Hello! Want to see what the initial stages of one of my comics look like? A lot less interesting than one might think. Or just as uninteresting as one might think. When I get an idea, I jot it down in boxes that might resemble what the final arrangement might look like, as well as illustrate the joke. Sometimes, I jot it down and forget what my idea was, so I just see four boxes with a tiger shape in mid-flight with a stick figure yelling “Jones!” and I completely forget what my joke was, and the idea goes to the joke-that-might-have-been graveyard.
Here is the initial sketch of A Musical Ambush, a fan favorite here at EQComics. Click on it to open a new window with the finished strip!
See why I forget ideas? What if I sketched this after a night of drinking and woke up the next morning, trying to decipher what joke I was attempting? Cartoonists, don’t try this method at home. It barely works for me.
