Chesca Hause
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Making of "First Day"
🕑 Added 2024-09-09 14:17:03 +0000 UTCBeen making notes for this one for a few years. I think I wrote "Lying Smiles" line last year, but still didn't quite know how to deliver it. I thought I might have to throw this idea in my "needs to be animated" folder, but I decided to have a go first.
You can see me fighting the panel layout at the beginning. I like to tell a story in as few panels as possible, but with something like this, the correct timing is so important! I knew I wanted the last 3 panels together and initially I had them sloped to emphasize them rushing out the door. It wasn't giving me much room either side to work with though, so I changed it back to rectangular panels. Then I had the bright idea to make the middle one look like a raised photo -slanted and overlapping the panels either side to maintain that sloped, hectic feel.
I needed a big build up at the beginning of the comic to show how absolutely mad everything is on the first day, so I kept adding panels. Once I had the layout down, things got easier, although that was still a lot of panels to ink and color!
After already spending way too long on this, I had to do the lunchbox. My usual instinct with Vince's stuff is to make it Minecraft themed, but I needed a color other than green to pop against the stink cloud. I searched up Mario lunchboxes instead and wondered what animal Mario would be. I didn't have to ponder long because I remembered Tanooki Mario!
These ideas are always fun because I don't know how they'll look until I actually draw them! I traced over a Mario head and added Tanooki bits to get:
-And after all that, the kids were actually pretty good on the first day of school this year! Funny how that happens!
