Thursday Art Walk - Capra aegagrus

 

In Which I May Learn Ya Somethin

It occurs to me that I missed Tuesday's Talk About Tuesday blog. Sorry about that. I was swept up in a whirlwind of working on crochet and just being sleepy :)

We've hit a brief warm patch here in the Blanket Fort - outside temps today were around 44℉ (6.7℃)! It was cloudy and sprinkling during my walk, so the heavy fleece and beanie that I wore were helpful at offsetting the damp chill (and keeping my unruly mane out of my face - gotta keep my hands off my face!). I went to the shop and picked up some snacks and sodas, and I just enjoyed my exercise.

But enough about that, I promised you art, and educational art at that!

First, though, I have to tell you where the idea for this short three-panel comic comes from:

Ghost Town Living on Youtube.

You may have heard of this guy before - he's a dude who bought a ghost town named Cerro Gordo and is now fixing it up. He lives up there all by his lonesome except for the wild bobcats. And the kittens he took in from a farmer who didn't want them. And some goats.

It's the goats I'm talking about today - specifically the #1 goat, Tofu.

Tofu is adorable. He's this lil brown-and-white turbo-charged latte of a goat who is absolutely adorable and precious and I love him.

He lives in an area where bobcats are not only plentiful, but they're gutsy, too. So I worried at first about the lil dude's chances.

And now I know I won't have to.

Why? Well... he's a Boer goat. Lemme show ya:

Bobcat crouching in the grass "Goat burgers coming up..." as a goat grazes in front of him.

[DID YOU KNOW:] caption. The bobcat notices and is distracted. "Eh?". The goat is nonplussed.

The goat is heckin buff. Caption reads [Adult Boer Goats can weigh around 300lbs (That's ~136kg!)]
The bobcat is in awe. "Heck"
Small caption with an arrow pointing to bobcat: [Bobcat = ~40lbs (~18kg)]

So there ya go. We need not fear for Tofu's wellbeing - he's gonna outweigh literally every animal in Cerro Gordo in the future. So are his bros, Elon and Baretta (at least I think that's the other goat's name?).

Hope this gave you a chuckle! Hope you learned something new!

Hope you Go Enjoy Something!

Thursday Art Walk: HIM CHONKYBOI

In Which I Have Made Comic?

You might have noticed that I have a soft spot for chubby critters. From Dedbert to Totoro to fluffy lil Chinchillas, I love round chonksters. I am a round chonkster, so maybe that's my narcissism showing through, but regardless, I love fatty critters making their way in the world (provided it's not holding them back).

And one of the most famous fatties in the animal kingdom right now is Chunk the Groundhog! This lil chubbins has a whole family now, though when I first started watching him it was just him and his girlfriend, Nibbles. Now they have three kids, and it's just... it's precious.

But Chunk has this certain way of doing things, and I thought it'd be pretty funny to draw it out for you guys:

"Chunk In The Wild"

This paper is actually too big for my scanner, hence the poor quality, but I plan to (eventually) redo this comic in digital someday - it's too cute not to!

So go check out some Chunk vids if you need a pick-me-up, or if you just like brazen, tubby animals, and...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 234: Sorcery Con Leche

Thursday Art Walk brings you:
Sorcery con Leche

Last week I tried out a way to make a short comic, and it didn't work out so good. A combination of poor planning, lack of practice, and not actually knowing how to make poses work made for a less-than-stellar showing, so I figured I'd work extra hard today to show you that I can, in fact, do sequential art. Okay, it was mostly to prove it to myself that I'm not garbo at comics. It's literally been about 7 years since I last made comics... oof.

The first step in any comic is writing a script!

My incomprehensible scribblings.

My script was for a 3 panel comic, the fourth panel being my title card. The script goes like this:

• Panel 0 - Title Card. "Sorcery Con Leche". Maybe add a cup?
• Panel 1a - Tim standing and drinking coffee, Cap sitting at feet
• Cap: "Tim"
• Panel 1b - Tim sitting and drinking coffee, Cap sitting nearby.
• Cap: "Tim"
• Panel 1c - same as 1b
• Panel 2a, b, c - Cap looking up
• Cap: "We need to talk"
• Panel 3a: Tim spit take (standing)
• Panel 3b: Tim spit take (seated)
• Panel 3c: Tim spit take (standing, chair knocked over)

You may be wondering about all the letters after the numbers. See, I had three different possibilities on what I could maybe do with this comic. Scenario a, scenario b, scenario c. Since it's still just a 3 panel comic, and since the basic beats are the same, I put all three in the script. The basic beats are:

Tim at rest with Cap speaking up to him.
Cap at rest looking up at Tim.
Tim does a spit take.

