The fourth of Kitty Slider's logs from http://www.cflar.org/casinonight/kittylog4.html :

"Dear log,

Just wanted to say: surfing is hard!

Spent most of my day wiping out. They say cats have natural balance, but that sure doesn't seem to apply to water! I just couldn't get into the flow for some reason. Dug my board pretty hard and ended up face first in the sand.

Geez, I hope my siblings don't ever hear about this--I'll never live it down! I got scabbed a bit but at least my board didn't . Of course, I had to get back up and try again! It's what all great surfers do!

-K. Slider >^_^<"

This was another idea I had early on and really wanted to draw. I think one of the more classic sight gags to have when doing extreme sports cartoons is to show a crash or the humorous post of a crash where pride is the primary injury.

I had to redo this one a lot too. First change was Slider's tail, as it was too lax in the first drawing. Second was adding in paw pads after finalizing the design. Third and final was redrawing the board, as I had it facing the wrong way originally ;)

I actually had to study a lot of surfboard pictures and surfer images when doing Slider. I knew embarrassingly little about surfing before working on Slider, and now I only know a little more but can at least tell a real surfboard from a fake one when I see it ;P

If you're wondering what kind of board that is, it's called a Manta, I believe. Kelly Slater promoted them.

Kitty Slider © CFAR
Art © MXR