At this point Robot Friday was going on its fourth year in production. I'd read stories about other cartoonists who had great success by year two and started to wonder if Robot Friday would ever take off if it hadn't by now, but as with anything that I do in life, I soldiered on and was determined to make it big or sink with the ship! Robot Friday had already seen some style and charactrer changes in the first couple of years, but by year four I really put a lot of thought into exactly how I wanted to draw things from characters to props and backgrounds.

I'd been drawing everyday for four years straight now and I was starting to develop a really distinct drawing style. I started redesigning characters on the fly with each new month, it seemed, as well as really putting a lot of effort into backgrounds too. The thing with artistic growth is that the more you grow the more you see what you have to work on, that's the cycle of improvement. The problem with seeing these areas you need to grow in is that, sometimes, an artist can tend to fixate on those areas and drive himself (or herself) crazy!

I'd begun drawing backgrounds with simple shapes. Then I moved into linking the background color with the mood of the character or scene. Next I started adding a little prop here and there, but in year four I went full in on background scenes that, in the end, started taking more time to draw than the overall strip itself. I also softened up my character design in general and really started to standardize the overall look of Robot Friday as well. It was at this point that I made character sheets for all of the characters - and even some props - so it made it faster and easier to keep the characters "on model" from here on out.

Thinking back, year four was a pretty big year for Robot Friday. I'd weathered a lot in the first three years and now I was starting to come into my own as a cartoonist and a writer. But that's a blog for another day.

HOME | BACK | READ MORE