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Glen vs Leftover Halloween Candy Round 1

It’s the first week of November which means all the Halloween candy is likely gone and there’s a lot of rumbly tummies and regrets. Glen is no exception… here he is covered in chocolate and remorse.

The Making of Glen

This week I didn’t do too much different or special although it did take me a lot of time. I just found a photo of a pile of candy and and traced over it with a fresh layer eventually deleting the original photo as I resized the pile to suit my needs. Then I added a very fat little caterpillar and for that added kick I then threw more candy on top of him. He’s not feeling so good now…

Though this week’s comic does make me feel weirdly guilty like I am torturing a real entity and not just a doodle. I wonder if any other comic illustrators feel like that? I know writers sometimes do – because I’m also a writer (who for some terrifying reason is currently working on a children’s book because I need MORE self-taught illustrating skills!)

Glen Explores the Dark Web…

Today we get to play with puns and give a tip of the hat to all the tech geeks out there as Glen discovers the “dark web.” In his world this is just the web created by a certain black widow who is a call back to Glen Joins Tinder. What’s not answered is whether or not he knew what he was getting into when he went in there… or how he’ll get out… Best wishes there bud!

The Creation of Glen…

I have also decided to separate my descriptions of the panel each week with how I made them. I would love to show my progress as I evolve as an illustrator – something I think would bore most people to tears. So for everyone who likes learning about this sort of thing I will write these passages under part two of every entry The Creation of Glen – something all the people here who just want to see the comic can happily skip over.

Now keep in mind I have no formal training or education in animation, drawing, computer sciences, or literally anything else. What you see here on my website is the creations of an avid autodidact – that is I teach myself everything. Most people would take a course or at least watch a lot of YouTube tutorials but me… I prefer to blunder around pushing shiny buttons until something explodes. It’s an imprecise and sometimes terrifying way to learn things but it’s going to be reflected beautifully in this part of the blog so here goes nothing!

This weeks panel is a wonderful Frankenstein’s monster of layers and callbacks. When I initially started drawing Glen again just a few short months ago my only previous experience was drawing him in Classic Microsoft Paint where layers were just not a thing. I am shocked at the amount of things you can do with layers! In this week’s comic I took the background from Glen Stumbles Into Popples Dungeon, the web from Charlotte’s Dear John in Glen Stumbles into an Awkward Moment, and the black widow from Glen Joins Tinder for Bugs. It made what would have easily taken five or more hours detailing and reduced it to a smooth hour and a half while maintaining the same high quality.

I never intended to have so many call back characters. Some of them I knew would return but mostly I figured these would just be Glen doing his Glen things by himself like the old days. More surprising is Glen’s world gave clarity to his size. I never knew how big he was… in my mind he was either the size of a teddy bear or just was randomly whatever size I needed him to be in each scene. Well now that I have somewhat accidentally added so many other bugs I can say with certainty he’s the size of a particularly rotund tomato worm.

In addition to using layers from previous comics I also learned how to invert an image when I discovered I needed The Black Widow facing in the opposite direction than the one she was in the original comic and I learned how to draw a layer that you could see previous layers underneath by reducing the opacity of the Fill tool. I needed to do this to cast a light from Glen’s glorious head lamp. And of course upon doing that I blurred the lines of the light to make it look more like real light and less like a crudely drawn cartoon.

I cannot believe how much I have been able to learn just doodling a few comics and I have my hopes set for someday making them even better as my skills improve. Ultimately I may cross the threshold from illustrator to animator and that’s when I can really call for a personal toast.

Until then I will continue bringing you the best content I can,

With love,

Theo

Glen’s Trusty Steed Asks for a Promotion…

With Halloween approaching I felt like Glen needed a nice costume. Delighted he told me he wanted to go as Zorro and the giant snail could go as his trusty steed Tornado but I guess the lines of communication got crossed because they both showed up as Zorro… SIGH.

This is really what happens when you combine a lack of inspiration, the advice of a muse, and a few flu-induced fever dreams. Suffice to say it’s been a rough week but Glen, as usual, made it worth it. I cannot tell you how happy I am with my progress as these panels get more and more complex complete with many layers of scenery, texture, and costuming. It’s SO NICE to be able to show the world just a sliver what’s going through my strange mind. Here’s hoping you find this week’s comic as adorable as I did. Signing out with love,

Theophanes Avery

Glen Joins Tinder for Bugs…

Glen returns from a brief hiatus with a three panel comic on a new day! Hump Day! Which is when I will be posting all the new Glen comics from here on out in the hopes of gathering more love for this strange little caterpillar.

As for the Tinder? Well, he really pulled it out to show Boris from the last comic but alas, as usual he got carried away… as did I writing terrible puns into bug profiles which is WAY more entertaining than writing human profiles!

