I thought this would make for a potentially interesting post for those curious about my process. If you bought my comic: The Plainest Plane's Plainest Pictorial Periodical Vol. 1 (plug plug), then you're likely familiar with my short story "Hear The Wind Howl" or as it is more popularly known as "Wait What? What The Fuck? Did I Miss The Joke? I Don't Get It."TM
Above is the first page of an early draft of the story. Originally, the narrative was much more deliberate with a slower more methodical pacing. I was hoping it would be a little more representative of how I would like my story telling to play out.
The tramp (always wanted to refer to a homeless person as a "tramp") couldn't make money by pan handling alone, until he meets a stray dog. He quickly notices that people are quicker to donate money to him, and what follows is a short montage of him and the dog making money, and enjoying the spoils, as well as each other's company. When the dog (SPOILERS) dies, he loses a friend, but also goes back to being hungry, and not making any money as a mere panhandler. There was a not so subtle attempt at some kind of social commentary about how we tend to treat animals with more care than people... or something equally contrived. The keen eye may have noticed in the final draft, the tramp's cup is full at the beginning, but empty in the end, so I tried to slip that aspect in a little, but laid it on much much thicker in the original draft. Some would say too thick.
The main problem I ran into had to do with reducing the original artwork down. It was originally drawn on a great big 11 x 17 art board. When you reduce something that big down to 8.5 x 5.5, you tend lose a lot of the fine detail in the artwork. It was also about twice as long as the final draft, and I was running out of time. So I edited down, and simplified the artwork. My only real regret is that the quality of the linework, and pacing may have been rushed in the end. People have generally responded to it positively though, so I try not to dwell on what could have been.
