Superheroes

We goof around with our cats, even taking pajamas and tying them on as 'capes' around the neck, which one of ours is perfectly comfortable walking around in for several hours (he liked how it reflected the body heat apparently, curled up and went to sleep with it).  I don't do it often though, don't worry.

That sparked an idea about Marcus trying out a superhero personna, which of course had two of the little guys joining in and, in the normal course of discussion, took ALL the fun out of it for him.  It came to nine strips before I got to an ending.  I even gave a nod to Dr. Horrible's Sing Along.  Ha! 

It was fun doing this one up.

ARGH

Jake’s still eating his pulled out fur clumps.  Gross.  He’s been doing this since June and I try to get to him fast when I see him grimacing with the stuff on his mouth but he slurps them in like spaghetti when I get too close.  Only way to make him hesitate is to scruff him…. and he’s getting wise to the lunge and grab.   Cats….

I'm still getting the strips redrawn, they're going fairly smoothly (the backlog is tremendous!).  Whenever I get 80 strips done I'll print them up in booklet format and have another issue available.

TV References

Sometimes being funny means you reference a TV show now and then.  I’m hoping enough people watch Dr. Who and know Star Trek to ‘get’ the 4 strips I did the other day.  If they don’t know River Song or Amy Pond or what a Dalek is, or some of the quotable lines the Doctor has said over the past few years, well those four strips may not make much sense.  But I had to do them, they were a natural outgrowth from the Harry Potter strips I just finished before them.

If you don’t watch those shows, then sorry folks.  Just move on to the next ones.

I Didn't Learn LAST Time This Happened

Aww man!  I thought I could get away without backlash on a real life ‘vet’s trip’ by making my cartoon strip be about a mundane checkup.  Life always followed art before when I did a vet strip – within a day or two we would always have to take one of the cats in for some problem.  The strip I worked on was just about a checkup. The Siamese was going to ‘go in’ and I could see Marcus getting all thrilled about it.  However……..our Merlin got an upper respiratory within two days and I had to get him in for antibiotics. 

Ok, ok! I learned my lesson now. This is the THIRD TIME the vet strip turned into a real trip for us, so no more vet strips done in the comics. EVER.  NOT EVER AGAIN!

Kickstarting The Drawing Again

I got a jolt in the butt to get moving again in the artwork for the strip.  If I want to get them published I need to get them DONE.  All the backlog of sketches have to be reworked, completely redrawn and then reduced down 40% before doing paste up and have it be ready to go to the printer.

So last night I spent a good half hour with pen and paper doing the outlines for the strip boxes, getting maybe 30 pages worth ready, which would be two to a page, 60 strips.  Then I started in on the top group of sketches and did as many as I could in three hours.  It takes a good fifteen minutes to do each strip start to finish…. Basically four per hour.  The ones with the Siamese talking I had to set aside since I can’t locate my notes on how the Korean language looks. She speaks Korean.  It looked nicer than Chinese, Japanese or Thai. 

Working on the Cover illustrations

The first two issues are printed.  Since I have another 8 or 9 issues to print, I have to focus on doing up some decent cover illustrations for them.  Something more than just Marcus standing looking out at people. 

The things are turning into small vignettes  with each one a small 'story' in the works.  The small cats doing their Steampunk thing, Marcus battling the evil Siamese, Marcus sleeping as some of the cats use a magic marker on his face... 

I think they'd double up as good greeting cards too.  Hey, ya never know!

My ZZTop cat

Art follows life,  I had a nice inspiration for a cartoon thanks to Jake the other night.  He's a longhair, always shedding fur, and his ruff is HUGE, all the undercoat is like yak fur (thin, sticks to everything, you can't get away from it).  When he sits down he leaves pieces of his belly fur behind as he stands, he gets his back claws stuck in it and small chunks pull free.

Lately he's been grooming his chest ruff (and yes, I brush him daily to avoid the HUGE hairballs he can heave).  The stuff tangles,  he yanks at it to clear the tangles out and usually swallows the fur he just pulled by doing that.  He was on the table last night grooming, I turned to get something off the counter, turned back and there he sat, watching me alertly, with a BEARD hanging off his face!  Totally unexpected!  I made a quick grab to get it off his mouth before he swallowed it (it was quite large) and did manage to get hold.

Of course it's done up as a cartoon now.

Kill The Wabbit....

I was reading one of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books last week. He had a character gearing up to fight monsters with a special spear with a cross brace on it, and there was a little throwaway joke done where the guy mutters ‘spear and magic helmet’.

That immediately transported me back to the old Saturday morning cartoons – that classic Warner Brothers one with Elmer Fudd dressed in his bullet armor going after Bugs Bunny as Brunhilda and that fat white horse. That was one of the all-time classics they’d put out!

American kids got a solid grounding in classical music and opera, thanks to copyright free stuff they used at the time – we weren’t even aware of it (but I digress).

The words ‘spear and magic helmet’ said by Elmer Fudd stuck with me for 2 days. I even found myself semi-singing it. So of course I had to use it. It grew into two strips, one where he’s gearing up with the toilet brush for his trusty spear and an empty Doritos bag for head gear. After fending off the smaller cats he’s prepared to do battle with the dragon (the owner) and that ‘spear and magic helmet’ line gets used.