Making of "Good Advice"

Got the kids out of the house for the day, so lets get caught up on these making of's!

So, I am not great at taking me-time. I put off chores to work, so when I inevitably get burnt out, I end up facing a mountain of mess. I always tell myself I'll relax after the house is clean, but SPOILER ALERT! that never happens.

My husband keeps telling me I need to take time to chill with TV and/or video games -that it will refuel me creatively to immerse myself in other worlds and stories. I know he is 100% right, but there's a big gap between acknowledging it and actually doing it!

Roll on to the other day when a recently pregnant creative reached out to me to say that the 1st trimester was kicking her ass and how can you possibly work while pregnant? I reassured her she'll probably feel better in the 2nd trimester and in the meantime to refuel her creativity with, (you guessed it!) TV and/or games. Proud of my solid advice, I told J what I'd said and he replied "That was MY advice to YOU! -and you didn't take it! You regifted it!" Again he's right, but I didn't really take it on board because I was too busy writing down the comic idea! 😂

I changed the advice in the comic to be a bit more generic -both for relatability and not wanting to have a wall of text, especially in a first panel. I gave Fran the punchline because it was funnier with her acknowledging it.

The key to this one laid with pulling off drawing multitasking Fran so I started there. I chose her chores carefully. I didn't want her to be doing obvious household stuff like cleaning, because then people would be angry at Joel for not helping. I needed a sense of "she's choosing to do this" -the crazy smile helped with that too!

I had a hard time drawing Joel in the last panel. I wanted him exasperated, but not mad. I always struggle to pose him with his big shoulders, so I tried a bunch of variations before settling on a classic facepalm.