Daniel McCloskey's Blog

Robert Crumb episode: Apple plan to be a pro artist and meet her hero.

Rough auto transcript:

Cloud Town Tuesday Nov 2023 p25

[00:00:00] Alyssa.

Mission: Comics employee, tattoo artist. That's me. The youngest of the crew. Prodigy comic artists, cartoonists, tattoo artists. WARIOR, Kirt, this book got his cover on it. He's formally trained I at blah. , he's the most pleasant of us. He's got skulletts!. Yeah. , yes.

Welcome to Cloudtown Tuesday, the day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloudtown, and um, tell you about the process of making it. It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD, so here it is, let's go, let's do it.

Yeah, the rush just ended, Let's look at this page. Okay. Okay. I like how she's, , powering up her confrontation to the bully. You know, I just realized this pretty recently, that this, teddy bear lion...

Yeah. was featured in page two. Yeah. Heavily. It doesn't appear till right here. And you're like, why is this lion in her [00:01:00] head? Like she has a teddy bear at home that she cuddles when she's feeling insecure. Oh, so this is like the reason why the bear is here. Yeah. So originally this, the book opens with a scene of her huddled in her basement during a hurricane attack.

And so you just think it's a normal hurricane. Cause I used to hide in, When there are big storms in my town, you have to like, hide away from windows. And so she's , cuddling the, the thing. But, yeah, it's later in the story too. It's a cool little , , Easter egg. , you know what, , my editor thought it was the, there's like a creature like it in Bleach apparently?

Which I hadn't read at the time. There's like a, a possessed teddy lion something. That's cute. Yeah, I don't know. Alright, hang on, let's watch the timelapse. Yeah, there's really good energy in this page.

Originally it was just, , Pen in her mind saying, you can take them.

I like that you put them a little more in the middle, [00:02:00] So that they're at the focal point. And this is also a pretty traditional, in traditional storytelling beats, You usually have, on a hero's journey, they try to do the right thing early on, they try to change in the way they should, and it just goes awfully.

And it reinforces them being the way they were. Um, and so , that's something I didn't think about at this point in time, but in retrospect, that is like... That's what you did? Yeah, that's what, that's what happened, yeah. That's cool.

I play with the dolphins on her shirt, reference to... Yeah, yeah, cause she was in love when I first designed that, , hoodie. She fell in love with the dolphin boy. Remember we talked about that other character? Oh, yeah. That got edited out. No. In this world, do they know about the dolphin brain people?

Yeah they do. The people that pilot the Stormcatchers are like, , celebrities. They're well known. And two of them are dolphin brained. In the first version of this, not too much.

But [00:03:00] in the world of Cloud Town, crazy stuff happens so much that it's not so crazy for crazy things to happen, you know? , weird random creatures come out of a rip in the universe. , stuff can be shocking, but , nothing's outside of the realm of , reasonable expectation.

Mm mm. All the major beats are in the script, but the details all got changed, basically, like how things play out. And sometimes it's just like, Oh, the expression this person made and this page makes me feel like they didn't actually, in retrospect, they didn't actually feel confident about this decision.

So that would change how they react later. Right, because you're building a continuity with your characters as you expand on them more. So you kind of have to like, go less on the script, but how the story is going while you draw it. Yeah, well you know, I think about this, like screenwriters write the screenplay, but then it does change.

Like, when you didn't get the shot, or it looked better, or like, oh this character is actually the star, or whatever. That's why you're supposed to have a [00:04:00] screenwriter on set. Yeah. You know, you'll have to change the dialogue with the actor. But,, direct influence of,, watching YouTube, I had never heard of Kirby Crackle.

And this is like a, a crude approximation, but her, , power up stuff, , definitely was, , learning about what Kirby Crackle is from Cartoonist Kayfabe being on in the background while I was drawing. They're so good. Yeah, I enjoy it. But, , , again, , we're gonna do, , the, , Meanwhile, back at the farm.

Oh yeah, it. I like that , wavy texture in the back. Looks like a... got the... pattern. Yeah, so what I do is I take a texture pencil or marker, or texture brush and then I manipulate it with the liquify. Oh, yeah, you bend it. Yeah, and I do that a lot and I find it really enjoyable. I find it, I like the effects on that.

Yeah, it looks cool. Um... So yeah, that's this page.

Hey, thanks for watching. These videos are brought to you by the stuff I make, and [00:05:00] Patreon supporters get all that stuff. So, I've been putting up more free ebooks, my first 200 and some odd page "A Film About Billy" alternates between comics and prose "Bears in Space" over 100 pages of "Free Money" so many of the stories that you might have read about in my Failing to quit are all up free for any paid supporter to read.

I sold out of the 1 early adopter slots, so that's great, thank you all for signing up, , I added 25, 2 a month, slots, so if you have friends that you think would like this and want them to get in before it goes up to 3 a month, uh, do tell them about it.

, not only are you guys getting these two pages of my new webcomic , plus all the years of backlog of the story of me pitching and selling and writing CloudTown, and access to pitches only a few editors have seen at this point.

Besides all that, you're all about to get a brand new membership card. And this [00:06:00] enamel pin. Gotta send these off soon, but every new member can get one of these cool enamel pins. Thanks again for being here, spread the word, and I hope I'll be making some good stuff that you're excited to watch.

Yeah. Sorry, we're just hovering. We're not even working here. We're just bothering her. Have a great day.

Robert Crumb episode: Apple plan to be a pro artist and meet her hero.

Rough auto transcript:

Alyssa Crumb Drawing Board OCTOBER

[00:00:00] Simple advertisement. Dear, Vanna White. No, no, no! You can't show that! This is for kids! Oh, right, right, right. We'll edit that out. I'll show a more PG page. If there is one. There isn't one.

Welcome to Studio Bean Can's Drawing Board . These are collections of musings, thoughts, arguments, cut on tape while recording the time lapse videos, and um, put together just for you.. I hope you enjoy it. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Oh, okay. I think it did say my thing was like 300 or something like that. Oh, three hundred's fine. Yeah. It might've been that you had, it originally made for a half sheet. Oh, oh man. Maybe I, I'm pretty sure that I could, you know, it might've been five. 5. 5 by 8. 5 and then it like upscales it and then you get the, JPEG [00:01:00] artifacts.

. Come on. Come on, sit, sit down. Where's that other coffee, Kirt? I threw it away. You're full of . It's in the back? I thought it was Alyssa's. Yeah, but I gave her mine because I hadn't drank from it yet. Oh.

Ugh, Spider Man. Well, I did something really stupid, I realize. What'd you do? I didn't bring my iPad. I brought my iPad. Yeah. She's ready.

