I noodled and doodled this comic for the past few months trying to come to a decision on format, story, setting. Most of it came very easily. I had the name picked out in 2006 and I knew it was going to be a riff on the classic FRPG genre that I cut my teeth on (starting with the D&D red box, Mentzer edition, c. 1984). But it wasn’t until just very, very recently (like a couple of weeks) that I settled on the opening storyline and characters and the fact that I would populate this fantasy city with anthropomorphic animal characters.

I don’t know if I’m a typical fan of the “funny animal” genre. I suppose just using that term pretty much establishes where I’m coming from. My entry to this approach to comics (not really a “genre”, is it?) was of course through a combination of classic cartoons like Warner Bros. and many of the old Hanna-Barbera characters, but also via certain comic books. Most notably was Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw (!). I discovered CCaHAZC purely by accident as a wee lad of maybe 14 years in a flea market 25-cent box. The owner of the market got discarded/unsold comics from local stores for cheap and sold them for a quarter each. I’d swindle my mother out of a couple of quarters each time we went there (we were sellers) and I just happened upon CC one day. For the next few months in that magical summer I hit that quarter box as often as possible and managed to put together a collection of the first 6 or 7 issues. I spent many, many hours re-reading them over and over.

Later I discovered Usagi Yojimbo and a few other titles but I don’t think it’s possible to over-state how magical and meaningful an impact CC had on me. Now I’m not doing superhero stuff at this point, but I’m wedding that great love of “funny animals” to my great love of old FRPGs and trying to produce a good, enjoyable, and hopefully sustainable comic series.

I tend to obsess over the form and format of the comics I make. In the past this was a matter of certain necessity, way back in the Stone Age days before there was the Digital Revolution. See, back then we had to make sure our stuff would fit nicely on a sheet of paper that could run through a photocopy machine or – if we were willing to go belly up on printing costs – on a standard comic page of some kind. We also had to make very serious decisions about color because back then color was major mojo. So for most of my life as an artist I’ve been in the black and white line art game, sticking with digest-friendly formats.

But the digital age changed all that. Today an artist can publish immediately, in color, in any size he wants. Cheap.

Of course I still think about printing. I love the feel of a good printed comic book in my hands and I certainly would like to see this comic printed up at some point. So I opted for a format that was both screen-friendly (landscape) and would translate well into print. If you take two pages of Zyn Dweomer and stack them vertically you end up with a perfect fit for a standard comic book page. Sweet.

Not that I didn’t obsess over it for a time. My friends at the Wizards of Ur sketch blog can attest to the fact that I went through several incarnations of this comic prior to launching it. But in the end I fell into this format very easily and very comfortably and I’m happy to report that I haven’t given the decision a second thought since.

Up next, some notes about the technical side of things. Geek speak!

So far most of the scenes are in dark places or at night so I’ve felt comfortable with simple black panel borders. But once I have a daylight shot I think that might change a little. I’m not sure.

I don’t know if other artists do it this way, but I tend to work out a lot of details right on the page as I go. I did a lot of prep work on this comic but it was mostly related to setting and story and not so much in the realm of visual designs. I did sketches of most of these characters prior to putting them on the pages but in some cases I wasn’t exactly certain how someone should look. Hurke was really easy. I had him pegged pretty much from the first sketch. Rin Rin Volar seems to be fairly easy (the purple cat). Strangely, Naola is challenging me. I think it’s because I’m trying to draw her as a practical, tough adventurer yet still a sexy character. Not t’n’a sexy, just naturally sexy. I’m not sure.

I guess that stuff will work itself out as I go. Already I’m more comfortable with her look. I was having some issues with drawing her from different angles, just trying to keep the consistency, but that’s starting to gel for me too.

The format is working for me. I was worried about that. I experimented with strips and with “manga” formatted pages but the landscape half-comic page is really doing the trick for me.

Still tooling along with a Monday and Friday schedule, so hopefully that will stick for a while.