Making of "Reframe"

Alright, so this one sort of happened, but not in the way you think!  We were invited to a friends girls birthday party.  When I mentioned that it might be Frozen themed my boys both made faces and said they wouldn't go to an "Elsa Party"!  I told them that the good thing about Elsa parties is the cake usually has her on, so what's it like when it gets cut...? -I made a knife cutting throat gesture.  Big evil smiles all round!  Let's go!  We get there and I realize too late that I had neglected to tell them NOT to bring up my reframing with their fellow party goers.  Cue "My Mummy said...." 😬 

Luckily the other kids were too young to understand and the parents were so sick of Elsa that they just found it funny!  Once we were home and the boys were digging into their party bags ("I'm going to pretend this is a WINTER lollypop!  NOT an Elsa one!") I thought with some artistic exaggeration, this could make a good strip!

I started out closer to the original story:

I liked Vincent directing the attention onto Fran (because he did!) but it was a little convoluted.  I took it to J and he suggested streamlining by having Vincent come up with the reframing.  I leaned into the idea and made Fran really pleased with herself in panel 2, which makes the contrasting horror of the last panel more extreme.  By dropping a panel, I could also make the last one full width to show the party better; more people = maximum discomfort!

Of course, everything hinged on a convincing Elsa, so after brainstorming, I got to work turning her into an artic fox.  It was actually much easier than I expected!  I found a picture of Maid Marion from Robin Hood looking in a similar direction and then just added foxy bits to Elsa, adjusting the proportions slightly to make her body closer to my style.

For the rest, I reworked some linework from previous comics and picked some kids that had been shown before; the frog princess from the Dog Halloween Comic, the bunny from Vincent's class and the budgie from Use Your Head.  Before I added color, my 8yo looked over my shoulder and asked if the bird kid was a penguin.  I was about to correct him, but realized his idea was much better for a Frozen fan, so a penguin she became!

The knife cutting hand was a pain in the butt!  I couldn't find the right angle on Google and was too lazy to go downstairs and snap a photograph myself!  It was going to be the frog mom's hand, so I made the fingers longer, but then I decided the bunny looked more like the birthday girl, so I shortened the fingers (after finally finding a good reference photo!)  It wasn't until adding color that I found I had a problem!  Her dad has been shown before and is white, which wouldn't pop very well against all the Frozen stuff.  I've never shown her mom, but she's brown in my mind, so I colored the hand accordingly.  Then it sort of looked like a human hand, so I decided to go full circle and make it green -that way it drew attention to the important cake cutting.  To elevate the frog to birthday girl status, I gave her a little tiara that's bouncing off her surprised head! :)