Cliff x Father Eugene- Spaghetti (Patreon)

Oh boy, this one has been in the works since JULY and I just kept putting other things on my plate and finding no time for this. I'm excited to have it done! This is one of the major plot points I had written down, to move the story into the next section! Oh nooo, they have to spend MORE time together? When poor Eugene thought he was off the hook.

Truly I didn't need to go so hard with this, but I do find it hard to stop myself! And tbh, I love drawing kids, it was really fun to have different body language to explore, and how Cliff and Eugene would work in that situation. Someone said that Eugene is more a calm grandparent, and Cliff is still a kid, 100% on the money haha.

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Here are the references I used! The table ended up being square because curved edges are hard, and also ended up covered up by a tablecloth...but I DID like the idea of them having a fold out table for more guests. The bug was so cute I had to include it even if it's a bit weird. it's called tug-a-bug and it's a fisher price toy from 1975 :P. The dollhouse is sesame street, though as with most things when I actually draw them it ends up as more colour blobs than anything else. I'm so pleased I pulled off the sofa, patterns are tricky to simplify in a readable way, but I think I managed pretty well.

those kid outfits are something else. I loved drawing Sarah's little dresses, though. (I did name them all yes. Car kid is Danny, then Sarah, then baby Jeremy. And the parents are Barbara and Robert. and. eldest son is Michael... who is not even in it.)

Sarah's actually from this comic, I made her a proper character because I thought the idea of Eugene having a little fan was very cute. I like how being nice and actually paying attention to kids immediately bags you 'favourite ever' status. (If you haven't looked closely at the comic, I recommend looking at each kid throughout the pages, I had a good time putting little mini-narratives in the dinner scene.)

Unrelated, I had to look up what food people ate back then, and apparently spaghetti was coming into fashion in the 60's and 70's, I thought it might be cute for Eugene to find it quite novel, still.

(source)

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Process etc!

Playdoh reference... Would I recommend this? Not really. Did it help? Kind of. At least with visualising who would cover who when I was at certain angles, but the perspective of my photos was too extreme and the models weren't exactly accurate ;P so it made things a bit wobbly!

For some of them I just referenced loosely instead of tracing, and that worked better. Excuse half a lamp, I guess I coloured this one with the speech bubbles covering things like a fool. (Don't do this, you'll cry when you have to move a bubble)

Speaking of reference, tbh most of the time I don't need it for people, but sometimes when a pose is complex I find something, like this jump!

I also traced this car, god bless whoever made a renault 4 model that OPENS. I love you.

I actually defaulted to yorkshire countryside for that last pic and had to add in civilization, lol.

Colouring:

Nothing like colouring to give me the most extreme imposter syndrome. I wanted to just lay down and wither into dust at the beginning of every new setting/room. I felt like it was just extremely non cohesive and I was feeling blindly in the dark trying to find colours that worked. At the end I showed Hari the bottom left and they told me that my saturated backgrounds were kind of drawing the eye away from the nice detailed realistically coloured backgrounds, and that was honestly very helpful. I think Previously bright colours were my thing and I'm a fish out of water now.

For example, my webcomic (pdf)! It was so bright haha, and I think because most things were abstract, and not local colour, I could just be like 'ok, this thing that is usually brown is pink because it looks better' or 'everything is blue' and now I'm like. Doing something much more toned down and have to learn much more subtle colour combos. Also I'm being stupid and stubborn and don't want to rely too hard on layer effects etc. Which I definitely used to do. And it looks good! But I want to learn (said through gritted teeth).

I actually pulled up some animated movies for reference in the end. I wanted the simple colour characters and backgrounds, but because I didn't use any lighting or gradients in the bg it was tricky. This was still very helpful as a starting point with the sort of peach/teal/yellow combo that I used a lot

At this point I was like. Can I just Not add a shading colour layer, and yes! I can't believe how much difference some chunky black lines make.

You'd think I would remember, considering this was the same technique, but nay.
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I'm putting this at the end because it's Such a tangent lol. So this isn't the book they're reading, I didn't choose anything specific, but I was looking up 80s kids books and this one made me bawl hahahaha, one that's absolutely written for the kids to laugh at, and the parents to cry at.

Thank you for reading, and for supporting me making these incredibly self indulgent comics!