Hey everybody,
I hope everybody’s enjoying the current storyline spotlighting Zoë and her new friend Skitter. I’m starting to get a better feel for drawing Zoë. Checking out my tags, she was the second least featured character on the site and that’s including the Zoê of the Mouse Wing short story that was posted in eight segments. To date, Zoë has been featured in 89 topics. In comparison, Deema has been featured in 72 and she was introduced several months later. Nektara is the most heavily featured character with 154 tags. (So much for Cyran being the star.)
The problem is Zoë’s so small, I keep forgetting her. Kidding aside, Zoe’s small size does have something to do with her lack of appearances. A panel featuring Zoë and another character require more planning. Either they’re all wide shots or I have to figure out a way for Zoë to be elevated to eye level with the character she’s talking to. The same problem arises if I want to put Zoë in the background as an observer (which does bump up the number of appearances a character makes). For that reason, I found that I was featuring Zoë only when it was absolutely necessary. Usually that’s been when I need Nektara to have a second voice of reason to speak to.
Creating Skitter gives Zoë somebody her own size to interact with, which is so much easier to lay out. I’m not about to bump him up to a full member of the cast, but I’d say he’ll on par with Popkin and Mouser.
This weekend I wrote ahead to plan out what will be happening in the strip. Phase One of the Zoë-Skitter storyline ends on May 2. I had intended to break it up with a short storyline to introduce yet another character and then start phase 2 of Zoë-Skitter in June as the big summer story. Well, apparently I had misjudged how long that “short” storyline was going to take because I’ve scripted things out to the end of June and I still have a few more plot points to hit before I’m ready to close it out. It’s now looking like Zoë-Skitter Phase 2 will start in August. Who knows how long it’ll stretch out to?
Writing is funny that way. I don’t think something will be very long and it balloons way bigger than I anticipated. Other things that I thought would cover a lot of ground pass by really quickly (like my last roleplaying session notes). That usually implies a lack of planning on my part. I expect something to be short because I didn’t think about all the things that have to happen for things to logically bridge from point A to point B. I’ll expect a basic premise to have enough meat for several pages and there just isn’t enough action to sustain it.
So who’s the least featured character of the main cast? That would be Barnaby with 68 tags. Don’t worry though. I have a storyline for him, though it probably won’t be until next year before I get to it.
The list:
Nektara – 154 tags
Todrick – 149 tags
Cyran – 122 tags
Sass – 111 tags
Red/Blue/Green Rich/Richmond Raccoon – 106 tags
Zoë – 89 tags
Big Oonch – 80 tags
Deema – 72 tags
Barnaby – 68 tags
Popkin – 33 tags
Mouser – 26 tags
Crismus – 14 tags
Pickle Patch Bandits – 10 tags
Wilhemina – 6 tags
Raz – 6 tags
Bunwick – 6 tags
Zouly – 6 tags
Skitter – 4 tags