We’re back! After taking a forced week hiatus due to technical difficulties! And I know, this week’s comic is just a stupid simple pun. It’s getting back to the basics… Glen started out as a late 1960’s/1970’s inspired stoner comic. I drew it when I was a super sober and totally innocent high schooler and now look at me… STILL loving this little guy a lifetime later! Nothing in my life makes sense but I’m not complaining!
The Making of Glen
I am really loving drawing the bubble letters by hand like old music concert posters. I think it adds quite a bit of character. And of course I decided to run with the late 1960’s feel with my color scheme and choice of furniture. There isn’t anything about this I don’t adore. And although it’s simple it is the first time I put Glen in a sitting position and drew a couch/seat. I don’t think I did too bad and I am amping up the courage to maybe do an animation one of these days…
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!
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.
It’s been a weird week, what can I say? Poor Glen didn’t escape it – his kids are BRUTAL in their innocent way. Today’s comic was more an acknowledgement of my inability to draw anything beyond a ‘blob’ than a joke about his adorable chonkiness…
I know, I have been really bad at posting Glen regularly. It’s a conflict of schedule I have at the moment as well as the nature of life these days so I’m changing his day to Monday… and because I am very exhausted at seeing people argue I am making a little light of in this week’s comic. Ah Glen, my little glimmer of sanity…
I’m not sure what’s up with Glen lately but it seems like every panel I draw just gets increasingly cutesy. Today’s duck heavy theme came from an unusually hostile reaction to Ducks on a Wall by the Kinks which I personally find hilarious but apparently other’s consider audible torture. Oh well, can’t have it all.
The Making of Glen
I was hoping my illustration program would already have bubbles as an effect option but alas it didn’t so I had to resort to drawing them all one by one. I debated if I wanted to make them more realistic with little light glares on each but I realize this is a cartoon and maybe not the best place for realism. Meanwhile everything else came pretty easy as I have learned I can draw any aspect of this comic as huge as I please and just shrink it to size. This seems to work better for me. Other than that this is a simple comic with not too much fancy going on.
Today Glen shows everyone his little side hustle – perfume for cats. I think we can all agree we needed this this week. I know I did!
The Making of Glen
This week my inspiration for Glen was someone who wasn’t talking so well and said purry-fume instead of perfume. It was a long and trying week on us all but this made me laugh because I thought, “That COULD actually be a word…” And so I set about making a little infomercial. I didn’t do anything special illustrationwise but I am happy with the aesthetics none-the-less, and the idea of making the purrfume into a cat bottle that spritzes perfume out of it’s mouth… again that was all me being weird while I was drawing the thing. In the interest of keeping glen PG (which I don’t actually always want to do but my internet audience seems to want) I refrained from making a series of crude puns. SIIIIIIGH.
I think everyone is going a little insane lately. God know I am, so it’s been really nice to come up with a Glen comic I’m actually pretty proud of. Hope it made you laugh!
“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.
Another day and another stretch of a pun, what can I say? It was a weird week. In today’s panel we get to see Pirate Squirrel stealing the ultimate ride – Glen’s acorn carriage. And we get to see Depressed Teddy all tangled up in the reigns!
The Making of Glen
I have been SO focused on writing and editing lately I haven’t had much time for Glen BUT with that being said I did add a few new elements this week. The first was a muse… I was completely and utterly out of ideas so I started having a nonsense conversation with someone until something came of it. This is so much easier than coming up with a new panel every week on my own!!
Besides that the biggest challenge I had drawing today’s panel would be the position of the depressed teddy bear…. again he’s in an odd position as I have him flopped up-side-down on the seat of the carriage tangled in the reigns. It’s… interesting how a teddy bear can change my perspective of the physical world…
I also stopped myself from making this comic overly complicated as I was going to have the squirrel driving out from under a house made of nuts… but that seems like a whole ‘nother joke in and of itself so I will save it for later!
We all know that guy…. the Bit Coin guy… you know him, I know him, he’s ubiquitous. And as he blathers on and on about how cool Bit Coins are the rest of us look up with glassy eyes and go, “That’s great Joe, real great. I need to go eat lunch now.” And our profound disinterest is likely partway because virtually none of us actually know what bit coins are… although we may have some vague ideas from the colorful language around them. For instance bit coins are “mined.”
And so I sent Glen off to the mines – to mine bit coins… although by the looks of it they started out as regular chocolate coins before being bitten. Such is life with a hungry hungry caterpillar and a comic artist who likes to take things literally.
The Making of Glen
I knew I’d have a hellishly busy week so I drew this Glen on Saturday to put up on Wednesday. I was all proud of myself for being ahead of the game. Too bad my computer wasn’t so keen. I have never had this many problems drawing a comic! For some reason it wasn’t allowing me to copy more than one layer at a time which made duplicating the trolley (and it’s wheel on a second layer) a total pain but I did eventually manage!
This comic was a very basic one. Initially I was just going to draw Glen eating a coin but why would he be eating coins? He’s not actually a toddler though he sort of looks like it – and then I thought, “Because they’re chocolate. DUH.” But just one frame – a head shot of him gnawing on a single coin seemed… too plain. So I decided he should be mining these coins and just for effect I should add the Depressed Teddy somewhere doing his usual depressing thing. This time I figured he should be reaching longingly for a lit stick of dynamite in a moment of intense anticipation not dissimilar to the comics in The Book of Bunny Suicides. And the expression on his face remindes me of yet another suicidal teddy bear – the one on Supernatural…
Anyway… dark humor aside this comic was nice in it taught me patience as well as how to make a complex idea in a simple way – something I think may help Glen in the future.
