Making of "Tag Yourself"

I'm not actually sure how this one came to me.  Something just clicked while watching the cats being crazy at night after sleeping all day (seriously, these cats are paying for themselves with ideas!)

I'd seen a similar comic before by Gemma Correll and worried it might be too close:

I asked J and he thought I was fine, especially since mine brought a new level to it with that being how cats really are!

I set about sketching it out.  I wanted the early bird to be a jogger in the park which meant it was a pigeon in my mind.  I used previous linework from Zoomies as a placeholder for Fran at night.  I originally had the text read "Dozy all day" but worried that might be an English term, so I changed it to the more universal "Drowsy".

As I neatened up the pencils I wanted to have Fran doing something different from the Zoomies comic.  I googled pictures of crazy cats and attempted a different pose, but there was something so perfect about the running!  I brought the lines back in and changed her head to give it a different feel.

The coloring on this one was FUN!  I always flat everything out in "normal" colors first and then shade or color adjust from there.  Here they are next to each other to compare:

I used my Pinterest board full of beautiful backgrounds to get color inspiration.  The early bird sky was heavy influenced by Kaeti V. on twitter.  I used similar night colors as I have before, but this picture by Amo Kannika inspired me to push the blue even more and make the computer glow warm instead of my usual cold -I really wanted the night owl to look cozy!

One of my artist friends JTA always jokes about being a Night Owl, so I wanted to have one of his stickers on the laptop:

One sticker wasn't enough, so I reached out to 2 other good friends, SprinkleBat and SpicyDonut to ask if I could add them too.

Lastly, the mug!  Years ago, when #10 MOM mug started selling, I asked my friends for other slogan ideas.  Devin (the aforementioned SpicyDonut!) sent me a HUGE list of fantastic ones which I squirreled away.  I've used some of them already, but the remainders are quite long, so they're hard to fit in.  This one was "Probably Cold Coffee. Please heat in microwave before drinking", so I trimmed it down (could be cold TEA too!) and put the second sentence on the back of the buyable mugs!