Rennen wrote:I agree that, if you have a "higher meaning" or a "greater purpose" in mind other than just telling jokes in a visual format, yes, you need to have some thought involved with the characters. But would it honestly be all that different had you started out with Sybil as a rabbit? A wolf? How about a hedgehog? What if Fen was the fox and Syb the badger and Alex the cat? All else being equal, would it really be any different?
Probably not. But I consider that more an inadequacy of my strip than the concept of using different species; AF did originally arise from a few characters I'd doodled and abruptly decided to use, without much planning. I'll be thinking it through more thoroughly next time.
Rennen wrote:If you don't use the species in the story- a'la Holbrook's frequent, if often inane, snide references to large Fennec ears, rabbits' penchant for gnawing and jokes involving porcupine quills- then the species is more or less irrelevant. You're just drawing "funny animals". But on the other edge of the blade, if you DO use the species' quirks- skunks spraying in defense, dogs barking at cats, ad nauseum- you're really not making much of a sociopolitical statement most of us can relate to, are you?
No... but that seems to imply that there's no room for anthropomorphisation to have real-world significance, which surely can't be true. I agree that a very large proportion of strips do fall into the two categories, and make a big thing of doing so (for example, Cedric Henry's
Post-Modern Musein the former, and, yes, Kevin & Kell in the latter). But I reckon there's room to be a great deal more subtle, and more comprehensive, about how animal characteristics are used; drawing on the implicit associations of each animal, so that they 'resonate' with character and plot, rather than drawing attention to obvious traits.
I suppose my model is Spenser's
Faerie Queene; an epic poem brimful of complex moral ideas which are expressed through the allegory in such a way that you almost pick up on them without realising. Not that I'd be trying to teach moral values myself, as Spenser declared he was.
I should also probably add that much of what I'm saying hasn't really been brought into effect in Albion Fuzz itself; I'm currently trying to develop my ideas for other projects. And, of course, I'm enjoying the discussion.
Rennen wrote:The use of animals in comic and cartoon no longer confuses anyone, save for the possible exceptions of religious fundies or those who can't figure out butterfly ballots. And, I'll further the argument, do you really want them reading your work anyway?
Absolutely. They'd be fun to argue with

Tim Tylor wrote:Gorey's Inanimate Tragedy
I have to pick this out, as it's possibly my favourite Gorey book. It seemed to me a perfect distillation of (real and theatrical) tragedy's conventions, with the emotional aspect rendered insignificant: a gods' eye view of human affairs, really. (And the Greek chorus of Needles & Pins is a stroke of genius.) It's a good example of another use of anthropomorphism, in that it forces us into viewing familiar actions from an unfamiliar perspective.