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.
Welcome to Chapter 3, cupcakes!
I had to do the backgrounds twice because I realized after the first time that I had oriented the room wrong. I built a 3D model of the school in Sims 3 several months ago, specifically to save me from this sort of thing. Otherwise I’d just be guessing all the time and every building would have Escher-style architecture.
I actually tried building sets in Sketch-Up so I could use filtered screenshots for backgrounds, but the learning curve was way to high for the amount of time and patience I had. Instead I plan spaces out in Sims and then draw them in Photoshop. Works well so far! My goal is to be able to reuse a lot of backgrounds. Even though there’s a ton of different set locations, most of them come up in multiple scenes.
Oh, and I was thinking I’d release the Sims-created sets for download, though I’m not sure how much interest there would be. I did, of course, create Sims versions of the characters as well, to, uh, test the buildings. Yeah, that’s it.
New classroom! New character! New TATTOOS! Get it while it’s hot!