Um, dum dum dum dum I'm so ashamed. Is it on? , one thing I realized I've never, we've never done is actually introduce all of us. That's something I thought would be reasonable to do, like, I'm Daniel McCluskey, creator of Cloud Town, among other self published books. Cloud Town is my first book with a big [00:02:00] publisher.

It's gotten good reviews. Things are going well. Awesome. My name is, uh, Alyssa Appleberry, but people call me Apple. And, um, I'm currently a tattoo artist, and I'm also practicing cartooning and making comic books. So, I like to draw adult comics. Do you mind me asking how old you are?

I am, I'm 20. Alright, so Alyssa is 20, we live in one of the most expensive places in America, and she went from , well you went to high school, an art high school, so you have some formal art background, more than I do. Alyssa also went from, you know, living at her dad's house, or whatever, to...

Living at my dad's house without him in it. Yeah. , he moved out. All right. Yeah. Yeah. And so suddenly you were paying rent and you made it work by working at a comic shop and starting from scratch, getting your tattoo license. And that involved, setting goals, building a portfolio.

You did a lot in that first year [00:03:00] when, I think I met you when you were 18, right? . Yeah. I started working at Mission Comics at 18 years old. And I definitely put, , a ton of work into,, both aspects of being at the comic store and tattoo shop. But it's also really helped just, , being friends with the people around here and talking with them and asking their advice for the process.

So, . Yeah, it's, uh, cool to be, , around the people that are similar to me to learn how it works. Also, , your life... Like, we don't have to, talk about this, but like your high life is pretty hard . Uhhuh. , you were like eating a one taco from Taco Bell. Yep. A week or something , yeah.

And, your ability to like try hard and make that art and get the tattoo stuff running is what made you be able to be here and hustle. Yeah. It's the, it's the only thing I had for sure, like, . I, I just knew that if I kept going eventually it would get somewhere and today you have your first comic you printed, right? I might blur it out because I'm trying to be relatively [00:04:00] PG 13. But this is a comics anthology, ? This is "Repulsive". So this is my, uh, very first comic book anthology featuring six different underground cartoonists based in San Francisco, mostly in Mission Street.

I created this anthology to try to meet Robert Crumb because he said that he was coming to the country. He didn't even say he was coming to SF, he just said he was coming to America. He's definitely going to be on Mission Street. So I texted my tattoo mentor and I was like, I'm going to try to find Robert Crumb.

And she's like, okay, how do we do that? I was like, let's try to make an anthology so that we could show it to him. And, , , that's how this started. This is the birth of Repulsive. And, um, the birth. Yeah, it was a natural birth. I didn't force the labor. It came out. It came out perfectly

But I [00:05:00] did. You did? Yeah. No shit. Yeah, so, uh, What the flip? Like, I didn't give him this anthology, but I ran into his daughter, and , I gave her one of my zines, and , my tattoo mentor, who also makes comics, I'll show you, you can censor this, but um, she did this comic right here, she did the, like, first comic of the whole anthology.

So, uh, I gave her my Zine and this comic to Robert Crumb's daughter, and I was like, please give this to Robert Crumb, like, out of breath, , sweating, because I had, like, run over to where she was, because I saw she was, , on Valencia Street via Instagram, like, she was supposed to order, so I was like, I gotta get there, I, like, ran out with, like, my comics and shit.

And so I met her and she was cool. She even asked if I did a zine with her, but I was like, no, sorry I haven't worked on a project with you. That'd be cool. I've been in a anthologies that Sophie Crum has been in because she does a bunch with Birdcage Bottom Books and I've done a couple. I think they were in Too Tough to Die, the [00:06:00] aging punk rocker anthology.

Really? That's awesome. Is that a publisher? A publisher and indie distributor.

That's cool. Yeah. That's awesome. But then don't you have a photo with Robert Crumb on your Instagram? Yeah. Can you send that to me? Did you actually meet? I'll show him. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I met his daughter and then, um, we talked a little bit and then I went back and like I told Mary, I was like, I gave, I gave her my comic, like she said she was gonna give it to Crumb.

And then, a day later, I was walking home from work after the comic bookstore. And for some really weird reason , I was like, I'm just gonna walk a different route home, like, just to try it out. So I walked, like, parallel to Mission Street down, and um, like, for a few blocks, and then I felt like something really weird in my legs, and then, , I don't know, it was just something, I was like, man, like, like, I feel like I'm having a stroke or something, like, I'm gonna die.

And then I seen, like, this old man across the street, and I was like, Man, that guy looks like Robert Crumb. I thought I was a heat, the heat or something. , I thought I was [00:07:00] tripping out. And then I walked a little closer to him, I was like, Holy shit,

This guy looks exactly like Robert Crumb.

And then I, I went up to him, I was like, Hey, are you Robert Crumb? And he was like, Yeah. And then, and then I was like, oh my god, , I gave you my comic, did you read it? And he was like, And I was like, I was like, what'd you think? Like, did you like it? And he was like, no, I didn't like it.

And then I just sat there. I didn't say anything after I didn't respond. And he was like, you got to stop doing drugs. And then I like I took the joint out of my mouth. I was like, smoking . I was like, yeah, you're right. I got to stop smoking. I got to stop doing drugs. So, yeah, we talked for like a couple of minutes.

That's like a PSA. Yeah, yeah. You should put that on television. Make your comics better. Hey, that's what happened. I don't believe you.

So he, like, at first he wasn't smiling. Like, he was just like, like, you know his face he does? Let me show the camera more. That's... And so I was [00:08:00] like, wait, wait, I was taking a bunch of photos, I was like, man, I feel dorky here, because I had the headphones on, right? I was like, man, I gotta take the headphones off for this.

This is Robert Crumb. So, so he's like, he's not smiling, like, he's not. Oh wow, that's right around here, isn't it? Yeah, , so I took it off, he started smiling. The comic that you showed him, which comic was it? This was my very first, , zine.

It wasn't even a comic book. Oh, was it with the flash? Yeah, it had the Cerebus flash on the back. Oh, okay. And like, my wizard in the tower comic. So, my very first ever zine, I think I can bring it from the back. Yeah, I took my headphones off and he started smiling because he thought it was funny. Hey, what's up?

Oh, that's awesome. What a... What? Yeah, man. That's amazing. Robert Crumb owns this zine. He loves it. Well, yeah, I heard he doesn't like it, but it doesn't he doesn't like the art, but he loves the book [00:09:00] He loves me Well, I feel like that's actually pretty good motivation, right?

