Making of "Baby Pics"
Added 2021-02-01 19:37:31 +0000 UTCThese "relatable" ones are always a roll of the dice. Either people will have the same experience and find it funny, OR they'll have no idea what you're on about and it will bomb. Luckily for me, it seems to have landed and people aren't thinking I'm some sort of baby-hating-monster! 😅
The 1st draft was longer and had Fran in the photos too. I removed her because a) she muddied the joke about newborns being weird looking and b) I'd never forget looking dreadful in my post-birth pics!
I didn't like it being 3 rows. As a general rule, the shorter the comic the better. I could easily shrink the middle panels into 1, but I was hemmed in by the need to show the 2 baby pictures.
I thought I could get around it by losing the cute baby picture. After all, readers could guess what baby Vincent looked like because of Cooper. It just wasn't the same though, so I experimented a bit, trying to squeeze in another panel, without adding another row. The only space big enough was on the bottom right of the 1st panel, but then the speech bubbles were getting crowded. Brainwave: Combine the two!
I wanted the classic Ren & Stimpy look for the baby picture and discovered they are called "gross ups". I wasn't 100% happy with my rendition, but it was good enough and needed to move on. I have plans for more gross ups in the future, so hopefully I'll be able to perfect the style over time.
