As I’m sure I’ve said here before, I didn’t really start drawing humans as characters in my work with any assurance until about four years ago. Until then, animals were my proxy for every story I wanted to tell. This was mostly a confidence thing - I didn’t have much in my person-drawing skills. But also it felt like that one-step remove that animals allowed gave me a bit of space between myself and my story. I couldn’t possibly be revealing anything personal if the main character was a lizard.
As I’ve become more confident in my story-telling, I’ve felt less need of that remove. Not that any of this was conscious - it’s only thinking about it recently that I can see it. My stories get more personal and (for me) brave each year. For example, I wouldn’t have drawn naked people a few years ago - despite seeing more of them that I do of tigers, I’d feel less exposed drawing the latter than the former. Like someone would point at my boobs (well, not mine, but you know) and say “My god, it’s like she’s never seen boobs before!” but wouldn’t say “My god, it’s like she’s never seen a tiger ever!!”
It makes me think of kissing and sex scenes on screen - when you see an actor holding a dead body, you don’t think “I bet that’s how Tom Cruise holds a dead body in real life” - but when you see him putting the moves on someone, you (I) definitely think “that’s how Tom Cruise gets frisky with his lovers in real life”. So, hence no boobs etc. UNTIL A FEW YEARS AGO.
Nowadays, when I’m thinking of a comic, I start with humans. Sharing the “Turn of the Shrew” in my last post here made me think again. As I struggle with glacial speed through my gothic comics anthology, I’ve been thinking I need to change my old animals comics into human ones. But what if I just mixed them all up together, especially since some of the “gags” are based on animal jokes…
I’ve been working through this one, “The Promise”, replacing the animals with people. But now I’m thinking I might leave it as is.
Here are some panels with human vs pig…
Here is the full comic, made in 2019.
For anyone who’s read Jilly Cooper, one of her early novels, Bella, had a main character who had moved cities to become an actress, and had changed her name from Mabel to Bella (Delphinium is a character from another JC book, Prudence) - then a shady man from her past appeared to scupper her escape… curse all shady men from the past!!
We love your boobs!
OMG I couldn't love your art more