Yeah You're trying to do better every time, right? Yeah, yeah. No, actually, no, like, he doesn't. I don't think I would have recognized him. Man, but like, he looks like how he draws himself. To the T. Like, he looks exactly how his illustrations look.

So, I was like That's what I've heard. He looks very Robert Crumb esque. Like, he was like He's like what an old man would look like if he looked like Robert Crumb. That's how he looks like himself. That's wild. What a national treasure. Yeah, man. But he did He told me to keep making comic books and , you know, like I'd always keep doing that if he didn't tell me.

But that's really good advice. I think it's good Creators should just be honest and say, No, I don't like it. No, it's nothing personal. It's just, I think it sucks. I think that's actually a lot better than being like, Oh yeah! Keep it up! Keep going! Like, I mean, that's also [00:10:00] good. I mean, there's a balance.

But you're not getting anything. You don't want to be destructive and try to break someone. But saying it's not good and keep going is actually kind of amazing. That's the best of us. I don't know if I can do that. Because everyone isn't really that good. Yeah. If you were, you'd notice. He probably wouldn't like any of these comics in here.

Yeah. Well, a couple. Maybe, maybe a few. . He might like his own. I'm sure he'll find something. Uh,​

Um, I have another mission for you and I think you might be the only person able to do this.

Yeah. You now need to meet Alan Moore. Yeah.

Right,​

Rough auto transcript

aug28cttPT22ytedit

[00:00:00] How did Batman become Batman? He started out rich. That's how most artists become artists. Well, okay, so how did Green Arrow become Green Arrow? I don't know. He's exactly, exactly the same as Batman. But he crashed on an island and figured out how to make a bow and arrow. Welcome to Cloudtown Tuesday, the day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloudtown, and um, tell you about the process of making it.

It's like a editor's commentary on a DVD. Here it is. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's do it. If you want to be a famous artist, starting out rich seems helpful. But what's the point? Talk to your parents about that. Yeah. You know, ask them, why are you poor? You know, what is this? This is the reason I can't draw.

Yeah, this is the reason I can't have an art career. Dad! I know, I do think I want to have a series where I just take some time and Um, I think about what I would like to have known earlier. One thing I would like to have known earlier is [00:01:00] just like a lot of the, the concepts of how to move toward getting a book deal and getting a following and getting, um, you know, a career.

closer to a career or a really nice robust hobby if that's where your heart lies like honestly both are fine part of that is just Not as bombastic and crazy as it sounds part of it is really just like having a schedule being Consistent making goals for improvement doing small projects showing up places Letting people see you some cartoonists that have new book deals out that I have met and talked with Went to cons regularly, had a new product every con, sometimes they were just illustrations or a little zine, and kept doing that until people wanted their stuff.

And once people want your stuff, editors, agents, all those people notice, because they want people to want their stuff. It's all about persistency. It's, it's partially about [00:02:00] it. Persistence is important. Persistence is real important, I think. We talk about it. Quality is important. It's unclear what qualities.

Because different qualities are important to different people. Probably like, you said it depends on your style and what you're aiming for. Yeah. With the different qualities. And what the fickle fans in the world would be interested in. Yeah, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

They are the water you're swimming in. If you want to be read, it's about the feelings of other people. It should be like some of what you want in your work and what other people want. Like a mix of both if you're trying to publish. I always have a problem writing with the concept of a target audience.

Um, but, you know, you just write, you just write for me now. You just write to make me happy, right? Yeah, that's pretty much Well, I don't know. No, you don't. That might be actually the opposite. Yeah, poop emoji. I like the, um, black hair contrast shading. Thank you. You're welcome. Sometimes I like these pages before I shade them because they're just easier to read.

Um, [00:03:00] and that's something that like they talk about in Bakuman when people add too much gray tones. Yeah It becomes a mush, you know, the the creator of One Piece doesn't use tones like at all. Wow That's like that's amazing. He's such a good cartoonist. So good just black and white and occasionally He'll use a tone for like a night scene, but it looks real out of place He's just like, you know with deadlines once you start putting gray down its all over You need a team to, like, He has a team and he's still, you know, like, If you don't, if you can cut that out, cut it out.

But, He's all detailed, too, actually. So you can pull off, um, detail in comics. So, in those studio setups, it's usually, like, the main artist just draws the characters and the layouts, and then they have, uh, assistants do the backgrounds? It really depends, but I certainly am interested in, we've talked about this, exploring doing that.

Um, partially because that's just the [00:04:00] way I'd like to live. I'd like to be drawing with people more. And when you make me happier, I think, uh, for the most part. I do like this technique I started doing where I just had the background characters and stuff just be in the blue tones. Yeah, I like that. Oh, yeah.

Cause it, it It creates that atmospheric Yeah, I don't know what I started doing there. Or just the beat didn't feel right. Because the no talking came after and I wanted it to come before, so I had them go to behind them in the classroom. Oh, did you switch it? Yeah, here, I'll go back a little bit. Oh, I see it.

So it starts over here. Because Oh yeah, that works a lot better. Yeah, it just got confusing, like, I wanted you to understand that they were typing in their goggles. They were like shutting up after that. Well, I wanted you to know that Penn and Olive were typing in their goggles and this was like the lesson they were working on.

Oh. But if you went from them typing to this to that, it was just like a little less clear. A weird skit. I guess I think you're doing good.

This video was brought to you by the free Comic Newsletter at https://danielmccloskey.com/ And by my wonderful Patreon supporters who have early access to all my videos and comics! https://www.patreon.com/freemoney Special thanks to my sister, Zoe McCloskey (see some of her amazing art at http://www.zoemccloskey.net/ ) and dad, Kevin McCloskey! ( Watch a video about his most recent book HERE https://youtu.be/VcglyVrUJrU?si=aypKx... ) Follow him on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/kevinmcwho/ Follow me https://www.instagram.com/beancandan/ Early access to videos and more at patreon.com/freemoney There are spoilers so read ahead at your local library or favorite comic book retailer. Signed copies are available at my website and the following stores. If your comic book retailer would like to be added to this list, have them contact me via email and I'll send some signed bookplates their way. https://danielmccloskey.com/shop/clou... Signed copies are available at: USA: CA--Mission: Comics and Art, Comix Experience, Silver Sprocket, Cape & Cowl, Sour Cherry Comics, Escapist Comics, Knowhere Games & Comics, The Comic Bug, Current Comics, Hicklebees GA-- Read It Again Bookstore MI--Vault of Midnight NC--Ssalefish, The Country Bookshop NY-- Books of Wonder, Gutter Pop Comics, Anyone Comics, Desert Island Comics, Everyone Comics IL-- Quimby's OR--Cosmic Monkey Comics PA-- The Copacetic Comics Company, Phantom of the Attic, FireFly Bookstore, Main Point Books TX-- Space Cadets Collection Collection VA-- Velocity Comics WA-- The Comics Place, Destiny City Comics Not on this list and want to be? message me: https://danielmccloskey.com/press Praise for Cloud Town: "Weirdly and unexpectedly wonderful." Kirkus Reviews "A rollicking giant monster adventure will be a hit with fans of Hannah Templer's Cosmoknights and Tillie Walden's On a Sunbeam." School Library Journal "Meet Daniel McCloskey - a bold, new cartooning voice! Cloud Town is a beast! It's original. It's different. It's full of energy and life! Kaiju, skateboarding, manga, YA, so many ideas, and great cartooning! This is a special graphic novel. It feels like the future." Jim Rugg- The PLAIN Janes, Street Angel, Hulk Grand Design, Cartoonist Kayfabe channel "You're going to want to hold on tight for a wild ride from beginning to end! A thrilling adventure defined by Pen's strength and Olive's bravery." Eric Colossal- Rutabaga the Adventure Chef Psst, do you want a secret free prequel to Cloud Town? Here's the URL... https://danielmccloskey.com/ytsecret #vanlife #kidlitart #pitchingcomics #comix

