BEHIND THE SCENES: Who's A Good Boy? by Hien Pham

Please welcome this Behind-The-Scenes post by Hien Pham! He is sharing his creative process of how he made Who's a Good Boy? This was originally shared on his own Patreon, so head over there if you want even more thought process posts from him.

-Erika

Hey everyone!

A banger of a comic today! I'm really quite proud of this one, and I think not only because of the narrative but also because I got to flex my colours again!

The level of colour complexity varies from comic to comic, depending on whether I'm short on time and whether it adds meaning to the comic itself or not. Here, the event I was writing about was so strongly rooted in a singular moment at a particular venue that it made sense for me to invest more time in the lighting.

The original draft of this comic spoke about how I wasn't fully sure if I fit in the Pups & Handlers scene - I don't quite think I'm a pup (not yet anyway) and while I wanted to learn how to handle, that never quite took off. It just so happened that for most of the competition night, I was volunteering on door duty and there was quite literally a huge curtain that divided me, at the front, from the crowd inside! The lighting between these two places were also quite different, so to really hone in on that aspect I think really emphasized this feeling of "oh, I'm just on a fringe of the scene".

This is important because on page 4, I used a more concentrated version of the lighting previously seen where the magic happens on the competition stage. Narratively speaking, this was where I felt a truly deep understanding of why folks enjoy being pups! In the original draft of the script, the handler didn't say anything. I simply went "Aroo..." instead of verbalizing all of the anxious things I could have said to deflect the handler's compliments. In that way, I was able to fully take in and internalize his reassurances, instead of instinctively denying them because I didn't feel worthy of them!

Here, Matthew suggested that the handler needed a final praise to round out the dialogues and, while it didn't reflect exactly what happened, it made that beat work so so well! Thank you Matt! Oh, and I'm very proud to have made Ziggy cry twice in the making of this comic, hehe! Shout out to both of them for being so lovely to work with, and for being so supportive of my sappy shit!

FUN FACT: one of the early EARLY drafts of the script had me talking with a potential pup version of me, haha! His name was George (the name I use at restaurants because my actual name confounds people) and he was going to pop out and I was going to say "I'm not ready for you yet." haha!

Bonus photos (all are public on aphc.net.au)

At the Meet & Sniff welcoming party hosted by Bears: I am on the left on catering duty, pictured with Bear President Kingsley and Contestant Wrangler / Australian Pup 2019!

Me on front door duty of that fateful competition night (before I changed my shirt to the one in the comic) um and an unfortunate accidental censor... the logo is in the same spot every photo…

And just a random photo that showed the lighting I referenced in the comic!

—

Thank you for reading! And thank you for sticking around and supporting me still to this day! I am grateful, as always.

Take it easy and take care, everyone! See you soon!

P.S: I almost forgot: my good friend handler Bowser who won Australian Handler 2023 commissioned a lovely gift for everyone who competed! I really enjoyed making it, so I thought you'd enjoy seeing it too! He's top left holding what I originally thought was a random piece of chain but actually it's part of a leash lmao.