Today’s progress

In my introduction blog post, I said that I’m not good at talking about myself. That doesn’t really apply to talking about my comics, I guess. I love to talk about my comics. I’ve been doing it right here all week! In a way, though, I think that was all part of my introduction, getting up to speed in regards to what my webcomics are. Now that that’s out of the way, I can talk about other things. Such as whatever happened today.

Today, I got to have my cast removed. Having my arm free and unrestrained is pretty awesome. I can move it around. I can bend it. I can scratch myself. But it’s still broken. I can’t use it for pushing, pulling or carrying stuff. I can’t bend it too far, or fully extend it. It’ll be interesting to see how well I can draw with it. I already tried to get back into working on my comic before, and I imagine it may be a little easier without the restraint of the cast. But seeing as I should be taking it easy still, I probably won’t be able to do a whole lot of work at a time.

That, and the fact that the holiday season by now is in full swing – during which I was planning a break from the comic anyway – means that the comic will not be returning just yet. But I can work on it, and I can make use of my right arm a bit more than I could yesterday. And, it bears repeating; I can scratch it. This is a good day.

Origin of the Triplets

The idea for Twice the Triplets came pretty easily, almost as if it just created itself inside of my head. I don’t remember where or when this happened, only that I was thinking about making a new comic and my thoughts went something like this:

Hey, what if I make a comic about a guy who suddenly has to take care of some kids?

He should be related to them – probably not their father, but what if he’s their uncle?

Maybe I should make the kids girls? I’ve made comics before about kids, but I always made the main characters boys.

I know, I’ll make the girls twins! No wait, triplets!

Wait a minute. Waaaaait a minute.

If I’m gonna do that, how about making it two sets of triplets? You know, to really make the guy have his hands full?

I could call it “Twice the Triplets”! And refer to it as “2×3”, as a kind of stylized abbreviation!

It was that quick, and that straight-forward. Next thing I remember is coming up with a gag – I immediately knew it would be a gag-a-page type comic – in which the uncle character would be planning some bedtime activity with a ladyfriend, and some of the kids would inadvertently scare her off. This idea would eventually become the fourth page of the comic, titled “Grownup Stuff”.

Right from the conception of Twice the Triplets, Fred just couldn’t catch a break.

It would be a while before that happened, though, because the next thing I did was to file away the ideas I had for Twice the Triplets in the back of my head. A cutesy comic about kids? I should probably try to do something a little bit more sophisticated than that for my next comic, I thought. In the months that followed, I did have other ideas I tried to make use of. Continue reading

The story of Henry

I said at the end of my previous blog entry that my next webcomic after Badass Brat would be more ambitious, and yes, I was referring to Twice the Triplets. Before that, though, I had made a short lived comic – one I did end up showing online – called Henry the Comic Strip Character. It was just a silly little thing I felt like doing when I felt burned out on Badass Brat at one point. I wanted to just have fun making a comic, not work hard or worry about quality, just indulge my silliest impulses in the form of a crudely drawn comic strip with excessively stupid jokes and giggle at readers’ confused response. I didn’t much care if anyone other than myself found it entertaining at all, but judging by the response I got, some people did see the humor in it (though they would usually wish it had better artwork). If I am to be completely honest, I should admit that there was a touch of parody about the comic, aimed at the “intelligent, hard working wife and fat, lazy stupid husband” sitcom cliché, but I am not going to claim it had some sort of high-brow subtext.

Groundbreaking comedy.

Henry was originally written in my native Norwegian, and probably is read best that way, but I nevertheless translated most of the strips into English and made them available starting right here.

So. If I made Henry, then how exactly was Twice the Triplets my next webcomic after Badass Brat? Simple: After I made Henry, I made the last few Badass Brat strips after having had a break from it for some time. When the comic ended shortly after, the next comic I made which actually went all the way to becoming a webcomic was Twice the Triplets. So what I told you was true… from a certain point of view.