Catch Up Part Seven

When I first drew this, I was going to have Irene sticking her head in from the side. But almost immediately after I drew that, I realized that since they're underwater, she COULD be hanging upside down. I almost never get to do that, so I decided to seize that opportunity.

 I've never seen one of my characters appear so calm around an eraser. (I haven't done eraser jokes for a while, either.)

 Yay for the Muppets!

Not quite sure if I was able to digitally capture the transgreen effect...

The Election Week strips will appear sometime tomorrow.

Catch Up Part Three

Maybe I should start doing this.

Apparently the Joneses got an iPad recently.

Here I started running out of ideas, so I rummaged through some really old Garfield comics I made back in 2003 (don't ask), found a few pretty good premises or sections of strips, and reworked them into the strip above and the strip below.

This strip was based on a story I started once where Garfield was planning on sleeping for a whole year.

Pressed for Time

 Immediately after this year's Feb-Mar story (the trip to Iimojj), you kind of remember in the back of your mind that Moe and Julia have had their memories wiped–as time progresses, though, you start to lose that feeling. I decided to attempt to bring it back here. I'm probably not going to have them remember their identities, though.

I was a little pressed for time when I made these strips, so I didn't blue-line them on half the paper. Also, I switched today's strip with tomorrow's to make it faster to draw.

And, I have to think of a new color scheme for Squeaky, since my old pencil I drew him with is gone now.

Right Back At You Again!

The title is a repeated title of Right Back At You!

This is the first time I've used brown in my strips since Sunday!

Peter Pan Needs to Teach Bob

Charlie's Secret Friends was one of the original ideas I had when I figured I wanted to use a lot of green, blue, and purple this week.

Oops Indeed

The title is a repeated title of Oh, No, Indeed!; Yikes, Indeed!; Freaky Indeed!; Unfair Indeed!; and Picky Indeed!. It also references The Field Trip of the Dusk Rider.

Higher and Higher

This was/is my last usage of my twistable blue colored pencil (because it ran out).

There's only about a week left to vote on our poll!

Also, you are still free to suggest 5-word strip ideas if you haven't already!

That'll Be $7.50

I realized that I use a lot of browns, reds, oranges, and yellows in the strip, but very few greens, blues, and purples. I made these strips to account for that relative lack of cool colors.

It's Banana Beak Again!

We're getting pretty close to our 2000th post! I can't wait!

He Hypnotized Her?

Notice the yellow glow around the trident and Michelle?

Note To Self

What If He Started Calling YOU "Banana Whiskers?"

"Banana Beak" is actually my humorous nickname for the Angry Birds Orange Bird, and I couldn't get the image of him out of my head while I was sketching this strip. Plus, the way I drew Banana Beak is actually pretty close to the way I draw the realistic Orange Bird.

I Guess She Could Be Talking To Herself...In A Way...

I'll be honest. When I said that today's strip would be a little late, I didn't expect it to be this late.

Today's strip is actually the third in a line of ideas for Julia's Secret Friend. The first was a "Mystical Disembodied Voice," and the second a ghost.

I Do Love A Bit Of Gorgonzola

Sometimes I need to shorten a strip idea to get it to fit in this Sunday format. But in this case, I actually needed to extend it a little.

That's Gotta Be Interesting

This is almost a repeated title of That's Gotta Be Embarrassing.

Remember the other day when I introduced Irene? And I told you the backstory? In that backstory I thought of having Julia be able to wrap her tail around herself in this way. Then it wasn't hard to apply that idea to Irene.

And My Jaw Becomes That Long Too

The idea for Irene came from me looking through my earlier sketches. I found out that, before I had Moe's Secret Friends, I was going to do a week's worth of strips with the Jones family as merpeople. I was going to call it "Moepeople." (I really can't remember why I abandoned the idea.) Anyway, I found out that one of my ideas for it was to have Julia's tail be extremely long. That's where this comes from.

Irene's name has absolutely no intentional connection with Hurricane Irene (currently forming in the Atlantic Ocean).

That Would Be An Awkward Conversation

Ah, so his name is Zyxoi!

That's one of the first aliens we saw. Actually, when I drew this strip, I copied Zyxoi from that original strip, not his most recent and slightly updated appearance.

Wow, That's A Big Burden.

This is a reference to a previous Moe's Secret Friends strip, where I hinted that, since the mermaid Moe was visiting was not Maren, he might be secret friends with the whole oceans.

Also, the lack of belly button is explained in a previous post, and the division line was drawn the same way it was here.

I thought of the grudge between merpeople and humans a while ago, and realized later on that this idea kind of explains why mermaids are so often seen trying to lure people to their deaths.

Her Color Scheme Kind of Clashes

I'm not sure if I'll be using Marina in the strip more; as the title says, her color scheme does clash a little bit.

Yeah, How DOES He Know That?

The past two "Moe's secret friends" strips have the division lines between human and fish in a straight line. Yet in all the other mermaid/merman pictures I've seen, the division line is at a bit of an angle. So I tried to replicate that angle here. I drew the body first, then I drew a blue line where the division line would be. Then I drew the scales under that line, and then erased the blue line. (This was before I colored the strip, of course.)