Glen Stumbles into an Awkward Moment…

It’s my favorite month of the year – October! And since Halloween is just around the corner I thought this week’s comic should be about something spooky – and that’s how I came up with spiders. Keeping to my musical theme the only song I could think of was The Who’s Boris the Spider and for some reason that combined in my head with Charlotte’s Web and before I knew it there was a torrid break up scene wheeling its way through my strange mind.

So there you have it. How spider break ups work. An answer to a question no one asked.

Glen Releases the Kracken

This week’s comic was an absolute joy to draw. This was the first time since I started this website that Glen decided to take me for a ride. This was not at all what I was trying to draw when I started but I must say I am super happy with the results! I feel like I finally reclaimed Glen’s disturbingly cute spirit.

And this is the first comic I have drawn that’s more than one panel! I think I will do that more often now. I am having so much fun working with layers and adding details that now my mind is on fire with the idea of perhaps doing an animation someday.

This comic was supposed to be another joke on a popular song but with the addition of a Kraken that went out the window and I am at a loss as to any songs that do in fact describe such a wonderful beast. So if you happen to know some kick ass death metal song about a giant killer squid, or perhaps some sort of acapella punk ballad about sunken ships, please leave them in the comments! All genres welcome!

Oh and since I was working with layers I was able to quickly jot up this bonus panel which looks like it’d make an awesome meme…

Glen Stumbles into the Popples’ Dungeon…

Alright. I know you’re all probably staring at this in somewhat shocked horror. Just HOW did I come up with this one?! And the answer is quite simple. Vermont. Vermont should take 100% of the blame for this intensely disquieting image.

Vermont is a crazy place full of artists, recluses, hippies, and people with a weird sense of humor so I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised to learn that there isn’t one Popples Dungeon Road but rather two a hundred miles apart and smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Clearly this got the gears in my head turning. Who named their road Popples Dungeon and what the hell does that mean?! Are these iconic 1980’s plush toys being tortured there?? In the middle of the woods?!

Not exactly. The original Popples Dungeon Road has been named that since before living memory which makes it a bit of a mystery. The second Popples Dungeon came about when a bored teenager stole the road sign to the original road and brought it home, displaying it at the end of his unnamed private road for decades, periodically replacing it until in 1993 it was finally registered as the road’s official name… by someone… no one really knows who.

So there we are with a hilarious story, likely a great deal of confused delivery men, and a terrible picture ripped from my warped imagination. Hope you enjoyed it!

Glen Discovers a Problem with his Deadpool Costume…

I remember when the Deadpool movie was coming out. I had no idea who or what Deadpool was and only could imagine one of those fish tanks full of deceased guppies at Walmart… you know, a dead pool.

I did however watch with some glee and intrigue as others argued among themselves about it. Would this movie do the original Deadpool justice? Would he be a psychopathic killer who shags anyone and everyone he sees? And then the obvious… nope… he’s been mainstreamed and cuteyfied, like the Ninja Turtles!

But my issue with Deadpool wasn’t any of the above. I’m not enough of a nerd to care that much about him buuuuut I could wonder how the fuck he was breathing without a mouth hole. My issue was with the artist and his general design. WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SMOTHER HIM?!

Welcome to my mind. It goes off a lot.

PS Glen’s hapless children will always be more subtly disturbing to me than any pansexual serial killer…

Glen in Misheard Song Lyric #1

This song came to me one day when I decided to let YouTube play whatever it wanted to. After about four hours it fell face first into a pocket of modern British music that was completely and utterly new to me- a hapless American just trying to mess with the algorithms. This led to four more hours of nervous laughter and confusion as I went about my daily chores, occasionally looking up to see what was playing. At one point the Arctic Monkey’s Cornerstone came up and I couldn’t turn away. This wasn’t the raucous happy music that was playing before it. It was just…. face-peelingly awkward. Of course this endeared me to it because I fucking love English awkwardness. Peep Show level awkwardness.

So this lodged itself in my brain as I listened. The only problem is I found this particular accent to be a smidge hard to understand at times so it’s not really that surprising I got it wrong and heard, “I kept my chocolates to myself” instead of, “I kept my shortcuts to myself” but at that point I couldn’t change it. The image was already planted in my head. WITH CHOCOLATES. Because chocolate makes everything better. So do itchy red sweaters. An homage to the original video. And you know what? Now that I know what the lyrics actually are I’m still hearing chocolates.

So now you know what happens when you mix awkward lyrics, bad ears, and a rubbery caterpillar. Stuff. Lots of stuff.

Glen Dresses as a Dapper Gent

This was my first attempt at doing anything fancy with Glen when I picked up the new Wacom tablet. I had no idea how anything functioned on it so I was just playing with textures, colors, and special effects. I had no idea what Glen would look like when I started but what ended up coming out of that experimentation seems to be Glen dressed as a dapper Victorian gent. Why? I don’t know but I think it’s goddamn adorable and I am totally digging the random bits of curly hair. Also I’m not buying the fact he looks super polite here. His posture is just too good. He’s up to something. I don’t really know what.