Revisiting The Past to Prepare for the Future

I’ve started a new Fuzzy Knight storyline, which is actually an old storyline, but reimagined and, hopefully, improved.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, Fuzzy Knights started out as a photocomic. It was a bit of fun to pass the time while I was teaching English in Japan. It became reasonably popular among gamers, and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to bring toys to life.

When I took up cartooning, I saw an opportunity to build upon the Fuzzy Knights premise and maybe improve it. From a writing point of view, I know I can do better. I’ve had lots of practice!

One of the things I’m doing is condensing the story, taking the best bits and putting them together. Trying to re-release the series as it originally was would be a mistake, in part because this is a story being told to Rebecca. I’m also doing a bit of re-imagining or ret-conning of parts that in hindsight didn’t work, or needed to be set up differently.

So while the story itself will essentially be the same, I’m using the original series as more of a first draft. Hopefully, for those who remember the series from before, it will feel familiar and brand new at the same time!

But this also gave me a chance to improve things visually. While I won’t deny there’s a certain charm to using actual toys in the comic, the effect can be quite.. limiting. There was only so much I could pose the characters, or have them express emotions. So I thought I’d share some before and after images from this week’s strip so you can see the difference for yourself!