Hey! I’m back with something to say!
WARNING: This blog post contains spoilers from last Thursday’s strip. You might want to wait until you’re up to date before reading.
This is something I’ve been wanting to talk about since last June when I posted a picture on my Facebook page with two turtle designs asking people to vote on which they preferred. The result was a tie and I cast the deciding vote for the second design. One of the comments in the thread was really interesting. Penelope Rogal wrote:
“A looks like he could be pretty nasty, even if he looks unoffensive. B looks like an underdog, the guy everybody makes fun of, but in he will surprise all as he has an incredible attribute!”
This was kind of funny considering where I was thinking of going with the character. I hadn’t fully made up my mind, but I thought Darro might turn into a villain of sorts. Penny had no way of knowing that, but her post was just too perfect. By saying A looked like he could be nasty, it was sort of implied that B looked more trustworthy. If I wanted to turn him bad as a surprise, I’d of course want him to look trustworthy. Note I said trustworthy and not inoffensive. The choice to give Darro one arm had nothing to do with my possible plan to make him a bad guy.
I wish I could take credit for B looking more trustworthy. If it did, it wasn’t intentional. As I wrote in my last blog post, I was just trying to make him look more like a turtle. Are turtles inherently trustworthy?
I waffled back and forth about whether or not to make Darro a bad guy until the very day I drew the strip for the 19th in mid-August. In the strip for the 12th, I set up there was a reveal coming, but I had ideas to go either way. I had a week to think about it. I drew the strip for the 17th on a Saturday and I was still ready to go either way. On Sunday I needed to make a decision and…if you read Thursday’s strip you know what happened. If you didn’t, then maybe this post will get you curious enough to check it out. And there’s more to the story coming this week. I won’t get mad if you decide to continue following along.
That’s it for the week. Have a good seven (or more) and we’ll do this again another Monday.