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Rough Transcript:

Cloud Town Tuesday part 13 comic book author commentary

[00:00:00] I was in an elementary school last week and there was a sign that said, No playing inside the freezer. That's a good, that's a good plan. Was it a walk in freezer? No. Oh, geez. Welcome to Cloudtown Tuesday, the day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloudtown, and um, tell you about the process of making it.

It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD. Here it is. Let's go. Let's do it. This is my big sister Zoe. She has much more formal art training than I do. And as you met last week, this is my dad Kevin. Uh, children's book author and illustration professor. Also more art training than me. He's wearing the same shirt.

He's wearing the same shirt. Can you believe it? This is going to be page. Eight of the actual book. So this is really close to the original pitch. So this is the pitch document page that you're seeing behind. Me just tracing it. So I don't have footage of [00:01:00] me figuring that out, but it ends up being relatively different like this character in the top left character's Corner there is cut out.

She's got a fly print on her. Yeah, that's fly. Thanks Did we didn't we try to use ai to figure out a fly output? Oh, yeah, we were messing around doing fly dresses after, like, uh, was in my head, but of course it just looked like weird and gross because it combined flies and people, but that's the thing, uh, or like fly military people.

Drawing is still, uh, useful, better for me for sure. Some people are, it's a different skill set.. using AI for sure. What's this thing sitting on the apple? A little, like, robotic armature that she's programming. Okay. They still have cords in this, in CloudTown. Well Yeah, you think, you think you'd program armatures with Bluetooth?

I mean, things have to charge. It's not the future. It's an alternate [00:02:00] present, right? Yeah, something like that. It's unclear. I thought this was the armature's tail, but it's the apple's stem. Or is it the mini A? Wow. Or is it the mini B? You put my picture on the side of the apple. I'm flattered. That does look Every time I see an Apple sticker, I'll think, that's my dad.

What happened to her head? And then she like, reappeared. What? I can go back. Like, didn't she change and then all of a sudden reappear? Oh, I just put a picture. Oh, yeah. What happened there? So I know what he was supposed to look like. Oh, gotcha, you gotcha. You just threw a reference image. Yeah, threw a reference image on there.

But yeah, what I was saying before is I didn't have page numbers in any of the book when it was, like, completed. And then they retroactively asked me to put page numbers in, which is a lot. It's a lot of work to [00:03:00] shuffle everything to make page numbers look relatively normal on every page. So, I don't know.

If there's any editors out there Let people know in advance. So did you number them consecutively? Yeah.

Classic cool girls. Yeah, classic cool girl trope. Like, one of the things that was interesting, I was listening to a podcast about becoming a screenwriter today, and like how it teaches you some bad behavior if you're on your path to become a professional screenwriter, because you need to make things That a producer's, not necessarily writers, will believe, have faith that can be a sellable thing, because they are similar to what they've seen before.

And Cloudtown is, in part, that. Like, I, I had a bunch of other stories that just, I was getting feedback from editors that they couldn't see how it would be a whole story, or how it fit. And so, this is the story that's most, like, There's a [00:04:00] giant robot. They get in the robot. There's villain characters. No spoilers!

No spoilers! But there were comparables. There are comparables, yeah. You could see the pieces put together from the beginning and I like to think that there are twists and turns that make it surprising. But, I'm starting at a place If you support him now, maybe someday you'll get to see something really crazy and different that you've never seen before.

But you're watching this, you probably are supporting me. Well, no. Maybe it'll come out later. To the wide public. We don't know who you are. We don't know who you are. What if you're leaking this to YouTube? Yeah, no, he's, he's an amazing guy. He's got a lot of, uh, Bugs, bugs, bugs! Bugs! No bugs! Bugs, bugs, squish bugs.

Ah, the bugs are moving! That's very nice. There's an E? See, and I just redrew this, I wanted it on a donut, instead of, maybe I thought, like, the apple, I put it on a donut box, because she works at a donut [00:05:00] shop. I got cut out. Yeah, and then this character gets, I see, I drew so many pages so many times, but you can kind of see how I grew as an artist as much as I did because instead of drawing one 200 page comic, I drew like probably five to six hundred pages of material.

Yeah. Wow. And Boan was holding her pee the whole time! She was a little baby when I She wasn't even Oh, you weren't part of the equation. She wasn't alive when I started this story, but she was when I was drawing this part. Page 8. You exist. It's interesting trying to figure out how I'm making choices. I also got better at consolidating more plot points per panel in a comfortable way.

Mm hmm. I had so much consolidation. So the people in the background aren't just standing there, they're moving or threatening. Sure, I mean this, this shove I really enjoyed. I kept that from the pitch. Yeah. For some reason I like the way [00:06:00] this character's reaction is. Yeah. I just really enjoyed that. It says shove?

It says shove. In the final? Yeah. I love it. I don't know why. It's funny. That one made the cut. Yeah. I know. I found it delightful. Yeah, it's good. It's funny. And then this is from, I don't know, that's from the page before it, yeah, this reference. So I guess we've kind of been blurring through multiple pages I drew on the same page.

I must have duplicated it and continued. Well, that's why it's good to have numbers on them, because seven is basically eight. No, but we're still, this is still the same scene. It's just the same, it's just the next page. The three main girls arrive. And then the next page, well, the scene will continue. Right.

And the geeky girl. But yeah, this is, you know, much later. Alright, well, let's I don't remember these ants so much. I mean, it's only two pages in the very beginning of the book.

