Those of you who are familiar with my older works have been seeing a lot of very familiar faces, but there’s going to be some unfamiliar faces as well. Which is fine, since this is a new continuity and I’m introducing everyone as if you’d never heard of them before anyway!
For 99% of you, Dorothy Keener is a new character. Her only appearances in the Old Continuity are in Joyce and Walky!, and almost entirely in the subscriber-only material. So don’t worry if you don’t know her. After all, you’re not “required” to, same as everyone else in Dumbing of Age. It’s a clean slate for everyone.
In today’s strip, she wears green and yellow, and you’ll notice that up above she’s in purples. See, at some point in the middle of drawing this storyline, I realized that I had too many characters who wore predominantly green. I am, like, a green fiend. Probably all those years of Shortpacked! getting to my brain. This green overabundance bothered me, but not enough to go back and recolor Dorothy differently, I guess. So, uh, hope you don’t like the greens, ‘cuz she wont’ be wearing them after this first “day” of strips. After that, it’s mostly purples for her.
The only post that I couldn’t retrieve from Google cache when rebuilding this website was the one about Walky and his change of clothes. I can’t really remember exactly what I wrote about it in length, but let me summarize best to my recollection:
Walky is a slob who should change his clothes more often.
First of all, after today’s strip everyone should probably recognize where the site’s wallpaper comes from. Yeah, it’s the actual tile pattern from the real-life lobby of Read Hall, which is where the strip’s characters live. I liked it so I’m using it!
I began working on what would become Dumbing of Age on the plane trip home from San Diego Comic-Con. To the left is a scan of the first page of my brainstorms. Joyce was a no-brainer, as was the outfit I started giving her post It’s Walky! for some Joyce and Walky! segments. It really suits her. Then there’s a prototypical Sarah to the left, before I figured out what to do with her hair.
And, hey, it’s Becky, Joyce’s friend from the J&W! material.
And, of course, down below is art of Billie, the nose of whom I botched so badly I had to call it out to myself. That makes it somehow better. This way if someone goes through my sketchbook (no one ever really does), they won’t think I thought the art was acceptable! I’m saved from the full measure of scorn!
And finally, there’s two attempts at Ruth. She used to wear overalls (why?) and wear glasses the size of her face. Both of these would have to go.
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