Barrel Scrapings

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Let's Go Fly a Kite

Hopefully you’ve seen Mary Poppins or this won’t make all that much sense to you. But fear not, YouTube has every clip known to man: . I experimented with a new approach this time, using digital watercolor brushes for the background and alcohol marker brushes for the foreground. I wanted a bit of a looser style, allowing colors to escape the frame at some points, and even letting the characters leave the frame.

Mutually Assured Affection

This is a departure in many ways. I have done watercolor off and on for years before starting any sort of comics. I wanted a change of pace from the standard digital workflow. This started with the concept that was more traditionally ‘comic’ - I have been wanting to try some new things and challenges such as using fewer / no words. After I started prototyping the project, I decided not to add the thought bubbles - I think it stands on its own without the explicit indication of what the owner is thinking, and becomes more universal.

When Social Media Influencers Get Married

A lot of weddings I’ve been to have a designated hashtag to collect pictures or posts. Given I’ve been dipping my toes into social media to post these comics, I thought it would be pretty absurd to apply the same level of hashtags that a lot of social media posts have to a wedding context. Of course, I’m now a hypocrite because now I also post a large number of hashtags.

Tyrannosaurus Rx

I got the inspiration for this comic from the New York Times crossword, where a clue (or solution) said “Tyrannosaurus Rx”. Eventually I hit on this idea. Here is a compressed time lapse of the creation of this comic:

Dutch Tilting at Windmills

A “Dutch tilt” or “Dutch angle” is a film technique that involves rotating the camera so that the horizon line isn’t level. (Kudos to my brother Nathan for telling me about it). The following video uses a scene from Mission: Impossible to illustrate why and how it’s used: I am still learning the “Comic Draw” app, which I really like, but whose screen recording functionality is much flakier than Procreate.

Fun With Perspective

Here is the original sketch I did in Procreate:

Teenage Mutant Crocodilians

When I watched Tiger King, there was a section about dead crocodiles. One of the interview subjects described them as “Crocodilians”; I thought that was a funny turn of phrase. Later I had a dream in which I heard the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song with Crocodilians substituted for Ninja Turtles. By the way, it turns out crocodilians is a real word and not a neologism; see Crocodilia on Wikipedia.

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© Nicholas Dunn 2023