Since I don’t have time to make animated cartoons any more – and how’d that happen, by the way? – I’ve been spending a lot more time drawing static comics lately. At first I thought this would be a good deal easier. Since the images didn’t have to move, I figured, I could churn out ten times as many of them.

Alas, it’s not so easy. The movement in the foreground of an animated cartoon lets you get away with simple solid colours behind, whereas a comic, I’ve discovered, looks empty unless you put some scenery behind the characters. As another example, when I was making the Spokesmonster cartoons we always saw him from the same head-on perspective, so I just re-used the same three monster heads over and over again; comics demand a little more variation in the perspective, so each individual figure needs to be drawn.

Having spent many hours over the past few weeks creating this comic for my co-worker’s band Sexy Mathematics, and many more hours creating this other comic for the StepRep platform for online business directories, I have a renewed respect for real comic book artists, who have to churn out a twenty-page issue every month. Of course, they’ve got an unfair advantage over me: they actually know how to draw. Me, I have to take photos of my subjects and painstakingly trace them.

So thanks to Chris and Liz from Sexy Mathematics, and to Nicole and Tavis who posed for the StepRep comic. (Consider growing sideburns, Tavis. Seriously.)

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