So at the end of the book, when the giant ants come, people won't be surprised, right? Right, yeah, that's why I It's so [00:07:00] subtle. But this is almost exactly the original. Like, this is Oh, yeah. This page, barely anything changed. I had to draw it cleaner because I see Charles Byrne's style in that character there.

Charles Byrne? Her hair, you mean? Yeah, just the black white and the Wow, that's, that's an absurd compliment, but I'll take it. Sorry, Charles. They have really big dishes for their food at this high school. Is it jr high or high school? It's a high school, they're freshmen. And my hope was to, you know, have a sense of like a looming perspective.

I was talking to dad about how my ability to do freehand perspective has increased a great deal.

That's a little anime, that diagonal. Which diagonal? Behind her. Here? Because it goes from frame to frame? Yeah, I mean it's a traditional, [00:08:00] um, Like comics. thing is to, you know, watch your z's, like you want your reading path to go, and then drive your eye back to the next frame, right? But am I supposed to read it?

Oh, okay. Okay.

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Cloud Town Tuesday part 12 comic book author commentary

Speaker: [00:00:00] () All right, this is Cloudtown Tuesday with special guest Kevin McCloskey, uh, my dad, and creator of the Giggle and Learn, uh, children's book series. He's got a new one out about caterpillars. What will I be when I get to be me? And we're gonna look at, uh, some of this time loss footage. Welcome to Cloudtown Tuesday.

The day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloudtown, and, um, tell you about the process of making it. It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD. Here it is. Let's go. Let's do it. Guess I think I'll have to edit his language slightly less than Kurt. We'll see. F. Kurt! Originally, one of the reasons they didn't have groceries in the house is Fawn spent their grocery money on some fancy shoes.

And my editor didn't like, uh, how erratic and unsympathetic that character was being. I kind of believed in her as like a kind of, uh, [00:01:00] Selfish, like in a selfish phase as a teenager, but I changed it so that that character would be a little more sympathetic so I had her kind of feel pressured to Buy some shoes For social status with the plan to return them with a receipt, but then was unable to And so I kept kind of adjusting this scene, but this scene got edited out for space.

So it never appeared in the .... In the final comic at all. It's in a crowded

Speaker 2: cafeteria. She says I have lunch. She says it's not about the food. It's about making the most of our senior privileges.

Speaker: Yeah, so I don't know if this was at your school. It wasn't at my school. But some of my friends at their high school at their senior year they were allowed to leave and have lunch at other places.

And come back.

Speaker 2: At my high school you could go in a particular door and I didn't know that. And I arrived From another school transferred and people were, thought I was really tough because I walked in [00:02:00] the senior door.

Speaker: I also really liked the design of this side character. You don't see her as much until later, but she has really big hands and kind of a nice round face.

And, uh, she just, she's not in the book at all, unfortunately, but I did enjoy that. There's something, um, I was reading a book of like manga artists, like when they get on deadline what is something they wish they spent more time doing and often they wish they had a lot more characters that they designed because it's hard to make a really cool, appealing character off the bat, just off the top of your head.

But one thing that's fun about doing these crowd scenes is sometimes you just happen to doodle something that's kind of fun. And then that character stays in the back of your head as a creator. So they end up being in the story more.

Speaker 2: I like her down here where it's sophisticated. She's looking up, you know, like 90 percent of the time, Everybody draws profiles or full face, but to [00:03:00] have somebody complaining toward the sky, that's kind of sophisticated.

Speaker: Well, I think one thing that makes a good cartoonist is acting through the different characters. Yep. Um, there are kind of faces that I The one eyebrow raise that the character by Fawn's elbow is doing is a little bit semi typical thing. I do maybe a little too much. Oh, and so this is now, this is when I'm totally redesigning the page.

When I'm starting over. This is a scene that is from like an early pitch. Um, that was a double page spread. But because I ran out of space, I took that double page spread and just made it a third of a page. And this coolest kid in school is a prime example of a character that I just doodled and I thought looked funny.

And in the pitch version, it goes like this. The font isn't so detailed. I just kind of quickly doodled coolest kid in school with an arrow as a joke. Yeah, but then I was [00:04:00] like well the character kept coming back And I thought it would be funnier if he was in fact the coolest kid in school And I was also thinking of some of the kids in my school that were really cool It was very rare that it was kind of the stereotypical like Jock in my school some of the kids that were well respected were actually just kind of Pleasant and mature and confident.

So that's, that's where his coolness comes from in this story.

Speaker 2: Yeah, he's cool. He's charming to everybody and he's polite and yeah.

Speaker: And I feel like, uh, again, just the character I doodled randomly ended up like becoming a bigger character, taking over, taking place in the story. And because of that, my editor liked him so much, she really wanted to see Olive go on that date.

That scene didn't even exist in the first several versions of the script. Um, but because, because I found out that would be happening, I did include him in the background a little more. Oh, yeah. And this ant scene I added [00:05:00] because of the climax. If you haven't already, you know, stop. If you haven't read Cloud Town already.

But.

If you're here, you probably have the climax. She's in a giant robot and she's threatening, crushing other kids. But. I found that it was kind of difficult for people to quite understand what the threat really was. So when I went back and in the beginning of the book, had her as a normal sized person crush with her finger an insect, suddenly there was no question in people's mind what was going on during the climax.

So this is page 7, making something more readable on page like 220, you know.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not quite foreshadowing, it's kind of

Speaker: Yeah, it's somewhat foreshadowing. Her, like, working on this little programming stuff, that's something that comes in a little bit later when her and Penn are arguing. She wanted to be, like, an engineer when she grew up before she had to pilot the giant robot.[00:06:00]

But, you know, if there were future stories, in a way, you'd imagine her being able to get into the engineering challenge of piloting a giant robot, because that's something she's interested in.

Speaker 2: This guy is disappearing off the panel on the left. He looks a little bit like one of your self portraits.

Speaker: Just because he has like, like glasses like eyeballs.

Speaker 2: And he's sticking his tongue out. Yeah,

Speaker: I like that character, too. I ended up putting him more places because I just like the way it looked. Sometimes simple characters are funnier than, uh, and more delightful to draw. And sometimes I thought, like, in early versions, this kid with the apple cork getting dropped on his head by a drone.

Yeah. He got, uh, pranked consistently throughout the whole story. So that was, like, a side thing that, , got, again, cut out for space.

Speaker 2: And the, like, Lab monitor or the lunch monitor. Is he like taking attendance or keeping track of things? What's he doing there?

Speaker: I think he's just distracted, but it's hard to [00:07:00] know.

