Making of "Catch"

Dog people playing catch has so many funny possibilities that I wrote several scripts exploring them.  Unfortunately all of them were action based and really had to be animated to do the timing justice.  I needed something more text based so I settled on this idea of Beans getting overwhelmed by his Dad's and Baba's conflicting advice.  I also had an idea in my notes of Beans chasing a squirrel on a bike -both things dogs traditionally like to chase, so combined I reasoned they'd be irresistible!  Both ideas were OK, but by throwing them together I hoped they'd be promoted to good.

The first 2 panels went really well!  It was the first time having Baba with Dad Dog and her size next to him made me laugh.  Then things got tough.  I needed to show Beans confused for a period of time, so I had 3 panels at the bottom of him thinking and then the bike whizzing past.  This was then going to be page 2:

I looked at all this for a while and wasn't happy.  It was all over the place, and had Beans actually killed that squirrel?!  I needed a rethink!  

The squirrel gag was confusing things so I decided it might be best to cut it and lean into the original joke, adding more dialogue to really hammer home how dogs think when they run off with a ball.  I took my thoughts to J and he agreed, adding that Beans could be running in circles instead of standing still.  He also suggested doing the squirrel bit as a bonus panel, to which I said "These don't have bonus panels" -but already knew my brain was going to make me do it anyway!

Drawing him running in circles was hard!  I tried drawing several versions of him going around the loop to suggest movement, but it just looked confusing.  I googled "cartoon run in circles" and was surprised by the lack of useful results.  Eventually I found this Jerry picture and using it as a guide for mine gave Beans the feeling of circling instead of simply running forward.

I can only have 1 video per post, so I'll carry on about the squirrel bonus panel in a new one!