Homebased – Paul Caggegi

After months of planning, I’ve finally released a new project entitled Homebased. This comic is loosely based on my own experiences of being a stay-at-home parent, but has become more about the little absurd moments in a day-to-day home-based life.

Over the past few years, I’ve collected a few funny anecdotes about my kids, doing chores, things we argue over, and by sharing some of them on social media, I could see if these things resonated with others. Some did, some didn’t; so I picked some of the best, and turned them into short strips for this webcomic.

Keeping a lid on it was perhaps the hardest thing to do, since I’m so open about my process – and this has been almost a year in the making. So much had to come together for this to work correctly. I decided to go back to basics: keep it simple; be concise; maybe do it in black-and-white; write what I know. Artistically, I wanted it to be of a certain standard, so I did loads of concept sketches and practiced until I got a style I was comfortable with drawing, to the point where I really didn’t have to think about it. I also wanted a decent buffer of work ready to roll out before publishing, and I wanted it to be released on a few choice platforms that bring maximum traffic to the comic.

My overall goal was to see if there was an audience for this sort of thing. I know a few dads my age going through the same thing – not to mention mums. My generation is one that grew up with comics and pop-culture, and watched the internet give rise to the podcast, the web-comic, and most recently social media. So parents who are obsessed with phones, share stuff about their kids, and are trying to figure out how to be good at this gig – they’re my target.

Researching everything from which program to use (I’ve settled on Clip Studio Paint) to which platform to release it on (I’ve created a dedicated WordPress blog running Comic Easel, and Jetpack handles the mobile theme, sharing and feedback apps, and I will post updates on Facebook, Reddit and Instagram when appropriate. It’s been a monumental task, but once I got all my ducks in a row, I felt ready.

The response in this first week has been overwhelmingly positive considering I’ve only released a few strips, and already I’m hearing calls of “When will this be a book?” and “more please!” which is very flattering, but I don’t wish to put the cart before the horse just yet. I have a plan of sorts, and it all depends on a couple of things. Firstly, will this amass an audience that would potentially support the project financially? Secondly, will I generate enough content to create a solid enough book?

Currently, I have about 30 strips that I feel are solid ideas. In the coming weeks, as these comics are drip-fed to the internet, I’ll be collecting more notes for future strips, and should I hit about 100 good ones, I’ll be considering putting together a book of these.