Also, I understood like simple one point and two point perspective, but since then I've read, uh, like a number of books and essays that just have really simple, uh, methods, uh, of eyeballing rough perspective in big crowds of people. And. It has changed the way my drawings look. They're a lot more organized feeling and feel like they have a lot more depth than these pages do.

These pages have, um, really like shooting from the hip perspective, which is common in cartooning and is not a problem. I don't think, um, you're not doing exact portraiture. You're, you're trying to, Make symbols that give people the idea of what's going on, but um But there are some really simple Ways to think about perspective that's helpful.

For example, like If your line of sight slash your horizon line is at someone's head [00:08:00] Shoulder level, then everyone from the foreground to the background, their shoulders will line up. If they're relatively the same height. So, that does not appear in this because I haven't figured that out yet.

Speaker 2: Looks great.

Looks great, huh? And I love the way you always got that S shaped curl coming off of Penn's hair. I think it's on the cover too. Where? And then you have the shot that's S here. Oh, olive, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. All

Speaker: good. Yeah. Alright, well that's the page so that Well, thanks dad.

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Cloud Town Tuesday part 11 comic book author commentary

[00:00:00] But I'm gonna probably edit that part out. Yeah, don't You should keep it all in, it's authentic to your, your process. Welcome to Cloud Town Tuesday, the day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloud Town, and um, tell you about the process of making it. It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD.

Here it is, let's go, let's do it.

So yeah, this was the earlier version. And then you just trace your zines. For this, for these pages I did, yeah. Okay, yeah, it is a very different style. Like, of the characters, not so much monsters. Yeah, they're just quicker and rougher, they were like, Yeah. And, it took me so long, so remember talking about those 17 hour pages?

Mm hmm. The zine, I took like three days a page to draw those, and I tried so hard. I was living in a van, drawing on like a broken Wacom that would crash all the time, And I was just like, trying to outdo my previous abilities, [00:01:00] And like, I was like, working outside a dog park. Uh, because then I could leave with my dog and throw the ball for a while and then everyone would cycle out and I could go back in my van and people wouldn't know I was there.

And uh, there's also a bathroom there. So I was just working like every day and it would take me, yeah, again, three days a page. So a 60 page comic probably took me like a couple of years, months. Yeah. It would have been like six months. So it would have been a half a year to just draw that. Um. And then you're like, oh, could you do 224 pages written and scripted and everything in a single year?

And you're like, oh, I need to get a lot faster. Yeah, you got way more efficient if you took three days to make this one. And then this one, yeah, at this point I'm redoing it, I already know what's happening, but I'm an hour in, you can kinda see what's happening. It's kinda done. But I like this as a way to introduce the character, and I like the little gag I've always enjoyed.

I had this from the very beginning, [00:02:00] basically. You gotta stop bringing action figures to school, it's embarrassing. It's not an action figure, it's a scale model. And, like, that's the way to be like, these are real, but also people are like that. They're like, this dinosaur is accurate to the whatever. Yeah, I was like that with toys.

Like, um, I always try to get the baby dinosaur toys, because I want it to actually match, actually match the size. And then this having, like, the Face inside the word bubble from off screen. I must have read a manga that had that finally like that is a technology in comics that I hadn't experienced for a long time.

It'll be a face of this character inside that word bubble. Oh, yeah, but like that's something I use a ton now. Is that an inverted tag? Yeah, going to the head. Oh, that's neat in manga like generally even if you don't have a head like we're in modern manga and inverted tag means they're off panel. Oh, like they're speaking, so it's another character grounding.

That's interesting, I like that. It's really, [00:03:00] it's really, once you get used to it, it makes a ton of sense and it's really grounding and helpful. Yeah, that's super good. You did the, you did the hand really well up there too. Thanks. That's the one thing I'm, uh, started confident in. Like, I drew my hands a ton when I was young.

Really? Yeah, I was the only thing I was good at drawing. But because other people weren't good at it. Yeah, I mean, hands are so hard to draw. Like, to get down to a different person, you know. But everyone's got some. Gestures. Well, not everyone, but most people have some to look at. Most people that are drawing.

Excuse me. Not everyone has hands. Well, everyone has hands. I know, I don't, I don't, listen, let's, I'll stop! Take it easy! This guy! What do you got against my friend, Walter? He's a good guy. He's an amazing artist. They can do a lot of cool stuff. And write with anything, really. I don't know. Alright, well, this has been a page of actual comics [00:04:00] on Cloud Town Tuesday.

I feel like that's enough for this week. Looks good. Yeah, chugging along. I wonder if we'll have less and less to say. This is why we need to get other artists stuff to look at. Yeah, let's do like a I suddenly am like wait, maybe oh, yeah. Oh, that's neat I was like, maybe it should be this other character from before to have less characters There's this panic moment where I was told to remove more characters I thought from the book and I was like already done and I called my agent I was like, can I just hand can I just print this book myself and just do a new book for them?

Like if they want me to do this much work, yeah, that's cool. Like with the inverted tag and the expression Yeah, that totally works. I use that so much now Interesting Wait, why were you adding another character here to make less of them? Yeah, so that, the person with the other haircut is a character that you'll see later.

So they were like, yeah, and if you could consolidate as many characters as possible, but which the editor meant apparently was like, in future, like when writing another book, like how, like [00:05:00] consolidate as many characters as you can. Um, so we get more time with each character. That's, and it's less confusing.

Yeah. It's good advice. Yeah. Yeah. But I thought that they were.

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Cloud Town Tuesday part 10 comic book author commentary

[00:00:00] Time lapse. Welcome to Cloud Town Tuesday. The day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloud Town, and, um, tell you about the process of making it. It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD. Here it is. Let's go. Let's do it. So, this one is going to show you very little because I drew this This was part of the zine, this page.

Oh, cool. So I just go back and try to draw it cleaner. The first version was the version where my editor was like, Oh yeah, this is good, but can you send me finished pages? And so this is me trying to make it look more professional. Cloud Town was in a zine first? Yeah, I made two different Cloud Town zines.

Oh, really? Nice. And the second zine was my pitch. So like, the advice I was giving you about making like zine length things that could be pitches is like the advice I took and eventually got me a book deal. Cool. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. That's what I'm trying to do, put like one series inside of all of my zines that have a bunch of one pagers.

And then there's one that has like a few [00:01:00] pages that's an ongoing story. And then I could use that as like a pilot. Yeah. Like, uh, this one was 60 pages, which is too long. But I wanted to get to the point where they were in the robot. Um, because my previous pitches, I was having trouble --or the editors We're having trouble imagining where the story would go.

