Making Of "Cube" (Patreon)

I have a strong memory of being at the dentists when I was little, waiting while my Mum had her turn in the chair and playing with the Rubik's Cube they had there. The thing was battered from countless other children removing the stickers, so I did the same to "solve" the cube. The funniest thing is I distinctly recall how proud I was! I knew I hadn't done it the way you're supposed to, but in my young mind, finding this loophole was just as ingenious! 😂

Roll onto present day and my 11yo got hyper fixated on Rubik's Cubes for about a week. Of course, now you can look up guides online, but I was still super impressed when he proudly showed me his solved cube! Seeing it triggered the memory of me proudly showing my Mum and I chuckled as wrote down the idea!

The first challenge for the comic was drawing Vincent holding the cube up. I wanted the cube to be fully visible, but also his proud face. You can see in the vid it took some trial and error to find the right composition!

Finding images of Rubik's Cubes online was no problem, but finding ones taken at exactly the right angle was trickier. As I'm typing this now, I don't know why I didn't think to go and photograph his actual cube, but for some reason it didn't occur to me at the time! 😅 Oh well! I managed to find the angles I needed, although it was oddly annoying having to work with the first one jumbled!

Fran's face in the second panel was a bit of an adventure! I wanted to capture the pride she felt for Vincent's success, but also that wistful look of remembering something. In the end the winner was tilting the head back with the correct eyebrows + eyelids combo!

Once the comic was posted I was chastised by cubers for getting the colors wrong! I hadn't considered there being a correct arrangement, but of course that makes sense!

People thought maybe it was evidence of Vincent cheating by popping the cube apart and reassembling it, but I hadn't actually wanted to show that -he really did solve it! My thoughts were only on which colors would look best in the comic. White doesn't pop great and Vincent's white, and orange and yellow are too close to Fran's colors -so I went with red/green/blue. I was going to do exactly the same cube for the final panel, but the green wallpaper background made the green side of the cube shrink away; it was also easier to show the bumps in the stickers in a brighter color like yellow.

For the bonus I wanted to push the idea of what a crazy little kitten Fran was, and how maybe Vincent isn't so bad after all! I never actually stuck the stickers to my head, but I found the idea really funny! 😂