Goodbye, Farewell, a la Prochaine, Goodbye Until We Meet Again...

Thanks to everyone for all your kind words - it has been quite a year.

I won't be removing the blog; so long as Blogger's happy to keep it, it will remain here. The comments will freeze out but everything will remain.

Right now, I don't know if I have any other comics-serializable stories in me ... it will likely be months of taking a breather, drawing other things (doing other things in my free time), before I'll know. But if I do, I'll be sure to link back here and let 'Mudges and Foobiversers know about it.

To anyone stumbling in here, remember the FOOBapalooza wedding that ended the FBoFW strip? Well, start here and it will make much more sense.

The Whole Shebang

Dramatis Personae (some of this would be more obvious if I could work with colour, as some skin tones would indicate Ojibwe heritage, and Dawn's would have a golden hint):

Line 1: Dawn and Liz
Line 2: John (in canoe) with Paul's parents (later seen boogieing on the middle ground of L3P2), Mike (later seen dancing with Dee) with Meredith and Robin (later eating cake), Paul's brother on the shore (later as Paul's best man)
Line 3: add Elly, Melanie, and David (Dawn's never-seen husband, getting marshmallows with her) near April and Jesse playing music
Line 4: add Candace and Rudy, talking to the Cranes as Sophia toddles by. Andrew is in the background near Mel, and Phil and Georgia are talking to someone based off of a background character in a Hawk Creek strip.

There are a few other background forms for other unknown friends / family of Liz and Paul (presumably one is Kyle, Mel's husband).

A few end notes to Foob's Paradise:

• It's no accident that Mel is attending to a young child. Sometimes your family doesn't come together through biology.

• I don't intend to say canonically "what happens" in a Strip of Destiny, but what follows is what I think is likely:

Elly remains mostly "better". I don't know how likely it is that she'd be able to leave off meds, and I'm sure she continues to need therapy (perhaps a few extra sessions after April brings Ryan home :)

She does manage to learn not to say things as if she knows the only right way to do everything - regardless of what she thinks.

John can't imagine life without her, although he does like to spend a lot of time with his trains, especially once Robin gets old enough to play with them.

Elly occasionally mixes up things when dreaming about her past, but quickly realizes this when she wakes up. That explains any more continuity bloopers in the new-ruins. Yup. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.



Liz and Paul have a few kids. Sean is the cutest blond grass-dancer at the yearly pow-wow. (He's also the only blond grass-dancer at the pow-wow, but still.)








Candace and Rudy decide that Sophia completes their family. Liz and Paul's children are like out-of-town cousins to her as she grows up.









And speaking of minor characters, Francoise grows up knowing that both her parents love her. Her dad goes to great effort to try to make himself marketable to move and live near her. By the middle of elementary school, they all live in the same city, making her friend / school life much less complicated.

I expect Therese finds someone to share her life (and Francoise!) with, but she never has any more kids. And that works out just fine.

Anthony is very focused on his daughter and doesn't manage to have any romantic relationships until Francoise is at least off to university. I'm not sure he ever does.



Mike and Dee are OK. With Mike more helpful at home, Dee can relax and appreciate the good she does at her job more. It's still a slog some days (with certain customers), but she's no longer at wit's end.

Some years, Mike's writing jobs are pretty scarce, Dee's job is what keeps the family going, and he jokes that he's becoming a househusband. He writes some of this up as short articles and stories and sells it, though.

Mike never sells another novel.

Stone Season is made into a Lifetime TV movie. However, they change the setting to post-WWI instead of post-WWII to make the soddy house and lack of child welfare authorities more believable.


Michelle does become a vet. Valerie does go into medical research.










April struggles to get solid work, taking special courses in how to handle baby wildlife and such - she could tell you the "kind of cat food + stuff" recipe to make into a paste for songbird babies, for instance. But she wouldn't because she knows it would bore you. Eventually, she works permanently for the local wildlife rescue center. It is only part-time in the winter, so she gets other jobs, too.

She does eventually marry Ryan, in the revamped torn-up dress Dawn promised.

Nobody has their life all tied up in a pretty bow for them :-)

One More for the Road...

OK, I really wanted to draw this one properly - I started to work on it a week ago. In keeping with the "it's all getting hazy" ending style, I haven't erased all the pencil marks.

It's the first half of a 12-square "Sunday Style". The second half is nearly pencil-finished :

Like a Skipping Stone...

