Held steady today… inked one, pencilled four more.
Oh, and I found a GLARING error in a strip I inked yesterday. Tagon refers to Breya as being “single.” Silly me. She’s married and I know it. The good news is that I can change the text to be even MORE in character for Tagon.
I only mention it because this is the first time an error of that magnitude has gotten that far along. Sandra and I BOTH missed it, silly us.
Sandra and the kids are going to be gone for the weekend, and I leave for S. Africa before they get back, which means that when I get home from work tomorrow I’ll have the house to myself.
Whether this means super-productive time or not remains to be seen. Sure would be nice to stack up a bunch ‘o buffer on Saturday.
–Howard
This brings to mind a question I’ve always wondered. How far beyond the already buffered strips do you have specific story elements planned out? I mean, you have scripted strips, and then you presumably have some form of wide plan…like, “OK, Petey will go boom someday.”
But, for example, when did you decide to do a CSI parody? When you started scripting the relevant strips, or before then?
It depends. I knew Petey was going boom almost a year before it happened. I know things that are going to happen two and three years ahead. Other stuff I don’t know until I script it and the Voices In My Head start making changes to my well-laid plans.
I knew I was going to do a CSI parody when I decided to do one, which was about a week before I started drawing it. I sat down and scripted the principal plot points for the whole story, and then started cranking out individual scripts.
The hard part here is that the JOKES (presumably the part that makes the “daily installment” schedule bearable) don’t get scripted ahead of time. Those I come up with on the fly. Very, very few good gags are planned for and plotted into from a distance.
–Howard
K’know, it still blows me away that you can say “and I leave for S. Africa” without blinking an eye, as if you were just crossing the street to go to the corner store or something…
This’ll be my seventh trip. I went twice in ’98, once each year in ’99, 2000, 2001, and then they cancelled the show for 2002. I went back in 2003 (and bought cool boots), and now it’s 2004 and I’m going back again.
In ’99 I took Sandra with me. THAT was logistically tricky, what with the dropping off of the kids, but pretty much every trip since then has been a lot like crossing the street (except for the 20+ hours of travel time, the jet lag, and the technological marvel of the 747 I ride on).
–Howard
Does your 747 have a spiral staircase, or is it one with the elevators or straight staircases instead?
Straight stairs. Nothing super-fancy, and I always fly coach…
–Howard
Give him time – soon he’ll be saying that about Mars, too. 🙂
Yeah, Tagon’s odd…
On the one hand you sometimes make him appear to have so little brains that Groo would out-think him, and then on the other he’ll suddenly do something very clever, strategically. It’s like he’s an idiot savant, with the savant part having to do with direct combat-related stuff. (sort of like Son Goku, except he needs mercs to provide most of the firepower).
I suspect that forgetting that Breya is married would be something mediated by more than just stupidity, though.
BTW: BRING BACK PETEY!