Making of "Just One Bite"

It's become a tradition of mine to do one "What if they were _____ " Halloween comic.  Previously I've done zombies, robots and aliens, but this year I went for vampires.  As always with these types of comics, I started crossing normal family stuff with the theme -eating, bedtime, fights, school etc etc.  Bedtime was a strong contender with coffin jokes, but the idea of Vince being a fussy bloodsucker made me chuckle.  We've had times when our oldest wouldn't eat something because there's leaves or herbs on it and we've uttered "It's just decoration, you won't taste it!"  I decided to set the comic up like they're in a fancy restaurant, but reveal at the end they're vampires.

I paneled the comic out longer, intending to go back and forth between closeups of Fran and Vincent, but realized while I was sketching it out that I could leave Vincent off screen.  This allowed me to make the comic shorter (always preferable!) and go crazier on Vincent's vampire garb.

The last panel was a challenge.  I didn't know if I wanted them in a dark alleyway or at a dinner table.  Finding reference pics proved difficult, they were either the classic, vampire behind the victim, biting their neck or they were at a table drinking blood from fancy glasses.  I wanted neck biting, but I didn't want them all doing the same pose.  I though maybe this might be AI's time to shine!  Could it conjure up some reference pictures?  I tried Bing, but it had picked now to get all prudish and said it couldn't depict violence!  Useless!  

Back to me figuring it out myself!  I started thinking of funny animal victims and a giraffe immediately sprung to mind!  It was a good gag, plus it would give Joel's big head enough room to bite!  I was going to do a snake for Fran for the same reason, but thought against it because I wanted the only green thing in the picture to be whatever Vince was turning his nose up at.

I posed the other 2 victims 1st and decided on their animals afterwards.  I chose a bunny and a monkey because they fit the shapes I needed.  I was originally going to only have a little bit on green on the bunny, like leaves on a headpiece, but after losing the fight to draw a good looking hat, I realized I could just make her whole dress green.  It only dawned on me afterwards that it looked like lettuce, which was rather apt for a rabbit! :)

I wanted to have Cooper somewhere slurping on a baby bottle full of blood, but I didn't have the room.  There'd ended up being an empty space in the top right, so I drew a little bat Cooper as a sort of Easter egg.

I played around with the colors a fair bit, making their fur colors a little cooler than normal and using a restricted palette to give it a different feel from my regular comics.