#173
Even though I’m working digitally, I can’t bring myself to use copy+paste to duplicate anything. Cut+paste for movement is okay, and really convenient, but I feel like I’m shortchanging myself if I draw less by copying. So for those last seven frames of Mouse Kid’s ambush, I drew seven bushes. That’s part of why the style is so simple and minimalistic. On the one hand, it’s more like the newspapery stuff I grew up reading — but on the other hand, it doesn’t have the sense of detail and place of my older watercolor ones.
So I’ve gotta trust you, the reader, to use your imagination in filling out some of these environments. I trust you, okay?
Dinosaur Kid would make a pretty good newspaper comic, IMO. It’s got such a cute slice-of-life feel to it.
It was closest to newspaper-style in the very beginning, I think, with just a few frames and no color. I’d like to try some more in that style — maybe after this story — but it’s hard to be so restrained. Putting a comic up online, it’s just too tempting to spread out, writing more and drawing more — especially if it’s made on the computer and I don’t have to worry about scanning and reassembling everything.
It’s also really hard to think of something to say in just a few frames that is (a) interesting, (b) brevitable, and (c) novel. Schulz and Watterson have probably said everything worth saying, between the two of them. The other approach is to specialize, like Aaron Macgruder focusing on black issues with The Boondocks, but … I dunno what I’d focus on. Ice cream or childish enlightenment or some other sort of willynilly flimflam.