You can kind of see scenario A playing out here, with stick figures.

Scenarios B and C

A clearer image of B and C

But how to lay out the panels? Well, I didn't have sticky notes around, so I had to make do with some non-sticky note cards. Sadly, they were a bit big for my page (who'd have thought that legal size paper would still be a bit small for a proper comic?) So they're a little crowded.

The layout, but vertical because my phone doesn't listen.

The layout horizontally, sketched onto the page.

Now, obviously, I want to ink this all in at some point (hopefully later tonight, because I've got the fever now, and the only cure is more comics), but at this juncture, it would've taken too much labor to go around looking for my Micron pen...

But what's this? Someone has a job for me to do?

Ah, I have a duty to attend to, beg your pardon...

The princess requires her royal tent.

Even though it's already 80 degrees in the house. Fahrenheit, mind.

Back to the drawing. At this stage, I had to move upstairs since my grandmother had come over with her doggo, and he is, perhaps, a bit excitable and therefore not well-suited to tasks requiring focus and fine motor skills. I set up a table upstairs and set about sketching the undersketch for the comic.

I went with scenario B, since it seemed the easiest and my ability to draw dudes standing up is... meh.

Needs work, but I'm getting there on the title card.

Definitely need to work on this to add features, like... faces? and features?
Again, this is a very rough undersketch to let me know where everything belongs.

Cap's face needs to be rounded a bit more, but I'm actually pretty pleased with the
perspective shot here. Yes, it's rough, but I feel like I can see better what I was
going for! This is my favorite panel.

Rough gesture drawing/wireframe for the spit-take!
I've knocked his laptop over, his coffee has spilled, and his hand is gripping the table.
Cap's face will be annoyed when I draw it.

Now, speaking of kitties, as you might imagine, our Princess Puffy Paws (not her name, but who calls cats by their real names?) is not overly fond of excitable gargantuan doggos, so she bolted upstairs when he came in and began whining and barking, as dogs do when they're in strange places and want desperately to sniff and play. She never comes into my room, so when she refused to go into the room where I was drawing, I had to let her come into my actual bedroom, which is where she is still settled, staring nervously at the open door, waiting for him to come in and startle her.

He's been gone for probably half an hour now.

She's giving me a peeved look as I write this. I've told her multiple times that the downstairs is safe again, but I don't think she believes me. I'll have to go downstairs and make a ton of TV racket so she knows it's fine.

Poor kitten. She has no idea what to make of big dogs.

So that's been my day. I hope yours is treating you well!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 233: Comical Failures

Because sometimes art projects don't work out the way you'd hoped...

Today I tried something new - I tried to make a comic. Boy was that a nightmare and a half.

So the first issue was this: I don't actually know how to draw 90% of what I wanted to draw.

I decided "so what?" and went online to find reference photos/drawing sheets other people had done so I could work on poses.

Who knew that finding a picture of a guy looking at a phone with his back to the camera was such a dang trial?! I looked for three hours on three different search engines across two different browsers and found literally nothing that worked. I had to guesstimate. That never works out well for anatomy.

Then, I had to find an action pose for a cat. That did not work out well either because I guess Scottish Folds don't jump up on counters?

Finally, I had to figure out how to get the drawings to look like a comic. Here, I have failed entirely. They just.... aren't working. At all. I can't figure out how to get things to go in the right boxes and not completely deform. Also, the photos are awful for this. Honestly, I'd be better off just cutting things out and pasting them into boxes in the real world, then scanning them onto the computer, so I might end up doing that later. For now, however, please enjoy the raw images.

Without further ado: A moment from Sorcery con Leche

Of all the images, I'm most proud of the last one with Captain Killstreak (Cap for short) settled down on the potholder so that Tim the Coffeemage cannot get his morning fix. Yes, there's a couple stories behind all this. Yes, I'm working on the story of a barista who works at a magic school. Yes, it's more comedic than anything else.

And yes, Captain Killstreak is a main character, lol!

In spite of my griping, I really hope you all get out there and...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC