Glen the Caterpillar Comics

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Category: Literary Inspiration

Glen Stumbles Onto a Writer’s Block

It’s Monday again and as usual I am coming up blank with ideas… which gave me an idea! Here’s Glen taking a happy jaunt in the mountains when he stumbles upon… an actual writer’s block!

The Making of Glen

This week’s Glen might have been low on inspiration but it wasn’t low on enthusiasm! I have been watching a lot of Archer lately and I am so impressed by the layering and complexity that it has inspired me to take my overly simplistic little drawings and see how far I can push them. I mean I am not nearly as talented as the animators on that show but maybe someday with practice I could be… and maybe, just maybe, I should be dabbling in animation myself!

Glen Brings his Kids Trick or Treating

An early and appropriately socially distanced Happy Halloween to all my wonderful weirdoes out there! Here’s Glen doing his rounds Trick-or-Treating with is kids… all behind masks and on leashes. Bravo, little guy, you’re a brave soul.

The Making of Glen

I really toppled down the rabbit hole with this one! Spent more than four hours illustrating it because I wanted the spooky house, spooky tree, and the costumes… there’s a lot going on here. And I got to include a little Among Us fellow peeking out from the tree all “sus.” I’m not a gamer so I have to thank this inspiration to my muse and his insistence on making me watch funny YouTube videos (which I love! Don’t get me wrong!)

What did learn from this delightfully nerdcentric panel? Uhhh… how to make shadows for the tree? Everything else was just me playing with skills I already had. I am loving this one. It’s been the best in a long while.

Glen Plays “Dungeons & Dragons”

Before you all start yelling at me, “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU PLAY D&D!” I KNOW. Gawd, do I know. This week I have been repeatedly asked to join a campaign. You are so sweet for inviting me but I don’t think you truly understand what you’re asking. This Glen comic is 100% the amount of seriousness I could pull off playing. I am only good at comic relief and I don’t think that’s an actual role sooooo….

The Making of Glen

This was an interesting comic because it started out being three panels in my head, you know a little conversation between Glen and an unseen narrator, but I managed to boil it down to one adorkable image. I recycled the background of my Popple Dungeon but added a few things – mainly I blurred the grout lines to make them look a little more realistic and a little less cheesy. I’m always in the air about whether I want Glen to be super simple and campy or weirdly realistic. This is apparent in the fact I started out trying to draw an actual Dungeons and Dragons suit of armour and ended up instead arming him with a rubber chicken….

I also realize this comic might come off as a bit… mmm…. misogynistic. Trust me, as an owner of tits and a twat I am actually making fun of the trope not endorsing it. Besides, all us nerds know virgins aren’t great dragon bait – they are much better at catching unicorns.

I have no control of Glen. He damn well does what he wants to do and I am but a hapless observer.

Glen Gives a Gift to the Headless Horseman

Hey hey! Glen and myself are back after two accidental weeks on hiatus! Of course we had to come back because it’s October and Halloween season is the best of the year, especially living in New England which has such a steep tradition of horror. This week’s comic reflects this beautifully combining the Headless Horseman with the most terrifying things to ever come out of a cabbage patch. Happy October everyone!

The Making of Glen

I must admit that all these little breaks I keep taking from Glen are born to the fact that I have just been overwhelmed by life and I know with the current climate I am by far not the only one breaking under the stress. Similiarly, I have been struggling with profound disillusionment and disappointment in the human race so I felt the need this week to draw something kind.

And boy was it a challenge! My first attempt at drawing a horse resulted into a crude doodle befitting a drunk toddler. My second attempt inexplicably looked like a kangaroo which made no sense what-so-ever considering I had come to my sense by that time and was just tracing an actual horse. It took a great deal of tweaking before it looked somewhat OK. I’m now mildly satisfied with my efforts. Next week shall be better.

Glen gives the baby Kracken his first ship…

I apologize for the lack of a Glen comic last week. I had a migraine all week and was so out of it that Friday came and went without me noticing. This week I have decided to make up for this by drawing something so intensely adorable it’ll have the power to melt your heart. And here it is! Inspired by a very late night conversation about how sea monsters should be “boopable.”

The Making of Glen

This week’s Glen was a tough concept for me to gather and make into a readable image. How does one draw a Kracken in a way that makes it look like a baby? And how does one get a ship in bottle??

The answer to the first was to put the Kracken in a crib and endear it to audiences with HUGE baby eyes. As for the ship… that was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. I drew a ship and then drew a bottle around it one layer below it. Voila! Nothing else fancy done here except use layers to make the legs all make sense.

A final note here would be that right now as my mind juggles a billion other things I have found having a muse is essential. This time it was inspired by someone telling me about a story they were writing where they were criticized for making legendary sea monsters adorable. Did I hear a challenge??

Glen Meets Baby Cthulhu

It’s been a very Cthulhu-laden week and I can’t really complain! It was fun drawing him… as a baby… and who knows, maybe the reason he’s so evil is because no one showed him any love. Well, we all love you now baby Cthulhu!

The Making of Glen

This week I did something a little different by creating a three panel comic. For some reason my illustrator was NOT cooperating with me to allow me to copy and paste multiple layers so making three separate panels that were basically the same took more time than it should have. Other than that this was straight drawing. I didn’t really do anything weird, interesting, or new.

Glen Meets a Newt

“Eye of newt, and toe of frog. For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble!” Clearly I have been reading too much Shakespeare as of late. Mix that with a walloping dose of insomnia and I think my brain is pretty well melted. Good thing that really works for me… and Glen of course.

The Making of Glen

It has come to my attention that my art, writing, and yes, even these comics, can be a little intimidating to some because of their complexity and layering of many puns on top of each other. So I have decided to bring it down a little, go back to the basics and make it super simple. Maybe then Glen will be an easier sell because as it stands right now his only diehard fans are all people who know me personally and already love me for my weird brain. That’s really sweet and I’m not ungrateful buuuut I would also love for him to be a little more approachable to the outside world.

Glen Creates his own Rules of Robotics…

This week I actually drew Glen a day early! And then forgot to post it until now. I can’t be too organized you know. That might makes something implode. As usual my inspiration was…. chaotic… but I hope it worked out. Enjoy!

The Making of Glen…

I admit I put more effort into this panel than I have been lately but with that being said I think it’s a bit… busy….

I had a bunch of images in my head and I tried to make one panel of it. I experimented with the opacity of the watercolor brush (which gave a cool day glow effect) and handwrote all the wording. I used to feel this makes it look unprofessional but lately… I don’t know, I just like the individual feel of a handwritten comic. As long as it’s legible who cares if every e looks the same?!

I also tried out the ide of not separating the individual scenes into their own boxes… I am honestly not sure how I feel about the outcome. All this and I did very little new in the area of drawing and the robots look intensely crude but hey, it’s not that bad for a first attempt at drawing one I don’t think.

Glen Minds his Peas in Queues…

Hey hey! Welcome to Glen’s new release day, FRIDAY! This time I am keeping it Friday. It was total madness to change it to Wednesday and I apologize.

Anyway… I was low on inspiration this week so I decided to play with puns. I learned that the phrase, “mind your p’s and q’s” is a British saying and that historians and etymologists can’t agree on what p’s and q’s actually are… So I decided to answer that question once and for all. They’re peas and queues.

Bear with me American audience, I know “queue” is not a word we use often here (unless we work the phones somewhere) and bear with me English audience for I clearly am not British. Much love to everyone though!

The Making of Glen

This week’s comic was so obscenely simple it only took me a few minutes to draw so I have little to report on except for the fact I am learning comics can get their point across very smoothly if there’s no distractions. Simplicity. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Glen Fails at a Dad Joke

I admit it – I have been obsessed with my writing lately and not giving Glen the attention he needs. Also writing has been my entire world for a few weeks and it’s burrowed into my brain so deep that I was unable to come up with a plotline for this week’s comic that wasn’t writing related. So here we are! Making bad puns… about writing…

The Making of Glen

Today I decided to draw Glen Old School – in one layer! Using the same tools I would have in Classic Microsoft Paint. It was a fun jaunt down memory lane but only lasted until I had to put in speech bubbles and text which are automatically a new layer. And then I decided a plain solid colored background was boring so instead I put them on the beach. They like the beach. I think. I’m still struggling to get the right expression on these little buggars. Could use some help!

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