Changing Gears

There’s been this idea in the back of my head over the last year. It’s one of those ideas that lingers and sometimes fades, but you keep revisiting it. It eventually becomes too dominant to ignore. Your inspiration betrays your more cautious mind, and eventually convinces your rational mind to join the side of ballsy indulgence. This time has come. The fact that this could either be a colossal mistake or an outstanding expansion opportunity is irrelevant to where my bullheaded stubborn determination, fuelled by an unstoppable wellspring of inspiration, is concerned. I didn’t get to the happy state I’m in, now, by compromising my inspiration to the current of the mob.

UPDATE: This is an April Fools post. Despite there being a subsequent entry mentioning this fact, people are still posting forelorn and heartbroken comments to this entry as if it's real.

Over the next few months, Better Days will be undergoing a seismic shift. It’s done me well with over 400 pages, gradually shaping my style and improving it bit by bit. I’ve decided to use it as a means of getting better in my next area of self-improvement. Chapter 18 will be about Fisk coming home and a bit of fallout in the aftermath of his war experience. Once it is concluded, the Better Days plot will resume as a fresh web-comic with the characters re-cast as human cartoons. “Chapter 19” will be appearing as“Chapter 1” of Volume 2. Volume 2 will appear as a new link in the Entertainment Menu on the front page, as well as the two existing web-comicdisplay pages for Better Days and New Worlds. I realize this may cause some consternation amongst the fan ranks, but bear in mind: Do you like something just because it’s furry? Or do you like something because it’s good? It’ll be the same comic… sort of. I haven’t decided how this is going to affect the pornographic spin-offs that appear in the catalog, yet.

I’ve had a lot of fun scribbling up brainstorms and designs for human versions of the usual characters. A lot of these are still preliminary, but I’ve started adding regular practice into my usual sketch warm-up routine each day. This is a first-stab at Fisk and Lucy as human beings. Fisk’s face looks rather young and Lucy’s hair doesn’t translate quite as well, so I’ll probably experiment with a few different styles for her. She looks like she’s fresh off the prairie or something.

This was one of the better ones of Amy. She translates very well, here. Originally intended to be a freckled, Southern stereotype, he rexact archetype was more difficult to visually convey as an anthropomorphic cat.

I think Beth took the cuteness prize when I adapted her. She just fell right into it like a natural. Black lipstick is usually somewhat off-putting on real people, but on a cartoon person, it looks somewhat cute.

Here’s Sheila in a quaint little super-mom pose.

This is a first shot at Jessica and Robert. Jessica looks highly stylized, here, and I made her more “sly” looking than her usual stupid-happy. I didn’t originally intend for Robert to look like a chiseled specimen of the Master Race, but he looked better as a blonde. I’ll probably forgo the facing cheek-line in any future depictions.