Making of "Creatures Of Ze Night"

For a while now I've had "fat hedgehog dressed as Sonic" on my Halloween ideas list.  I desperately wanted to include him, but the only way I could see to do it would be to have him as a background character in some vast neighborhood scene while the cat family were out trick or treating.  That sounded like a nightmare to draw, so my poor chubby hedgehog remained only an idea.  That was until the dog family came along and I realized that Baba (the grandmother) might stay at home to hand out candy!  

Her character is a mashup of Ida Welker (Lois' Mom from Malcolm in the Middle) and Madame Foster (from Fosters Home)

Actually, looking up and remembering Ida's character, maybe the other way around!  She was so horrible haha!!  Let's say she's more cheeky old Madame Foster with a darker "from the old country" streak of Ida.

I figured commercialized American Halloween might rub her up the wrong way -Halloween costumes are traditionally meant to scare off ghosts after all!  That's when I thought her cheeky side wouldn't be able to resist putting the fright into some coddled kids -especially as it's the one time of year when their parents will wave and thank her!

So I had my basic script and 1 fat hedgehog.  Next I needed 2 more trick or treaters to round it out.  I thought a frog princess would be funny because of the classic frog prince story.  For the last one, I considered using my Dracula bat from this comic,, but held off because he is at least trying to be scary.  Instead I went for an actually dangerous animal (tiger) who'd picked a costume that made him less scary (Minion)!

The finial script ended up quite long, but that's one of the nice things about posting here -they don't have to be short viral things!  As the 2nd page was simply edits of the first, I completed page 1 and just changed the panels as needed.

The final panel was a fun challenge.  

The initial composition had the parents standing either side and was more visually pleasing, but I needed the parents voices to be read before Baba's.  I could have maybe made it work with some intertwining speech bubble tails, but I hate doing that.  Instead I redrew it so the story unfolds more naturally from left to right.  My fav, Sonic, would of course be having a hard time keeping up! :)