So I had to keep it simple enough that they could predict it, but not so simple that they would be bored by it. And like, oddly, that's a weird balance. I find it really frustrating that I have to make things less interesting. Well, to me, in order to, um, have an editor's faith that they can be good or can be sold.

Do you think the limitations have made you more creative with the project at any point? Sure, yeah. I think limitations can be good. And for me, I over imagine stuff. So, I would've, I could remake the same thing infinity times. [00:02:00] You could've been stuck on something for a while. Yeah, yeah. So, like, I, like, the way I'm redoing the Macho Valentine pitch now as a shonen manga, like, I could do the first chapter of Macho Valentine infinity different ways.

Yep. Um. So the moment someone gives me money and was like, no, do it this way, that's actually really helpful for me. Yeah, for sure. It gives you like one thing to focus on and then you can play with that one idea and external pressure to get it done. Yeah. Yeah. That. Alright, so that does help. This is the first page that shows up that's like actually story we're of the zines was any pages in the zine and the final book.

Yeah, that's one of 'em.

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Cloud Town Tuesday Part 9, comix commentary with friends

[00:00:00] There was a terrorist attack during a tornado. In a tornado. At the same time. It was a tornado. Wizard of Oz style. Welcome to Cloud Town Tuesday. The day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloud Town, and um, tell you about the process of making it. It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD.

Here it is. Let's go. Let's do it.

Oh yeah, so this is How'd this happen? I started by drawing everything as spreads. Thanks. But then I had to switch to single pages because, , it was too big a file for my Procreate to handle when I wanted enough layers. Uh, originally this novel was going to jump back and forth between text and prose.

And it started with an essay that Penelope Quick wrote about the creation of skateboards and kind of told you a little bit about the world secondarily. But it was talking about how, um, skateboards were invented by children. For children, like in the rubble of, [00:01:00] of bombings in world war two, French kids nailed parts of a roller skate onto the plank of wood.

And then that was it. Um, and just like being stoked about, , skateboards basically, and spelling a bunch of stuff wrong and not doing any research and getting a C plus. It's cool. Is it you that just like drew on a piece of paper and then took a photo of it on a desk? Yeah. Nice. And then, so when this starts getting populated with.

I'm going to keep fast forwarding. So this is all of her dad's like tech stuff. Um, like he's got just like, soldering pens and like some people use dental tools to like fix and replace, um, screens. Uh, these are woke crystals. I was gluing googly eyes on crystals for awhile and I was like, if I really wanted to be a millionaire, I'd start a Kickstarter for woke, crystals.

com. Uh, but instead I just put them around here. Yeah. Uh, this is like a soft phone that you could like. Use like a snap bracelet. Your whole comic is just a business pitch [00:02:00] for the woke crystals. This is like those Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday pill things, but they're just using them and replacing them. How'd you break your computer screen?

Okay, so one day I went to the coffee shop next to my house and uh, they used to give me free coffee a lot, which is nice. Um, but it was right next to my house. It was 7am. I was never there that early usually, but I was teaching. Uh, middle school writing class and the lady grabs my coffee and turns quickly my mug because I brought my own mug back in Pre co-vid days.

She turns and just smash it slips out of her hand just smashes against the wall. She's like i'm so sorry I'm, so sorry. I like I don't know. It's fine. It's fine. I got too many mugs She gives me a cup of coffee for free was very kind and then I bike to work At work, one of my other teachers had brought in a vase to pull out poetry poems and she immediately like Slips off her chair and lands on the vase and it shatters and she gets a cut.

She's okay But I was like what a weird day and I kind of forget about it until I'm biking home and one [00:03:00] of my backpack straps snaps My backpack swings around hits the front wheel of my bicycle. I do a flip and then land on the On my backpack, breaking my laptop screen, my phone screen, and my front wheel is totally destroyed.

Oh, did it bend the front wheel? Yeah, it's like a taco, so I had to carry it with its wheel in the air. I just limped home. Like, this was after I knocked my teeth out, so I was like, at least I kept those in. That's fucked up. Yeah. So I just like limped home, and it was just like one of those weird days. I'd be so sad.

I had to go find a new backpack. And then I bought new screens. It wasn't a Mac, so you could actually do that. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Also, yeah, and this is me trying to figure out, um, like, scales for both colors. Like, how many different arrays I want to use. Um, my editor was, like, also wanting me to add some narration.

Because, like, she's like, These editors. Yeah, they want people to know what's going on. It's ridiculous. Almost kind of adds too much to [00:04:00] it. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know. And then, you just have, These are the name of your kids. They're all home. And it shows you what level of Danger the world is in green blue orange indigo.

It's almost always is that based on like that, you know stupid stuff We had like in the early 2000s. Yeah when we were kids and every morning on the intercom at school They'd be like code red terrorist alert level orange So just so you know kids in kutztown pennsylvania, like there might be someone Gonna getcha.

It's pretty ridiculous. And they'd have one for like an earthquake. Oh, we only had terrorist alerts. I mean we had tornado warnings too, but very, but then there was an actual tornado and there was a terror, uh, tornado warning. There was a terrorist attack during a tornado. In a tornado at the same time. It was a tornado.

Wizard of Oz style. Wizard of Oz style. Weather terrorism. Inside [00:05:00] a tornado. You know, in the second, uh, series of, uh, G. I. Joe, no, with the dreadnoughts, where the dreadnoughts were in this cartoon. No, it is real. Um, the Cobra commander and Dastro created the weather dominator, weather dominator, and they did use weather for, for terrorist reasons.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. Um, I find this kind of boring to watch. How are you guys feeling about it? Um, yeah, it would be more interesting to see something character related. This Cloudtown Tuesday is cut short by our [00:06:00] impatient

