This week’s comic illustrates what happens when you mix Lord of the Flies with baby caterpillars and a holiday stool pigeon… Does anyone else find that damn elf as creepy as I do?! This was a weirdly cathartic strip this week.
The Making of Glen
This week has been rough. I’m dealing with some things in my personal life that have left me drained of energy, creative juices, and time. As such I needed something super simple to draw and well…. how did it get so complicated?!
I ended up tracing a photo of Elf on a Shelf and then deleting the photo layer and then repeating that with a chair that was tilted at just the right angle. Resize so both fit. Add caterpillars. And lights, and a halo around those lights with a soft wash… and there we have it!
I’m actually happy with this. More so than I thought I would be!
Well, it’s the day before Thanksgiving – otherwise known as America’s most passive-aggressive holiday and I thought I would draw a comic to reflect our ever conflicted sentiments on this event. On one hand Thanksgiving is kind of sweet – it’s a gathering of family and friends to eat a big delicious meal and give thanks to the indigenous people’s of North America for saving our asses and feeding us when we ended up on a strange new continent totally fucking unprepared. On the other hand it’s also the holiday we have to eat a whole meal with our most racist relatives and celebrate the near total genocide of aforementioned indigenous peoples…. SIGH. This is why we can’t have nice things.
To lighten the mood a bit I have decided to look at the ridiculous side of Thanksgiving – a historical narrative of pure lunacy – heavily influenced by Eddie Izzard’s “tiny flags” routine which has aged well over the years, I have to say.
The Making of Glen
This might sound insane but I have been so on top of things this week I actually drew this entire comic on Saturday, not the two minutes before release as I have been doing. As such I was able to take an idea I had and really tool with it. Mostly this came in the form of drawing things, realizing my perspective was way off, and having to resize and move them which I can do with the help of layers. WOO LAYERS! So much better than having to get it all right the first time around like in the Olden Times of Microsoft Paint!
I don’t know how much time I spent doing this but it was longer than you’d expect… I was however super relaxed listening to music and watching people get tattooed on the TV behind me. I’m a multi-tasker. This is probably how the Depressed Teddy found his way into the scene once again creating a mock Harold and Maude-esque suicide in the background. I’ve had a few chats with friends about whether or not Depressed Teddy should have an actual name and whether or not this lack of a proper name is contributing to his bleak mood. Is he Maurice the Intensive Care Bear? Or perhaps a Steve the Failed Welbutrin PR Bear? Or something cutesey like Chuckles? I don’t know…
Hell, I don’t even know a lot about Glen himself. I thought he was the size of a caterpillar but sometimes he’s the size of a teddy bear. It took me until yesterday to realize he’s been eating the mushroom to achieve this – one side makes you smaller, one side makes you bigger. I have been asked how old he is in addition to this and I just… I have nooo idea. He has an old sounding name and an archaic background story so it seems likely he’s been around forever but who knows! Not me!
