Incognito Sketch-Off next Monday!
As many of you keep reminding me, it has been ages since I did one of my infamous Twitter Sketch Offs. So, this Monday... I'm doing one of my infamous Twitter Sketch-Offs!
In honour of our last story, our theme is Sam and Fuzzy Incognito! This time around, I will be looking for your suggestions for drawings of Sam and Fuzzy characters who are disguised, undercover, or otherwise pretending to be something they are not. Fuzzy in deep cover as a Vampire? Jess as a spy? Hazel trying to pass herself off as a Superhero? Mr. Y as a burlesque performer again for... some reason? You decide!
Starting at 11am on Monday, you can tweet or email me your suggestions. I will pick my favourites and draw them, live! And as usual, I'll put the finished pieces up for sale for anyone who wants 'em. It'll be fuuuuuun.
Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Where isn't that thing Edition
Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!
"I was wondering if there is a question you wish people would ask you but they don’t? If so, which one is it?" -Samina
Interesting thought! I don't know if there is any one question I am dying to answer, really, but there are certainly some... genres of questions I wouldn't mind getting more of?
Most of the questions I recieve are either about really specific detailed superfan plot observations (Did Gert do ___ in strip 1432 because of ____ in strip 912?) or about potential new projects or swag (When is the next book coming out? Would you make a shirt out of this? What kind of commissions do you do?)
Those are all totally fine! But there's other stuff I'm also happy to talk about. Like craft -- how I make my comics, why I do or don't do certain kinds of things, thoughts on pacing, materials, art style -- the nuts and bolts of comic making, basically. I've done some general overviews of my process, but it'd be cool to answer more specific or finicky questions. I'm also cool with talking about web publishing and cons and business stuff -- it's not my favourite subject or anything, but I'm sure it is relevant to a lot of you.
I also thought some of the recent questions I got about content appropriateness and censorship were interesting! But if I want more of those I should probably write more comics like today's. (Ha!)
"Back when Gert was first working in the Underground, she was considerably more uptight. What on earth (or below it, I suppose) happened between then and now for her to not only give up on being Ninja Empress, but take over a strip joint and transform it into an undoubtedly classy burlesque establishment? One where she CLEARLY is an expert at her new profession?" -Puck
In her debut story, we saw a dejected Gertrude, resigned to misery, working at the old Saucy Hippo even though she hates it there. But by the end of the Noosehead arc, Gert is very motivated and aggressive, and looking for a new (non Ninja Mafia-related purpose.)
So basically, I imagined that Gert returning to her old job. Now, she'd have no patience for tolerating the unpleasantness. She'd confront exactly what it was that offended her about it -- which I figured from her perspective was not the lack of clothing, but the sexism, and the lack of respect, empowerment, and control for the performers. And of course, she'd then have no choice but to conquer the business (possibly literally), erradicate everything she despised about it (also possibly literally), forcibly transform it into exactly what she thought it should be, and then build that into a giagantic empire for her to rule over. Because, you know, Gertrude.
Gert's motivations and backstory were too big a sidetrack to fully explore in the Sam and Fuzzy comic proper, but I tried to imply a lot of it through her dialogue in Off the Sauce, particularly when she defends her business to Sam and explains what distinguishes it from the old one. It'd be fun to actually chronicle her rise as a burlesque tychoon someday and really get into her motivations, if I had the time and space to do it justice.
"Is Sam's laptop an iBanana? Is there a whole fruity rainbow of electronics to choose from?" -Jake
I guess really, it should be a i-____, where the blank is a type of banana. Maybe the line of computers is called Cavendish, and Sam's laptop is an i-Cav Pro? Let's go with that!
Making up fake brands is one of the greatest joys in cartooning.
That's a wrap for this week, team. See you on Monday for the Sketch-Off, and the start of our next chapter!
-Sam Logan