I want to visit April a bit, skipping along to future times:

Maybe she doesn't have an easily described career path. I see her as working with animals, but not getting to vet school, and maybe not getting a fulltime job right away. So she could do stuff like work some shifts as a barista at a place with music nights (bringing her guitar along to participate too, of course!).

To the Sketchpad!

It seems appropriate to get rougher around the edges with simpler sketches as it all starts to wind down...

Oh, Right... There's Stuff Happening Away from the Cities...

Have a raging cold / allergy making the busy start of semester even worse. I don't know when I'll have another one - early next week?

... and in Guelph, just a bit more

(OK, maybe I like Valerie's geek factor just a bit too much. And yes, the entire David thing is over. As if I'd have April find her soulmate in second year. Riiight.)

December 2010

I do think Mike & Dee's relationship could improve - and part of that would be stepping back a bit from attaching themselves to Mike's parents at the expense of Dee's.

As for Mira, I'd hope that seeing some of her daughter's family problems (with a few accompanying clue-by-4s courtesy of Wilf :) would help her, well, act better.

Back to School

(or nearly so), so it's time to start wrapping some things up:

Summer Hiatus

I thought I might get in one more drawing before I was off, but it looks like no. Be back in a couple of weeks.

Early Winter 2010, shortly thereafter

Early Winter 2010

(To be continued...)

Fall 2010

Therapy continues...

Fall 2010

Scenes From A Therapy Session

Sorry, I don't have an intricate story like "Christmas from Heck" about the family therapy. These are just glimpses into it. And yes, Dr. Walby got a haircut.

Summer Endgame 2010

Brief Hiatus

... travelling to see some colleagues. More drawings when I'm back. ETA: 1 week.

It Also Needed Saying

It Needed Saying

Elsewhere in July 2010

Anthony visits his brother Robert's family with Francoise
... and then sees them a few days after she leaves

Life Goes On

Well, I finally get to draw Candace's little Sophia.

A blog note ... it might be because I'm a bit busy this summer, although I mostly think it's because I see the Foob's Paradise characters as well on their way to achieving something other than the wrap-up mess of the "strip of destiny", but I see threads as coming together, not as expanding into more stories for much longer. Foob's Paradise isn't over yet, but I don't see an indefinite future in front of it.

Continuing

Life Happens

July 2010, Mtigwaki II

July 2010, Mtigwaki I

More From Africa IV

End of school year, June 2010: pretty much a wall of text from some e-mail

More From Africa III

Shortly thereafter, April is, well, discussing is too calm a word, this with Rhonda:(yeah, maybe Rhonda has watched a bit too much Buffy.) The other examples they're discussing aren't necessarily having to do with forgetting orientation stuff so much as "other ways to act badly". For that last bit - Rhonda and Seth were established as having been there the previous year.

I have got to pencil words in more often before using a pen - I forgot "despite orientation" right after "last year" in Rhonda's first word balloon, and then had trouble getting it in without hitting April's head.

The colour fills are again a bit of a pain. This is what I started with:

More From Africa II

Well, since I *have* it, might as well post it...
(That's colour fills for Adanna in panel 1, and pencils in the other panels.)

More From Africa I

Elizabeth has to finish doing her final classes and her marking before she can visit Mtigwaki, but never fear, she will - and the Susan / Paul / Jesse situation will be seen again. But first, let's go see how April is handling working on the orphan home building site.

Hawk Creek Interlude III

Interestingly, nobody who commented connected Liz' "Susan said WHAT?" with Paul's "someone else" yelling at him about doing his job.

Anyhow, the continuation...

Hawk creek Interlude II

Hawk Creek Interlude

Getting Started

I rather like the "blog post" framing for overviews of April's travels, but I may switch to drawing in the words instead of making text windows in the image processing - it adds an extra few steps.

Out of the City

Just Off the Plane

For the first bit, April is only up to observing - this is her very first significant jetlag experience. I think she hit the guestfarm's internet to stay awake until a reasonable hour to crash.

Onward

So I did some skin tones on the drawing, and decided to try some with colour fills. Didn't work out as well as I'd hoped - Adanna and Mavipi are paler than I'd originally thought, because the fills didn't blend so well with the outlines - that texture in Adanna's hair? not there on the drawing, comes from the photo, but I decided to keep it. (I only have pretty basic select/ fill options using GIMP, allowing it to fill too far into "similar colours" can cause it to over-select adjacent areas.)

I may just hint at skin tones in the drawings again.

If you're curious, here's how the drawing came out before I tried the colour fills:

Continuing Along (late May 2010)

Mildly Meta Monday

In which I acknowledge that I can't just dig up any old thread "just because" :)