Making of "Learning Curve"

When my kids were little we had these clever spill proof cups that let them drink like big kids:

Everything was great until I saw online that the cups have this little rubber seal that you're supposed to take out to clean. Horrified, I went to check mine and found they were all moldy underneath! EWWWW!!

Ever since I've thought it would be funny to include the info in a comic and freak out other unwitting parents! It's an incredibly specific gag though, so I needed a way to make the comic funny even if you have never heard of a Munchkin 360 cup! 😄

What's the easiest way to make people laugh at a comic these days? Dumb meme-able faces! If I gave Fran a ridiculous reaction face then suddenly this comic is for everyone!

I sketched out the first panel using the (now infamous) hyena comic layout. I wanted to use different animals to give it a fresh look and used an animal randomizer to give me ideas. A pig popped up and I thought "No, I can't do that! There's already Peppa Pig!" But then a second idea hit me! What if I leaned into it and colored her like Peppa Pig's mum and brother? A fun little easter egg and another way to elevate the comic from just being a very specific sippy cup joke!

For all the panels, drawing the comic went surprisingly smoothly. I had some fun doing Coop's reaction faces. I love making it so you can read a comic multiple times; once watching the speaker and then again with the ancillary characters!

The hardest bit with any comic like this is getting all the colors to pop on large panels with overlapping characters and props. I had a heck of a time picking the color for Fran's diaper bag! It couldn't be too close to the bird, egg, couch or background colors -and those are usually the colors of diaper bags! Got there in the end with gray -but I spent a stupid amount of time on it!