A bit of validation from an odd source

There are folks – some nudging gently, others with reddit downvote rage, and my own mother – who don’t like when my comics deviate from what they think is the intended style.

I play Guild Wars 2 and, like all MMOs, fans complain all the time about niche activities in the game. I just wanted to quote what this developer said about an upcoming hard mode in a game activity:

“I’d never claim to be an amazing designer. Only that I do think carefully about the design choices I make. Any time an artist chooses to do something that will be less popular than an alternate choice they know that they will be called a bad artist by many. Goes with the territory. It’s like (and I’m not comparing myself here) film makers such as David Lynch and Kubrick who make movies/shows with purposefully ambiguous symbology and unsatisfying endings, or musicians like Bjork who will randomly release a virtually a capella album. These decisions limit the audience and make a lot of people who do stumble across their media angry, disappointed, annoyed, etc. And then say “That was bad.” Again, I’m not saying that my work is anywhere in the same league as Bjork or Kubrick. Only that there is a common phenomenon where people who don’t like a particular style, or find something that doesn’t fit in the popular established mold tend to assume that it is therefore ‘bad’.

Hey, maybe my work IS bad. I’m just trying to make stuff that I personally love to play. and it seems like there are others like me. At least enough to keep my quirky little project going!” –Josh Foreman, Environment Design Specialist (Sourced from here)

So I thought I’d post that just to help folks understand that the first fan of Mister G Kids is me, and for me to sit down and draw a comic every day and not get paid for it – well, sometimes things get a little weird, sometimes the comic is bad, and sometimes I suck as an artist!  But if I can’t have fun and entertain myself, I would stop drawing the comics and shut down the site.

But as Josh Foreman said above, there are enough readers who like what I do – whether it’s a typical cute comic about something silly a little kid said at school, or a vampire massacre with teen pregnancy and child labor – for me to justify taking these little side trips of head-shaking oddness.  There is a core group of you who get where I’m coming from.  If you’ve had any exposure to my other comic series, you know that my humor is dark black, so I NEED to let it out sometimes.

Nevertheless, the central purpose of Mister G Kids still is to enjoy telling you what cute and funny things kids say, because while I have a cynical black heart, nothing warms it and makes it grow three times its size than one little kid making me melt with some simple observation about the world.

Weekend Kids #1 : Kitten Kids Studies

As I wrote in yesterday’s entry, during the summer months when I have more time I’m going to start posting on Saturdays and Sundays.  Again, the posts can be anything.  I want it to be fun, and it’s really just for the folks who might pop by to see what’s happenin,’ and the hardcore fans.  Missing the weekend posts won’t matter if you are strictly following the comics from the Mister G Kids world.  They’re just for fun!

So this is my first one, and I figured, what the heck, I would show you what I worked on yesterday to do Kitten Kids.

I wanted the kitties to be cute, but also to look like they belong in the world of MGK.  I noticed that lots of kiitten drawings feature huge eyes.  Eyes are small and black in MGK, so I wanted to find a way to make that work.  Freakishly large eyes were scaring me when I drew them.

For Elizabeth, the reference point was the drawing of a kitten in my old post Kitten that tons of people really liked.  That particular kitten has solid-colored eyes, without the white part.  So I wanted to achieve that again.  You’ll note that Tommy has black eyes, but his fur color suggests white around his eyes, without explicitly drawing them.  I like how they turned out.  Tommy looks a little bit like Yoda, but I’m ok with that, haha!

Lol, Hello Kitty was in there partly as a joke, but I did like how her head is huge and her eyes are little, so it was a reference point too.

Ok that’s it for today.  Happy Saturday!

Kitten Kids