I just receive
d some pretty amazing fanart from John Cuellar and Roman Wunderlich of B Movie Comic. It’s a fancy version of Frog Prince in 1700’s clothes, and it’s quite remarkable. Click on the thumbnail to see the art in its full glory.
If anyone else has any fanart they’d like to submit, please send it my way. If I get enough, perhaps I’ll create a fanart gallery.
It’s that time again when the school year ends and summer comics begin.
Starting next week, Suburban Fairy Tales will now be in summer mode. That doesn’t mean that I’ll update less, it just means that all your favorite characters are moving to the beach. I always enjoy the summer strips because it gives the strip a change of scenery for two and a half months.
This also happens to be the summer of a new Suburban Fairy Tales book, which is just about complete and ready for printing. It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since This Little Piggy Gets Even (the last Suburban Fairy Tales book) was published. The new book, There’s a Frog Prince in my Throat, will be the biggest Suburban Fairy Tales book yet. It compiles two years worth of strips and clocks in at 115 pages, with eight of those pages being previously unpublished material.
So enjoy the summer while you can because in about a week you’ll start to see all those big, depressing advertisements for the “back to school” sales at your favorite stores. Yay. Just what we all want to see in June.
A third Suburban Fairy Tales book collection is coming out this summer, and here’s a sneak preview of the tentative cover. Titled, I’ve Got a Frog Prince in my Throat, the book should be published this July.
In addition to featuring two years worth of Suburban Fairy Tales comic strips, the new book will also contain an assortment of previously unpublished work exclusive to the book.
Keep checking back for more information on the official release date. Your comments regarding the cover are always welcome!
A double review of the second Suburban Fairy Tales collection, This Little Piggy Gets Even is up on Spandexless.com. What’s interesting is that two different writers reviewed it and they both had contrasting opinions.
If you’re interested in reading the reviews check them out on Spandexless. The site is also a great resource for those of you looking to read about and discover comics that have nothing to do with superheroes (hence the name Spandexless).
One thing that I’ve always found the most difficult to draw in cartoons are “dot eyes.”
Before I attempted drawing dot eyes for the first time, I would always draw a character’s eyes as a circle with a dot in the middle to show their pupil. In my style of cartooning, that method looks like a mix between Garfield’s eyes and big Japanese manga-style eyes. When I started Suburban Fairy Tales in 2005, Little Pig #3’s character design screamed out to me that dot eyes would suit him best, so I thought I would go ahead and try something different.
Little Pig #3 circa 2005
At first, I drew Little Pig #3’s dot eyes perfectly round with a little shine in the corner – they looked almost like little black buttons on his face. I found this way of drawing eyes much more challenging than in my past cartoons. Sure, I’ve used dot eyes occasionally, but never on a main character. Using this method introduced some new challenges. How do I use dot eyes to show varying degrees of emotion? How do I show dot eyes looking up, down, left or right? It was always so simple with my usual way of drawing eyes, but now I was struggling.
Error the robot from "Made To Malfunction"
As long-time fans know, Suburban Fairy Tales took a two-year hiatus starting in 2006 so I could concentrate on Made To Malfunction. The star of this new series was a robot named Error, who also happened to have dot eyes. The way I drew Error’s dot eyes differed from the way I drew Little Pig’s. Error’s eyes were drawn more oval instead of circular, and gone was the little shine that was present in Little Pig #3’s eyes. Being that Error was now the star character, he was featured in almost every strip. So I really had to push the way I drew dot eyes the next two years. By the time Made To Malfunction ended in 2008, I felt I had come a long way with conveying emotion using dot eyes.
When Suburban Fairy Tales re-started in 2008, I took what I learned from drawing the robot Error and applied it to Little Pig #3. Gone were the little circular button eyes with the shine that I had previously drawn him with. Instead I took the same eyes what I had used for Error – big, black oval dot eyes – and put them on Little Pig #3. Humpty Dumpty and Goldilocks (a new character) also used these types of eyes as well.
Little Pig #3 with BIG dead-looking dot eyes in 2009
The problem with the big black oval dot eyes on Little Pig #3 (and on Goldilocks and Humpty) was that Error was a robot. Big black oval dot eyes worked well on something made of metal and circuits. But Little Pig #3 was organic, a living thing. Taking a machine’s eyes and applying them to Little Pig didn’t turn out to be the best idea. Error’s dot eyes were just too big for Little Pig’s face – he looked like he was dead! So as time went on, I shrunk Little Pig #3’s dot eyes (along with Goldilock’s and Humpty’s) to a more acceptable size. Now the size I draw dot eyes are just a tad above what Charles Schultz used for his characters in Peanuts.
The way I draw dot eyes has been a bit of a roller coaster ride from when I first started, but I’m very happy with the way they have evolved. As they say with anything you do — you only get better with practice.
Little Pig #3 as he looks in 2012
