Making of "Howl" (and the Dog Family)

I've had a big list of dog comic ideas for a while.  J and I were out shopping (coincidentally in Target!) when he suggested making the dog comics a Patreon exclusive thing.  Having them exist away from the cats solved a lot of storytelling problems I was having.

The next step was fleshing out the characters.  I didn't want them to just be the cat family in dog shapes!  I've had the mom, dad and boy down in my head for a while.  Bunny (the mom, named after a friends sweet ex-pug) is a more experienced mom than Fran, having raised a daughter from a previous marriage.  She's the breadwinner of the family, while her pitbull husband is a stay at home dad.

The relationship is heavily inspired by my best friends parents growing up.  Her mom had some high powered job in the city while her dad was a biker turned house-husband.  He was ragged with a bunch of old tattoos, often found in the kitchen wearing a frilly apron.  It was a bit more of an unusual relationship in the 80s and the novelty of it really stuck with me.  

In this comic the dad dog (name TBD) used to be a bad boi in his youth, but settled down when he met Bunny.  He still has the tattoos, cropped ears and docked tail from his past life, but now he's always seen in a big ugly sweater.  He's going to be a giant softie, but will definitely have a breaking point where he might snap back into his previous self if pushed.

They have a son around Vincent's age.  He's more pug than pittie.  A little slow, but a very sweet boy.  A while back I needed Bunny to have a baby too, so that her and Fran could go to mom meetups together.  I didn't want to give them the exact same setup as the cats, so she's a girl and younger than Cooper.  She's more pittie than pug -adorable but bitey!

I'm still figuring out the teen daughter.  I thought it would be fun to make the ex-husband something floofy so the resulting crossbreed would have ridiculous, unmanageable hair! 

J suggested adding a live-in grandparent and I immediately fell in love with the idea!  It adds a whole new dimension that Litterbox doesn't have!  Baba is going to be a sassy old broad from the old country.  I chose a grandmother over father because there was more scope for mom jokes.  I also went with her being Bunny's mother because a) I didn't really want to get into a mother-in-law thing and b) I could see a little old pug in my head and she was adorable! 

Her inception immediately solved the issue I'd been having with the "howling something from home" joke I'd been playing with.  Previously it had been either Bunny howling out to Dog Dad, or visa versa.  Neither really worked, I mean -WHY wouldn't they just text?!  Baba though... she's old fashioned!

She was originally just howling that they were out of milk, but once I got to the final panel, Bunny's expression seemed out of place.  I needed something more embarrassing to justify her discomfort.  I googled something like "embarrassing things old people need to buy" and found a Buzzfeed list.  A few numbers down I struck gold -hemorrhoid cream! :)

The rest of the comic was a composition puzzle.  I moved things around and changed colors to make the important parts pop.  A good example is in the last panel.  Bunny's phone was getting lost in the dalmatians behind her.  It was vital the phone was obvious or the punchline wouldn't land.  I removed their cart and pushed them back a little to make Bunny's silhouette clearer.

I'm excited to have a whole new set of characters to play with!  Especially as having more background to the dogs in here will make them more enjoyable when they venture out into the Litterbox comics!  Baba babysitting has such potential! :)