So every so often I decide to try cutting and pasting, in an effort to save myself some time. And it always ends in disaster. I may at some point draw up a few of the more standard backgrounds, places that will appear fairly consistently, and use them for appropriate strips. This will likely be one of those such backgrounds, though I'll still have to redraw it.

It looked so simple, just erase myself out of the second panel and copy what was left to the bottom...

Silly, silly me. I'd sketched out the bottom panel too different from the top. The position of the arm blocked the happy little creature, and I had no art on the edge to cover moving it to the designed position. So I had to move it the other way, amongst other things.

Midnight is not the time to realise drastic changes. Heh.

In the end though I really like the way it turned out, and as usual I've learned a couple of lessons.

You might notice that Grandpa looks a bit different today, as do his surroundings. I was not at all happy with what I produced last week, and I cannot attribute it entirely to my being sick. I designed him and his lab in a hurry and it shows.

The transparent edges were kinda nice, but a real bitch to do the way I currently produce the strip. Basicly I should be drawing everything in true animation style, each character and such on their own piece of paper, then composite them in photoshop one layer at a time. It's much faster in some ways, and looks far better if done right.

Of course the biggest time sink in that process is the backgrounds.

Which brings me to realize that if I want this strip to achieve a consistent level of quality I need to do some work behind the scenes. Meaning that I need to cut back from the 3 strips a week schedule, to a Monday and Friday schedule.

I will most likely return to the 3 strip thing eventually, I think it's neccesary for keeping a growing audiance if nothing else. And have no worries about me giving up on the strip, I'm anything but tired of doing it.

In fact we're already getting ready for San Diego this summer. I should have more info on that sometime in the next month or so. We're planning on making a big deal out of it, being the first year having a booth and all.