UPDATE (05/01): I Added Tony's Backstory! Thank You For Reading!

UPDATE (05/01): I added Tony's backstory! Thank you for reading!

"Maybe you weren’t a terrible person maybe you were just fifteen" UPDATED

Each character in our story has an important event that helped shape their them. We thought it'd be cool to keep their age consistent across each of these stories. Possible TW in some of these.

Art of Enzo and Lennon in HS.

1996, Meg prepares for her Quinceanera. She doesn’t want to have that big party and have all the attention on her. Meg has been super depressed and kids at school bully her, saying that she is going to kill herself like Kurt Cobain did. She doesn’t want these people at the Quinceanera, but her mom invited all the girls in her class. Her Quince doesn’t go as planned, not ruined by her bullies...but by someone who has been stalking her... 

1999, Tony recruits his older friend Ashley to "be his mom" and sign off on a parental consent form for his first tattoo. He must hide this from his parents... When they find out, they fear this tattoo will halt his "future career as a lawyer."

2000, Liv is convinced by her older sisters go out on a mini “sister only road trip.” After driving around for an hour or two, they abandon Liv at a gas station, teasing her that it’s “sisters only” and she isn’t a real sister because she is adopted. 

2000, Gia fights with her first girlfriend, leading to their breakup. They share one last “goodbye” kiss. 

Gia’s story continues into Theo’s  

2000, Theo is super high and accidentally walks into the girl’s locker room where he finds Gia making out with some girl. Theo didn’t know girls could do that with each other. 

2001, Rosie is asked to step down from her school’s dance team because of her recent weight gain.  

2001, Enzo witnessed a murder. The criminal gang paid him off with a duffel of cash to forget what he saw. This moment changed his brain chemistry and explains how Enzo seemingly has an endless amount of cash and no job or parental assistance. (This is backstory is mostly comic relief and played off much less serious than the others.)

2001, Oli and his friends decide to wear dresses to school one day during spirit week. Oli steals a dress from his sister. After the group of boys make their statement and take pics, they change back to their regular clothes. Oli didn’t get the memo and is stuck in the dress all day. He gets teased and feels insecure. His asshole friends think it’s hilarious and won’t let him borrow any clothes. He’s stuck like that for the day. Once the teasing calms down, Oli realizes he kind of likes wearing the dress. O_0 

2002, Lennon hasn’t showered for about 4 months. He gets bullied for being greasy and cuts off all his hair in the school bathroom. Enzo is sitting in the big stall, skipping (art) class to draw dragons in his sketchbook. He thinks Lennon is such a weird little dude and befriends him. The next day, BigMac gives Lennon $20 to go somewhere professional to get his hair looking half decent after he went ham on it. Instead, he and Enzo spend the money on something stupid. He lies to his dad about how he spent the money. 

2004, Alyssa is severely bullied at school for her love of plushies. The one thing she cares about most is her mall job at Build a Bear. Her school bullies haze her while she’s at work, ending with them destroying the store. They throw the unstuffed bears and knock over displays. They get to the stuffing machine and let it rip fluff everywhere. The bullies escape before mall security and police arrive. Alyssa gets fired from her job because of this incident. It’s not fair, but her manager felt it was the easiest solution to avoid this happening again in the future. :(  

2004, Park makes a trek to Area 51 from his Florida home to find his dad.

I know you're not focused on cat art now, but do you have any tips for drawing cats?

Depends what you want specifically advice on.

For realistic anatomy, trace basic shapes from photographs to get a good base and to nail the proportions. Eventually you won't need to do that anymore, but it's an effective way to start out imo. I still do this sometimes because getting proportions correct takes me the longest. With a good base drawing, everything falls into place.

Line weight is important. There's a delicate balance of how much fur should be rendered in the line art vs coloring. This would depend on your art style. I usually draw some fur in the line art, usually around joints or bends. (Take a look around the ears or neck in the drawing above). I also choose to color part of my line art after I finish coloring a piece.

For coloring, I start big, filling in each object with a flat color. Using a large textured brush with a soft edge, I'll add in some additional colors. The second cat on the left has a darker tail and lighter face than the middle of the body. I filled him in with the mid orange color then added the dark color for the tail and lighter face on top.

Then, I do a lot of individual brush marks for the fur and hatch lines. I use the same brush as I use for the line art. It's easy to overdo these lines. Less is more! Some of these little brushstrokes for fur are on a layer above the line art.

And don't forget whiskers! I often forget to add the whiskers because it's my very last step.

I hope this is at least a little bit helpful?

The line between prediction and projection is THIN.

One thing about this comic that's so funny is we started with the concept 10 years ago, and it's changed so much, but it's rooting in two teenage girls's brains....so like the two main characters (two mid 20s dudes) really just act like teenage girls the whole time and it's hilarious.

He doesn't know today is his birthday

Happy 4th birthday, Beanie!