31 January 2007 - Snowflakes

About mid-afternoon I was away from the office running various errands when it began to snow in earnest. As I am not used to dealing with snow, I decided to work from home rather than risk being trapped in rush hour traffic later on. The snow initially was coming down as big fluffy snowflakes. But there must have been some instability in the weather system. Next minute, the precipitation started coming down as big rain droplets. I was struck by the violence of this rapid change in the weather. This went on for a few minutes while the winter gods decided whether to have snow or freezing rain. They must have made a decision as in about 5 minutes time the big fluffy snowflakes were back.



This is the first appearence of Annie Mae in the sketchbook. Annie was a minor character in our comic strip "Terminal Degrees". Much like Kenny in South Park she was constantly getting injured or killed, usually by something going hideously wrong with one of her experiments. My partner in crime, who was the artist, did the original character design and based her on one of the generic cute schoolgirls found in anime and manga. Thus she was named Annie Mae (yeah, I know, how effing original). At the time art based on anime/manga wasn't so prevalent, so it seemed fairly cutting edge. All I remember of the original character design was her hair clip that unsuccessfully kept her hair out of her eyes. I can't refer back to the strips as they were lost in a flood in Houston. Still, I think I will ressurrect her and continue to work on her character design. Keep an eye out for more "Annie Mae" appearences.