Making of "The Beach" (Part 1) (Patreon)

I've been waiting to do a beach comic until we took the kids to a beach in real life. It finally happened this year with a trip to Antigua and the kids were actually pretty awesome at it!! Oldest got into snorkeling and youngest loved letting the waves toss him about on the shoreline -subsequently getting half the beach in his trunks!

So after all that wait, they didn't give me much to work with for a comic! Vincent and Coop are younger than my guys though, so I thought back to how they might have been at that age, combining it with my own experiences of the beach. I always love the idea of a beach holiday, but being vampire white, I often regret my choices once faced with the 3 S's: sun, salt and sand! I got horribly burnt on my 1st day out in Antigua, despite being good about putting on sunscreen!

I guess what I'm saying, is this comic is less about the kids and more about ME! I'm the one that sees it on TV and gets fooled haha! The punchline was definitely inspired by the kids though. They love the idea of the snow, but once they come face to face with the cold and wet, they want to come in pretty quick!

It wasn't the funniest script in the world, but I thought it might be a fun ride visually, so I set about drawing!

I reworked a panel from "Are We There Yet" for the car scene. I always liked how cute Coop looked getting jolted awake and I thought it would be cute if Vince was too. It also set up that they'd been travelling a while.

Two things I noticed in Antigua are how exciting that first view of the beach is, and that trudge down the sandy bank, loaded up with everything from the car, while the kids dashed ahead. Neither were particularly funny, but they felt important to set the scene and lull the reader into thinking everything was going perfectly.

I wanted Joel to be carrying an umbrella, so in the next panel they would be clearly still setting up when the kids come running back. The length of it was causing composition issues, so I went to look at actual beach umbrellas and found they collapsed into much easier to carry bags, so i gave him one of those instead!

(Continued on Part 2....)