I posted this in my LJ earlier, but I thought I’d repost here.
Here’s the thing: I created a page where I had to draw my own personal line as to where to censor my comic. I’ve shown gore (the Spider Lady Splatter fest), I’ve had people swearing (the occasional shit and fuck), I’ve even shown bare breasts, though not in a sexual context. So I consider Swiftriver to be a PG-13 if I had to give it a rating.
But Bowie is a ladies man, and enjoys sex. Eventually, I knew I would hit a point in my story where nudity would come into play in a sexual sense. The page I wrote doesn’t even have full frontal nudity or anything. Want to know what I was agonizing over?
A naked butt.
I mean, honestly, I’ve seen more than that in a typical National Geographic magazine. Art museums have naked butts all the time. And not just in an art context (If you want blatant ancient Greek art/porn, go check out the Greek pottery exhibit at the MFA. Seriously. This was not worshiping the art of the nude, people. This is what this internet was in 1000 BC.)
So my dilemma was “should I show the naked butt or not?” And I ended up with “not.” I ended up drawing panties on her. Not because I was ashamed. I just feel at this point that if anyone in the comic should be nude in a sexual sense, it should probably be one of the main characters. And I don’t plan on having any of them naked at any point in the near future. I still feel it’s titillating and sexy, I just don’t want to waste the opportunity on a third-string character at this point.
So long story short. This page is PG-13, but could be considered NSFW.
Discussion (11) ¬
It was a very nice butt, clad or not. So nice in fact that yes, I had to shrink my window and scroll past it at work.
This page is the perfect reason to have rear view mirrors on your screen. 😉
Bowie is such a cutie-patootiiiieeee~! <3 <3 <3 XD And omigod, Geoff's expression toward the end is PRICELESS.. LOL!!
Oh good! I was afraid it was too goofy.
It is goofy! But still great. 😀
Which character will have his/her completely-naked-butt-cherry popped first?!
…That sounded bad.
On that note, updates fffff yesssss
Yep. That sounded really bad. 😉
More than likely Bowie, since he really doesn’t have any shame. But, you never know. I could be evil and make it
Baba YagaLorraine.Censoring yourself is a constant problem I think a number of webcartoonists struggle with (myself included); being your own editor can often be as tiresome as having a real editor breathing down your neck, shouting, “Don’t you DARE draw that naked butt!”.
I have censored some mild nudity a few times in my comics (it was never pornographic or even that prominently displayed) for fear of how some people would react. I justify this by showing the uncensored versions in book collections, which only the hardcore fans are going to buy anyway.
All in all, wonderful artwork and hope this helps! Keep on drawing!
Hadn’t even thought of that idea of nudity in print versions. That could work.
And thanks! I’m hoping my update schedule will be far more regular now.
Um… pretty cool tattoo…