This video was brought to you by the free Webcomic Newsletter at https://danielmccloskey.com/ Also by Kirt, Apple aka Alyssa, and Mission Comics... Follow us all on the gram! @supercoolawesomechicken / supercoolawesomechicken @kirtburdick / kirtburdick @missioncomics / missioncomics @MissionComicsArt / BeanCanDan @BeanCanDan Early access to videos and more at patreon.com/freemoney There are spoilers so read ahead at your local library or favorite comic book retailer. Signed copies are available at my website and the following stores. If your comic book retailer would like to be added to this list, have them contact me via email and I'll send some signed bookplates their way. https://danielmccloskey.com/shop/clou... Signed copies are available at: USA: CA--Mission: Comics and Art, Comix Experience, Silver Sprocket, Cape & Cowl, Sour Cherry Comics, Escapist Comics, Knowhere Games & Comics, The Comic Bug, Current Comics, Hicklebees GA-- Read It Again Bookstore MI--Vault of Midnight NC--Ssalefish, The Country Bookshop NY-- Books of Wonder, Gutter Pop Comics, Anyone Comics, Desert Island Comics, Everyone Comics IL-- Quimby's OR--Cosmic Monkey Comics PA-- The Copacetic Comics Company, Phantom of the Attic, FireFly Bookstore, Main Point Books TX-- Space Cadets Collection Collection VA-- Velocity Comics WA-- The Comics Place, Destiny City Comics Not on this list and want to be? message me: https://danielmccloskey.com/press Praise for Cloud Town: "Weirdly and unexpectedly wonderful." Kirkus Reviews "A rollicking giant monster adventure will be a hit with fans of Hannah Templer's Cosmoknights and Tillie Walden's On a Sunbeam." School Library Journal "Meet Daniel McCloskey - a bold, new cartooning voice! Cloud Town is a beast! It's original. It's different. It's full of energy and life! Kaiju, skateboarding, manga, YA, so many ideas, and great cartooning! This is a special graphic novel. It feels like the future." Jim Rugg- The PLAIN Janes, Street Angel, Hulk Grand Design, Cartoonist Kayfabe channel "You're going to want to hold on tight for a wild ride from beginning to end! A thrilling adventure defined by Pen's strength and Olive's bravery," Eric Colossal- Rutabaga the Adventure Chef Psst,

Rough AI TRANSCRIPT:Cloud Town Tuesday Part 7, comix commentary with friends

[00:00:00] So this room is the future studio of Bean Can. Assuming it gets emptied out. Stop, no, there's glass, you're gonna kill people. This is not, this is a trap, death trap. Welcome to Cloud Town Tuesday. The day where I share a page from my graphic novel, Cloud Town, and um, tell you about the process of making it.

It's like a, um, editor's commentary on a DVD. Here it is, let's go, let's do it. We can do it. Oh no. Alright, this is not how you carry an iced coffee in a room full of books. Okay, so this is the dedication page. The dedication page? This, I don't know what this is. This is some other page. Okay, yeah. Dedication page.

So I drew this later. It had a little bit of a narrative. I have that small image there from the last page. Uh, I think we looked at that. And you used that to be a composition for this page? Yeah, because I wanted these characters to [00:01:00] run into this duck. Or, not duck, I think it's an ancient murrel. But I wanted that conflict to happen, so.

Um, I think also in the background of this page, there is a pen. Pen's family's house will appear in the background. And the dedicated to anyone who has ever hurt or been hurt by a friend. That's kind of, um, a theme in the books that I wrote. Like my first book, a film about Billy, I had dedicated to anyone, uh, who has ever died or loved someone that has died or will die or something like that.

Literally everyone. Why'd you look at me when you said will die? Won't you? I'm, uh, I don't know. Kirt's on his last legs here. I feel like it, man. After his Death of Power series. On huge success. Oh, it's all over. It's all downhill from here.[00:02:00]

So, also, I do chapter titles by trying to incorporate the chapter in the scene. So, later, chapter 7, I think, is written on the back of their house. So I still wrote chapter there. But I kind of hid it. This is like a new chapter page? No, but there will be a new chapter page later that is that house it, it's going to say chapter.

It's going to say chapter. Oh, like, oh, right on the, so yeah, on the siding, like this never gets put into detail, but um, like they're pretty poor. And his, her dad Fix's phone freelance and he just like nailed garbage together to make their patio, his office, you know, not, he's on their back porch. They have a chicken coop and stuff.

This is, like, influenced by one of the houses I used to run the writers co op in. Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers Project. Looks pretty similar to that house. Oh, cool. And then these little creatures, yeah, they used to, I think I talked to you guys before, but they had a kind of Where's Waldo secondary barbarian story happening in the background of the [00:03:00] first version of the script.

Oh, that's funny. But it got edited out. Because, in script format, it was really disorienting and confusing. Like, why, why do you keep changing your attention to this story for no reason? And then they were like, oh, actually, I like that, you should put it back in. But all of, like, the beats that made it functional, like, were gone.

Were already edited. So, it was, yeah, it was very hard to retroactively reinsert it. But that's something I'd like to do, still, in a future story. Have, like, a secondary Where's Waldo style story that you could find if you were a big nerd. Do you have it as like, tiny little characters in the background of a panel or their own panel?

So that'd be kind of like a Sergio Aragones type mad magazine. Yeah, it'd just be hidden. Yeah, you wouldn't know unless you decided to look for it. Yeah, okay, that's rad. So the plot for this was a crow takes one of these guys away, and then his like, brother goes hunting the crow in like, armor made of trash.

And they find just his [00:04:00] shell in the It's a, it's an epic. But then, but yeah, but then, but then you see like the, out of the shell comes like a, just the head. He can regrow like little arms, so now he's just a short version of the snail. And then, and he trains the crow and starts flying the crow. And then he's like the cool guy that teaches them all to catch birds and fly the birds.

And at the end of the climax when they're fighting the giant monster, they're also kind of swarming fighting the monster. And then he like punches like the foot of the monster with his spear, like in front of all of his compatriots. It's right as the main character punches it in the face with a giant robot, so that all of, all of the scrapper snail people think that he did it.

Damn them, you've got that in like a worst Waldo format. Oh, that would be awesome if it, you know, is in the background, like in the gutters of the book. Yeah, or just like, you'd just be tiny. And then it slowly forms into, like, into the book, you know, like maybe [00:05:00] there's like, you know. It gets more and more prominent throughout the time until it's like the main story instead.

For like one or two pages, not for the whole thing. I do love the shells being like beanies. It is so cool. This one looks like an army hat. That was the whole, that was the whole one of this video, so I feel like we can do a couple of these real quick. Oh really? Yeah, I don't know, so exactly, so like the last video we watched took forever, this one took me five hours.

But it's a five minute clip. But it's a five minute clip. But that means I'm getting way faster at these. The texturing, uh, looks really cool. I like the motion lines a lot. Yeah, I bought True Grit. And, uh, you know what? A friend of mine, uh, respectfully was like, You know, there are always these new technologies in comics that, um, that make you think, uh, it's really cool at the moment, but you'll super date yourself.

You know, you don't have to, but I, I toned down a bit of it, Hey guys. This video is brought to you by my [00:06:00] free newsletter comic. So if you've read cloud town already and you're enjoying it. Sign up to my newsletter. You get four pages of new comics every two weeks. , in the cloud town universe. And oh, yeah, I've done like a bunch of episodes already, but I've never told anyone to like, and subscribe.

I'm a cartoon. It's not a YouTuber. So if you like it, like it and subscribe to it and follow it and all the stuff people do. Okay. So I guess I'll show you this.