What are people skills? How I mine for friends?
Note: I tried to link to the origin of “How I mine for fish?” in case the younger folks didn’t get the joke, but Know Your Meme apparently didn’t do one on it and all Google wants to give me is one-offs riffing on the joke and articles about how literal mining destroys literal, real world fish habitats. While important information, this is not what I meant, Google. Feel free to ruin the joke and/or tell me I’m not funny in the comments. 👇
Don’t let a minor thing like a death glare throw you off, Steve-O! Keep trying! I’m sure Kevin’ll come around. Eventually???
If anyone is keeping track of how many times characters blush, you’d better update your chart today. And let me know who’s winning: Biiku or Maddy? 😳
Is this the Meet Cute? Or was that earlier? How long does a single instance of Meet Cute Last?
I would also be stricken if my school closed their burrito bar. Assuming I went to school and they had a burrito bar in the first place, which is kind of a stretch, but what are you gonna do? If the CW has 25+ year olds playing their high schoolers, mine can have a burrito bar.
I spent an inordinate amount of time on this page, mostly banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the best way to draw a new complicated background that would be seen from multiple angles and with a zillion background characters milling around. Also, UGH, background characters. 😭
I don’t have a great solution as it stands, but I got to the point where I knew I needed to just suck it up and draw some off angles by hand and let the perfectionism go. It was becoming an excuse to procrastinate and get all anxious over nothing. Anyway, it’s up now! Page 50 is already inked, and 51 is partly inked, so let’s see how quickly I can pump those out if I stop giving myself an aneurysm over the cafeteria. 😤
Blah, blah, blah, because we all know you’re just here for the dog. I mean, even I’m only here for the dog. I should’ve named my webcomic “Bronwen is Best Dog, Obviously” instead of Tomodachi Forever. What was I thinking?? 🤔
I watched Riverdale, that Archie TV series where Jughead is a brooding emo teen, while working on this page and UGH, I LOVE IT. Teen angst forever, y’all. The only problem is there’s lots of fleeting moments you really need to be watching the screen to get, which makes it hard to draw to since I’m mostly listening and glancing. So many times I’d hear those cinematic pauses that make you snap back to reality and rewind because you KNOW you missed something important. A look, or even just someone not looking. So, so good! It’s on Netflix so check it out, then you can @ me on Twitter and tell me how much you hate my problematic faves or whatever.
Preston, there’s only 12 people in your squad. If you’re whispering in the ranks, Yukiko Takahashi is still gonna hear you. Duh.
Aw, poor Jon! Maybe try not dating within your squad, huh? And I guess also develop psychic abilities so you can avoid ever dating anyone who might ever later become part of your squad.
To avoid confusion because of the tags, her name is Yukiko Takahashi (Preston will refer to her by her first name on the next page). I’m trying to only use first names for character tags, but ROTC students are typically using last names so…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I kind of want to name this page PUPPY or something, but the dog is kind of incidental. I GUESS. Bee tee dubs, her name is Bronwen and she’s a pibble and she’s The Best*.
I try not to do too many pages with very few panels, but I also don’t want to fall into Talking Head Syndrome, and if you can’t see people from at least about the knees up, you don’t usually get to see any dogs present in the scene and that just WILL NOT do, okay? All must see Bronwen. ❤🐶
*Please note all dogs are The Best Dog. ALL. DOGS.
Oh, Leo! You should know by now Tom has no sense of humor.
When it comes to client work, I’m always conscientious of efficiency. When someone else is footing the bill for my time, I don’t want to waste it. When I’m working on my own art, there’s considerably less urgency toward efficiency and I get on these perfectionist streaks fixing single pixel mistakes and deciding which of 567 fonts is just right for a sound effect. (I’m kidding, of course. I actually have 753 fonts right now.)
Which is all to say that I may have spent an hour and a half perfecting that “NOPE” over Preston’s head. Surprisingly little of that time was spent on the skull, to be honest. Ahem.
