Chesca Hause
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Making of "Superstitious"
🕑 Added 2022-10-19 17:00:07 +0000 UTCWhen we handed the Comictober reins over to the new hosts, I also gave them my leftover prompt ideas, one of which was "Monkey's Paw". I had a vague idea of a comic about Cooper getting attached to a monkey's paw, like how our youngest fell in love with a pair of skeleton hands one year.
Unfortunately for me, the prompt ended up being Day 2 and I couldn't get a comic together in time. I was going to shelve it, but found myself wondering what Cooper might wish for. It suddenly hit me. To be a different, "better" cartoon family! I LOVE excuses to draw in other styles and I'm a big fan of Bluey! This thing practically wrote itself!
I considered trying to draw them as cats in the Bluey style, but I worried it might not be obvious what was happening. Drawing them as the real Bluey family had it's copyright dangers, but it was too funny not to try. I crossed my fingers, hoped I wouldn't get sued and began finding reference pictures to mimic the style.
I cut out the reference pics, arranged them and then filled in the gaps to create my scene:
Once I knew it was going to work, I started shoring up the rest of the comic. I briefly considered having the 3rd panel stay on Cooper while he made his wish, but it made it hard to tell who was talking. I needed to make it absolutely clear that Fran was the one in the wrong, to justify Joel's strong reaction at the end.
The final panel was a lot of work! I drew the whole thing by hand, trying to stay as close to the originals as possible. It wouldn't have been so bad, but I rearranged things a bit and every time something moved, even slightly, I had to draw in what was behind it, which sometimes meant removing and redrawing lines to make them smooth.
At the 11th hour I decided to remove the speech bubbles at the end. I'd liked her "Don't be silly - Actually, I think it might be real!" sudden switchover, but I wasn't confident that it was reading as I meant it. Telling the story with their expressions was cleaner.
Comments
Matthias Gaber
Very well done, one sees that you put your heart in it
