There seems to be a lot happening. The day after we'd been to look at yet another school, J got accepted into our first choice, so now we just have to worry about the money...

My mother turns 80 tomorrow, so we're having a party for her on the weekend. I know what I'm going to get her as a present - a CD system of some sort (she doesn't have a CD player!) - but it's that usual problem of so many alternatives, so little choice.

The Sydney Morning Herald is running a Comic Contest "to discover the new great Australian comic strip." Well, I'm definitely up for that, particularly as I'm working through a bunch of scripts now already! I'm not sure about the "Australian" aspect, but maybe something reflecting contemporary life includes that in any case. There is a limit of 10, which gives me marginally more scope than the 8 I had been working with for Operation Funnybone, but the problems remain the same.

I think I'm much more of a character writer than a gag writer. That's not to say I don't write a lot of humour into what I do, just that it takes a certain amount of time and accrued information about characters and settings before it works. There are so many plot arcs in the series that I've written, and I just don't know which threads to pick, let alone which characters to feature. One thing is certain: any sample won't give a proper impression of the way it would work as a daily strip.

Now I have a lot to draw (Moth & Tanuki to finish, two other stories I can't talk about just yet, several feature pieces for OF and now these strips). The deadlines are all so close now! This week's Illustration Friday topic is "Digital" but I just can't seem to find inspiration on that topic.

Labels: Comic strips