Teaching the Penguins to Deal Cards

The two penguins weren't part of the original plan at all. I'd sketched the igloo lounge with just the bear at first, sitting somewhere near the hearth, and it felt oddly empty — like a room with the furniture but nobody actually in it.

Adding a second and third character changed the whole feel of the place. Now there's always something happening at the edge of a page even when you're deep in a hand of Frostbite Twenty-One — one penguin refilling a mug, the other apparently unbothered by the cold, the bear watching the table with what I choose to read as quiet approval.

I went back and forth for a while on whether they should actually react to what's happening in a game, nodding along or looking surprised at a good hand. In the end I decided against it — it felt like it would nudge the games towards feeling more eventful than they're meant to be, and eventful isn't really the mood I'm after.

So they stay put, mostly, doing the same small things in the background regardless of how a round goes. It's a deliberate kind of stillness. The point of the lounge was never to react to your points — it's just meant to be there, the way a good room is there whether or not anything interesting is happening in it.

A couple of visitors have asked if the penguins have names. They don't, not officially, though I privately think of the taller one as being in charge of the cocoa.