Let’s Get Physical!

Last week was an exciting milestone for the critters. With Dog and Bird reaching 200 strips, this has been a perfect time to reflect on where the comic came from and where it’s going.

First things first, the comic is continuing! Tune in here every Tuesday and Thursday for the latest antics and puns. I’ve got a couple story arcs on the back burner that should be coming to the forefront this year. Will Bird ever find a vocation? Want to see more of Hoo or Mama B? Is there really a squirrel conspiracy? All will, at some point, be revealed!

Second, I am going to try something new this year. Dog and Bird has been an online project for two and a half years. Over the course of 2018, I’m going to work on a zine. Yes, that means Dog and Bird will be taking a physical form for the first time ever!

Why would I do such a thing? Mostly, to see if I can. Learning how to write for the contained space of a twice-a-week comic has been an incredible challenge. I’m excited to try something a little lengthier, just to see how it goes. Plus, I’m just a retro person. Once something’s put in print as a physical copy, it just takes on a different life for me than it can ever have online.

I don’t have tons of details to share at this point, but I am committed to making it happen. All I can say for now is that the zine will be a completely standalone narrative arc for Dog and Bird, and it will have all the same cute zaniness of the usual comics. Watch this space; whenever there’s share-worthy news, you’ll find it here.

Cheers to an exciting year ahead for all of us! <3

Two years

I posted the very first strip of Dog and Bird on this date in 2015. It’s so gratifying to make something that’s all my vision, my humor and to keep it alive for this long. I’m proud of the milestone and of the progress the comic has made in two years.

Because wow, has it changed. At the beginning, the art was rough. The joke setup, when it existed, was accidental. The image quality was real, real bad. But any time I look back at those first days of the comic, it still makes me very happy. I see a spark of genuine joy in my early efforts, and that’s why I keep putting in the slow work to keep improving. I do this for my own satisfaction, but also to carve out a little corner of the internet where people can find some happiness.

Thanks to each of you who reads the comic. I’m delighted you also found a little joy in what I do.

Onwards and upwards, critter fans!

We’re back, baby!

In case you haven’t noticed, the critters are back to their usual silly shenanigans! Yay!

I’m really glad to be getting back in the swing of things with the comic. Keeping the story running for over a year felt like a huge accomplishment, and I’m already excited about what’s in store for the next phase of Dog and Bird. Think of it as season two. The sophomore album. The bigger and better (at least in terms of image quality) version of what you’ve seen.  Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy making it.

Pause

The comic is going on a break. I’m not sure how long the break will be.

I still really like Dog and Bird as characters and I want to keep telling their goofy little story. As you may have noticed, however, I’ve barely been able to keep up with posting twice a week. And given how many ideas I tried out over the course of 118 panels, I’d like to take a little time to think about what worked and what didn’t. So consider this the end of the comic’s first chapter.

If I had to guess, I’d say Dog and Bird be back around December or January. I will probably pop in occasionally during the interim with blog posts about the cool things I’m reading or looking at, so please do toss me a follow on the socials. And with any luck, the critters be funnier (and punnier) than ever when they return. Thanks as always to the folks who have supported me and the comic; I can’t wait to have something even more delightful to show you soon.

Cheers!

A post about other people

Hey critter fans,

The comic is off this week while I catch up on some work projects. (Yes, that does mean playing lots of video games and yes, it really is for my job). Besides, I have a very definite vision for the next few strips and I want to take the time to do them well.

The story will resume on Aug. 30, but I will not leave you without other cool things to look at and read in the meantime!

I’m fortunate to have many incredibly talented people among my circle of friends. M.S. Khan is one of the sharpest, smartest people I’ve ever met. She wrote a short story called Benjakiti Park that was published in a collection by The Bangkok Women’s Writers Group. Her work there is excellent, but you can read the entire anthology on Amazon.

Sarah Lokay is another delightful human. She’s a freelance illustrator/artist who also has mad animation skills. She also has incredible hair. Take a gander at her stuff on the Twitters  and on Tumblr (fans of Bioware games, take note!).

Enjoy, and see y’all next week!

