How a Strip Gets Done

I was looking through one of those high end food magazines the other day, they had gorgeous pictures of pre-cooked steak and lobster (at prices of $140 and up for 2 people) with home delivery and everything. WAY out of my price range. The images were so well done that you could practically taste what was shown in them.

The phrase Licensed to Krill popped into my mind. Nice way to end a comic strip, but how to set it up to give the payoff dialog line? There had to be at least two cats in the frame, to work off it.

What I came up with was the previous panel would have one cat commenting that he felt like James Bond. All the cats (or maybe only the one) would have a shrimp. The comment about Bond would be stated, one of the others would ask why, then the payoff line in the last panel, to which the other(s) would respond ‘lame’.

At that point I figured, heck – give them all a shrimp to nosh on. So the first panel was them being given a shrimp each by the owner as a treat. Either just tossed, or they already have one each and are digging in.

The strip still needed a counterpoint, so at the very end the final cat in line in the picture would add something like ‘actually that’s very appropriate’.

Done. Now to draw it…..

What Color Is Marcus?

In black and white he seems to be 'white', however I've always considered him a more pale buff color. Not a true orange.

On the down side, ALL the cats people are familiar with in published cartoons seem to be orange male cats! Argh! Do I follow through and use the pale buff, or do I just show him as white if/when I can do the strip in color? Will it surprise people at that point? Do I allow my creation to follow in the cliche footsteps and do 'orange' as if I have no originality in my main character?

Maybe I can use a pale gray or something at that point..... I hate to bow to convention and put another orange cat out there to the public and keep the cliche 'cartoon cats' color perpetuating.

That's going to be a hurdle when I come to it.

Help me Obi Wan....

Steampunk!

I now think I have ENOUGH strips to do one whole issue as a Steampunk Special. The two little mad scientist cats with their mutating box (time machine, submersible, air balloon, etc.) have enough adventures at this point to have me be able to present them all together in one booklet. Yeay!

A Watched Artist Never Boils

Last night I attended a local writers workshop, their theme this meeting was to sit and write something. Everyone had laptops, I had a pad of paper (did I feel like a dinosaur). Some worked on their novel but most were focused on writing a blurb or 60 second sound bite about what their book was about. Me, I sat trying to do a new strip for the cartoon. With no pre-thought-out idea at the time.

Thanks to the potted plants seen through the window of the meeting room I did come up with an idea and did a rough sketch with dialog, but it wasn’t my best effort. Still, it seemed to amuse them when I passed it around.

How Many Cats......

My sister asked me how MANY cats are in the strip. Honestly if this is all taking place in one household, how many am I actually implying are in the home -- I had to give that some thought.

Marcus, the main guy
The Siamese (she was a 'rescue')
The white one (this is one of the pair of 'mad scientists')
The tabby (with white paws)-- (he's the other part of the pair of 'mad scientists')
The tabby (with NO white paws) - in truth I sort of confuse the two tabbys
The white and gray
The gray with a white tail tip (he was our Hudson, we lost him to cancer in 2009)
The tortoishell (she's based on Hershey, who's 17 years old at this point)
The tuxedo cat (he's based on Merlin, who is a tuxedo cat of course)
The long haired gray one (he's called Jake, same as our Jake who not surprisingly is gray and long haired)

Then they have the occasional visitor like the long haired black and white cat that's the same size as Marcus. I wanted to mention a diabetic cat in the strip. You never see any comics about handicapped cats, you know? Our Hudson turned diabetic after he'd been with us for 7 years, it's not a problem dealing with it in cats once you learn how to do the insulin and regulate the type of food they're on.

Self Publish? Publisher?

Hmm, I'm self publishing via Office Depot, which gives me a 40 page booket (80 strips) per issue for a very good price. All photocopies, of course, but they work out really well. I've been thinking of possibly having the strips done up in book format, a REAL book format, but have still been collecting information on how to do it cost effectively.

There's the vanity press/print on demand, which is one way of doing things. It's not just lulu.com anymore. The guy doing the online cartoon Wondermark had his printed up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin for a decent price. I went to a pet seminar at the Raddison in September and talked to the speaker there, she had a good dozen different small books on dog training at her table for sale afterwards, she'd used a printer just south of Madison, WI who she was very happy with. And the writers group in Milwaukee here had a guest speaker from Chicago who has had three books published by two small presses.

He said the print runs on the books were done via the print on demand places, that's what the small publishers are using now. Interesting! The print runs on his books were anywhere from 800 to 1,300. I know that the larger publishers have been staying under 10,000 copies per print run. It was nice to get some idea of what the small publishers consider a 'print run'. Plus HE got to design the covers (they got the artist to do the actual art though) and he got to name the novels, the publishers did not change the title of the books.

ALWAYS nice to get the actual facts on how this stuff is done. I do want to have these printed up in book format at some point, not just home made issues as I've been doing.

Hey, if Hark A Vagrant! can get published then I certainly can!!!!!
(http://harkavagrant.com/ The artist got a book deal!!!!!)

Life Follows Art!

Ok, NEVER NEVER NEVER draw a cartoon strip about something you don't want to see. I've now had FOUR times when I drew a 'funny' and the thing happened within a week in real life.

The vet trips in the strip - within a few days we had to have an emergency vet trip done on one of our cats. The strip where the ceiling walking cat barfs - the next day we had projectile vomiting across 5 feet of hallway floor as Hershey tried running while she threw up. It was almost all water she'd just drank, but still..... I can't tell you how many paper towels it took to get it all up off the floor. She's the ONLY cat I've ever known who tries to run as they vomit. Ewww.

So now I'm very very leery of doing any vet strip in the comic, and I pull back from thinking of putting some things down in drawing on paper. For my peace of mind you realize. Last thing I want to do is jinx something else here.

Dreams

I realized recently that I'd only done ONE dream sequence in all this time. A sort of Sorcerer's Apprentice story, multiple strips long. It was time to do another one.

One thing I wanted to try was a sort of Little Nemo type, no not the Disney Finding Nemo, I mean LITTLE Nemo from the early 1900's that showed up in the Sunday papers back then. Check Wikipedia if you don't know about it. It's funny, and very artistic.

Not that mine is going to be all that 'artistic' but it's going to borrow a bit from the art style. Marcus's house mates will elongate, swirl, 'pop' in via bubbles, and in general give him some mighty strange nightmares! Ha!