Okay. I’ll admit it. I have too darned many hobbies, which doesn’t work well when one also has a full-time job and a family business. Sometimes (often!) I end up putting things on the back burner while I take care of making a living. One of those things was my Ferret in a Lab Coat webcomic.
I started the webcomic in February of 2017 as an experiment. In my opinion, far too many webcomics today are basically print comics on the web. The web, however, has the potential to be much, much more than that. Ferret in a Lab Coat is what I call an “enhanced webcomic.” I was inspired by comics like xkcd, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and Argon Zark, but shamelessly built on ideas from others as well. I discovered quickly that I am not an artist. I decided not to let a little thing like that get in my way, and forged forward anyway.
It takes me a long time to create one of these comics. I spend anywhere from an hour to a day working on the artwork, and then painstakingly create the imagemap that lets viewers mouse over different elements in the comic and click on them to get more info. Last June, I posted some of my most ambitious comics and then went on hiatus because I just couldn’t keep up.
Do you have any idea how long it took me to draw that spider?
(This image is just a teaser. Here’s the link to read experience the whole comic.)
I have a lot of fun with Ferret comics, but they are a lot of work. I’ll probably be getting back to them, but they certainly won’t be on a regularly weekly update schedule. I’m also considering changing the art style so I can spend more time writing and less drawing.
“The Sound of Science” was probably my favorite Ferret in a Lab coat comic ever.
Well, so far, anyway!
So go ahead and take a look. Start at the current comic and work backwards. Or start at the first comic and work forward. Or go to a random comic and wander through in whatever order you choose. It doesn’t really matter. I just hope you enjoy reading and exploring them as much as I enjoy creating them.
Gary D. Robson 