For they are jolly good critters

On July 14, 2015, I posted the very first strip of Dog and Bird to the world wide web. That means the critters have been around for one whole year!

I have a hard time believing that it’s really been that long. When I first started noodling around the idea of making a webcomic, it was just a project to get me writing outside of work. After the first few strips, I was hooked. I told people that I wanted to keep it up for at least a year, just to see if the joy would stick. It totally did.

Sure, there were a handful of filler posts and a few days off, but I’m still chalking this year up as a major accomplishment. I’d spent ages wanting to tell stories, to push myself as a writer, to make something I was proud of. Dog and Bird have given me that.

Thanks to each and every one of you who has read this comic. I hope we’ll be able to keep you smiling. There’s still a lot I want to do – more terrible/awesome puns to write, and so many more art skills to develop – so this is just one year out of (I hope) many. Cheers!

Comic on break until June 7

I have been known to over-commit myself. Between doubling my freelance client roster, working four dance events in three months, finding a new apartment, and now packing everything up to move to said apartment, now is one of those over-committed times.

I hate taking a break from the critters. They have made me giddily happy and creatively satisfied over the past many months. I thought that a week off would be enough, but I just don’t have enough hours to get everything done until after the move is done and the new place is unpacked. So I’m giving it a hard date. The comic will resume on the usual schedule beginning June 7. No excuses.

In the meantime, consider this a PSA that it’s important to know and respect your limits! Self-care for the win!

Mental health week

Hey critter fans,

I wavered a lot doing on this, but have decided that there will be no comics this week. Thanks to big crunches with other work and life things, I’m not in the headspace to be cute and funny. So rather than phone in strips this week, I’m going to take a breather and (hopefully) be back in top form on May 17. Have a happy week!

An Excuse and Some Rad Websites

Hey critter fans,

Sorry to run a filler strip today. But we’ve all had those times where life or travel or work or interruptions get in the way of what we planned to accomplish. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have filler strips for the world outside of webcomics? A chance to put a placeholder down and catch a breather? I could get behind that. So let’s say this strip is actually a nuanced meta commentary on the need to press pause sometimes given the fast-paced nature of our hyper-connected world. Yes. Let’s go with that.

If you do want to look at and read some other fun, exciting stuff on the Internet today, however, I will not disappoint! My friend Keir Briscoe, photographer and adventurer par excellence, has been off on world travels for the past couple months. He’s making the trip with an unusual paper companion and he’s got a knack for meeting really fun people. Fortunately for the rest of us, Keir has been posting thoughts and lots of awesome images from his journey. Share his experience from the comfort of your own laptop at his photo site, his travel blog, or though the #roadtripnick hashtag on Facebook.

The End of A Notebook

Well-loved.

I always keep a notebook. I’ve had this red one for ages. It was assigned as my notebook for creative writing, and my first entry was in August 2011. I drabbled my way through the pages over the years. No really, years. I’d put together a few words of random dialogue and see where they’d lead me. I’d imagine a nugget of story and play out a scene. The ideas would emerge, some of them pretty good ones, but they’d inevitably fizzle out. The first half of the notebook is disjointed. Scattered. Unfinished.

Then, in May 2015, I had the wild idea to make a webcomic.

So many pages!

The entire second half of this notebook is filled with prep work for Dog and Bird. Character development, long-term plots points, drafts, jokes, re-written jokes, re-re-written jokes. Far from fizzling, I felt like I always had thoughts on where the project might go or how to make it better. Even when I was stuck, the work still felt so satisfying.

I’m a writer first and foremost, so finishing off this notebook is an exciting milestone. It’s the first artifact I have of Dog and Bird’s beginning. I’ve re-read all of the notes and drafts a few times since beginning work on the project, and each time I do, I get excited about it all over again.

Some early drafting of strip #6.

Some early drafting of strip #6.

Thanks for being with me for these 50-odd strips and the many hundred pages of behind-the-scenes work that helped make them happen. Here’s to lots more comics and many, many more notebooks.

(P.S. – If any of the hundred-some folks who found this via Reddit have stuck around, hello! Welcome to the party. I hope you like puns!)