How many people work for this comic? It's amazing! Who had the idea? How long ago did you started? Do you still have the first sketch? Congrats! I'm loving this comic! :3
Thanks so much! Since a lot of people ask who is involved with what…
So there’s one artist… the amazing “PINE” aka Lidia S who you can follow here, and I’m sure she would love it… http://pajnduch.tumblr.com
The main writer is Zach Huddleston. Not only is he hilarious… https://twitter.com/zhuddleston … He wrote about 75% of the strips, and he also wrote 90% of the tweets on all of the CPD:U character’s Twitter accounts. He’s a beast. He’s a machine.
And then there’s me Shaun Spalding. Although I’m not nearly as talented as Lidia and Zach, I created the characters, edit all the scripts, do the art direction, made the site, and every once and a while, write a strip. You can find me here: http://shaunspalding.tumblr.com … I’m sort of like the coach. My goal was to make something like Homestar Runner or The Muppets. The type of thing that is cute but slightly subversive and a little bit weird doing it. That’s the type of thing that I always liked reading and watching, so I want to get the team to get to that goal.
And finally, there’s Andrew Tan who is a swiss army knife: he’s the best person to bounce ideas off of, and he also is the voice and conscience of Quirky Cat. QC doesn’t say anything without getting it approved by Andrew first. So maybe think of him like the assistant coach. ( https://twitter.com/tandrewtan )
And because I really appreciate your question and your enthusiasm, here are some of the first sketches that I can find of some of the characters…
Catchphrase Dog came about first about 15 months ago. At the time, he was just a "cool dog who spoke in nothing but catchphrases. This was the first concept. Lidia started drawing the strip later (maybe 7 months ago), so she remade all of the characters in her own style..
Quirky Cat came next, because well... Catchphrase Dog needed someone who could actually speak real words (that weren't Catchphrases) to him. And she went through a few different variations.
And I could post this stuff forever, so to save some time, I’ll give you one of my favorite old sketches…
Frenchy La Fox was a design completely created by Lidia. Frenchy La Fox just so happened to debut in the most recent comic. (You'll be seeing a lot of her in a couple months.)
Andrew and I were convinced that Quirky Cat needed a female friend. QC is cutesy co-dependent, so we wanted a friend who could be a lot more brash and self-confident. I talked it out with my girlfriend who loves Kesha and we came up with something...
So I gave Lidia the reference that Frenchy La Fox was supposed to be a French fox who was kinda like Kesha if Kesha were really into performance art. I also suggested that she have a red streak in her hair.
I really liked the first concept Lidia came up with…
But then she beat it by coming up with this…
…and after that, we were refined how to draw her quickly, what colors things should be, and FLF's haircut. Finally, she came up with this version that we're using now:
Thanks for asking the question and bringing me down memory lane. I appreciate everyone who works on the strip and couldn’t do it without them.