Homebased – a webcomic

In the early days of parenting, I became a stay-at-home dad. My partner had just landed a pretty good job, and we were ok financially. Hustling for contracts was already a headache, but also juggling day care for our new kid was adding extra strain. So we did the sums, and I put my hand up to be the primary carer.

I wasn’t quite ready to give up drawing comics, so I came up with a project I could handle, tackling a subject I knew well. I would script, thumbnail, and then produce the content in Clip Studio Paint. The work was mainly at night, or between drop offs and chores – basically whenever I could get a little work done, and I averaged about three a week, unless it was a bigger piece which demanded a lot more attention. To date, my favourites are still those larger ones.

The strips I created were a lot of fun. I got to reconnect with an old friend who became my defacto editor on the strip, and while we didn’t quite get to that 100 strip goal and release a book, I am still proud of this project. A couple of the strips were redone in color and published in the 2018 Reverie Anthology alongside the work of some of Australia’s comics royalty. Here are some of the better strips from Homebased.