This cartoon had a few more moving parts than usual. I had three specific things that I wanted to help people to see in the visual: the primary, kilted parachuter (obviously); the horrified mother looking on; and finally the signage that helps clarify the gag. Sure the joke is understood with just the man, the woman and the caption, but I wanted to side-step the questions an abbreviated cartoon would pose: Why is this random guy parachuting in a kilt? And why is this lady and her kids in the field looking on? Contextualizing this with the Scottish Games/Air Show twist made it come together nicely. In fact, now I'm wondering if I should've omitted the sign element and simply used “Scottish Air Games” as the caption. Hindsight’s 20/20.
The other dilemma was deciding how much detail to include in the background. I used muted colors and abbreviated line art to keep the fairgrounds from jumping forward in the composition and confusing the gag. It took a while playing with color combinations before it felt right, but I'm pleased with final result.
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