possibly because I’ve now been drawing the strip for a year even if it first appeared on GoComics in June.)

Barbara prefers to be called “La-VA” for obvious reasons. Kate uses an unfortunate nickname on their first acquaintance in today’s strip.

https://www.gocomics.com/furbabies/2024/01/18

Arf enjoys technology and likes gadgets. LaVa is the practical one, a bit acerbic, but fond of her brother. She gets along well with him and with Kate.

If the Mean Girls ever called her ‘Barf’, they only did it once.

The National Cartoonists Society has just opened its Reuben Awards nomination site. The Reubens are named after NCS founder Rube Goldberg, who designed the comical statue. The “Reuben” is awarded to Best Cartoonist of the Year. Category awards are given for Online and Print comic strips, as well as for animation. FurBabies has been entered in the Online Comic-Short Form category.

https://nationalcartoonists.com/awards/

I won a Category Award for animation in 1983 for my short film YOUR FEET’S TOO BIG. Maybe I can get one in another century in another medium.