Behind the Scenes with Jey Pawlik: Sex Toy Care

Here's a Behind The Scenes peek at how Jey Pawlik made their Sex Toy Care comic for us, as written by the artist, themself! Two versions of their script are in the attachments. Make sure you check out the rest of the comics they've done for OJST over the years, too

Take it away, Jey!

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I really signed myself up for a doozy this time y’all! Did you know tackling all this information was quite the undertaking?!

I had pitched a different idea at first but it just didn’t work out, and that’s okay. It happens! So I racked my brain trying to think of something lighter that I could pitch instead and after doing some searching around I noticed we didn’t have a sex toy care guide! I assumed, hey that’d be really easy.

My original pitch:

1. Keeping your toys clean may not be the sexiest part of using them but it’s an absolute must! Talking to a masturbateer stand-in about inserting anything into your body could introduce bacteria, dirt, etc. (I’ll go into depth)
2. But it’s actually real easy to do! First, what’s your sex toy made of? Porous vs. non-porous and what the difference is.
3. Wash non-porous toys with mild soap and warm water. Some can be boiled or thrown in the dishwasher (check the manufacturer first!)
4. For rubber, plastic and leather wash thoroughly being sure to get every nook & cranny (Note: I wouldn’t recommend using non-porous toys internally). Nylon items can be machine washed. Leave to air dry.
5. Clean toys well after each use, some might need a clean beforehand too. This’ll give you peace of mind and make your toys last a long time!

After some notes, we were a go on the script! The first version of the script is very different than how the final turned out. It was a little too ambitious and the information wasn’t coming across in an easy, digestible way. So after some notes, edits, more notes, brainstorming, we landed on using recipe cards for the big chunks of info.

I did quite a lot of research into different toy materials for this one. I was really happy to know that whole websites exist out there just for leather items, for latex, and more! I don’t have any experience with latex especially but it was an important addition and I had to get the info correct!

Version 2 of the script was a complete re-write, and that’s okay.

I really liked some of the jokes I had in the first version but ultimately the second version was much stronger. I really liked writing and designing the recipe cards going forward. I’m not too experienced in graphic design but I think doing these cards made me think a lot about to make big blocks of text readable. In comics, my dialogue leans more minimal and I don’t normally have to deal with big chunks of text – so this was good experience for me to try some new things, new fonts, colouring my text is pretty abnormal for my style but it really did help in the end!

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Back to the OJST Editor: Read the final version of Sex Toy Care!