OJST can't get it up (Behind the Scenes) (Patreon)

Erika here! Did you know that Valentine's Day is basically Christmas for the sex toy world? 

I mean, when you think about it, it's kinda obvious. What do you get for your romantic partner on a romantic holiday? Flowers and chocolate and a fancy dinner to show "I appreciate you, I love you, I want to make you feel special" and then maybe something sexy to show "Also, I find you incredibly bangable". And nothing says "I would love to bang you" like an object that was built exclusively to facilitate banging. Enter: an abundance of sex toy sales leading up to February 14th. 

For years, Matt and I used to compile an über list of our fav toys (and also toys that aren't our personal favs, but we know they're good for other people) and conveniently release that in time for this day of commercialized love/lust. 

However, the last handful of years, we fell out of the sex toy reviewing game- which is where Chicago's best indie, feminist, queer sex shop, Early to Bed, stepped up. We hired them to provide their own recommendations that we then turned into the classic illustrated list you all know and love us for. We intended to do this again this year! Matt collected their (paid) quotes, headshots, and even laid out the whole comic for me in advance, giving me plenty of lead time (months!) to actually get in there and draw it. 

...

Yup.

I had pleeeeeenty of time. 

Rather than get the new comic up on time, we wound up instead just linking to the previous Best Of collaboration comic on our social media accounts. 

It's not dead! I am still going to get this new one drawn. At some point. In the future. There's just a lotta stuff going on! You know how it is. In the meantime, though....

I dunno, I drew some cute drawings! I'm gunna share 'em here. 

Here's Matt and me, for the intro.

To accompany the toy recommendations, I needed to draw up a little portrait of each Early to Bed reviewer. It was fun getting updated photos of some of the same people from last time and getting to tweak how to draw them :3

Sometimes, though, I lean a little too hard on the photo reference and wind up with portraits that need to be re-cartoonified. Here's some faces that I had to go back and make more simplified, to fit in with the cartoon-y feeling I try to bring to OJST.

This one went through a ton of revisions:

For these Best Of comics, Matt goes in and basically assembled the whole thing for me ahead of time, so I can just come in and add my drawings without having to bother with arranging the text, positioning where all the imagery should go, and finding reference photos of the products and people. On the left you can see the document Matt gives me and on the right you can see how turn it into drawings. 

Matt then goes back in after I've drawn everything and moves bits around, adds word balloons, tweaks fonts, gives it the final colors (the coloring I used here is called "flatting" and it's just a placeholder before the final colors are decided on) and turns it into the finished version. 

Of course, as you know, right now there is no finished version, 'cos this is as far as I got. 

But! Someday there will be! Maybe in time for next Valentine's Day? HERE'S HOPIN'!

Muah Muah, lots of love and I hope you're crushing your deadlines better than me,

-Erika