About / FAQ

About the comic

Sandra and Woo is a comedy comic strip featuring the 13-year-old girl Sandra North and her mischievous pet raccoon Woo. While most strips are just supposed to be funny or tell an exciting story, some also deal with more serious topics. We also want to show what growing up means for Sandra and her best friends in middle school, Cloud and Larisa. Another regular feature of the comic are Woo’s trips to the forest to meet his furry friends Shadow (a fox) and Sid (a squirrel) and his love interest Lily.

Contact information

Writer, webmaster and forum administrator:

  • Oliver Knörzer (Novil)
  • Mayenner Straße 48
  • 71332 Waiblingen, Germany
  • novil@gmx.de (If you have general questions about Sandra and Woo, you should rather write a mail to me instead of Powree.)

Artist:

This website is published according to German law. The legal notice (in German) contains further information about liability and privacy policies. / Die Veröffentlichung dieser Website erfolgt gemäß deutschem Recht. Das Impressum enthält weitere Informationen über Haftungs- und Datenschutzbestimmungen.

See also our privacy policy.

License

Sandra and Woo is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Creative Commons License

This means you are free to share the comic strips, that means to copy, distribute and transmit them under the following conditions:

  • Attribution: You must attribute the creators and the source of the comic strip. This means you aren’t allowed to remove the creator names and the website url near the bottom of the comic strip. If you want to use a cropped piece of a comic strip, the same information must be put as a text next to the image. In online publications, an additional link to https://www.sandraandwoo.com/ must be provided.
  • Noncommercial: You may not use the comic strip for commercial purposes.
  • No derivative works: You may not alter, transform, or build upon the comic strip.

“Noncommercial” means that only an insignificant amount of money is made with the publication, e.g. with ads on the website. Up to three comic strips can be posted on commercial websites without monetary compensation as well if it’s a webcomic website or if the comic strips are posted as part of a review of Sandra and Woo.

This free license only applies to the comic strips written by Oliver Knörzer (Novil) and drawn by Puri Andini (Powree). It doesn’t apply to all other pieces of content found on our websites.

Awards and reviews

Awards

  • Sandra and Woo was given a Webcomic Beaky Award as one of the three best new webcomics of 2008 by the jury of the Webcomic Beacon podcast.
  • Sandra and Woo was nominated as one of three comics for the category “Best Black and White Art” at the Wecomic List Awards 2010.
  • Sandra and Woo was nominated as one of five comics for the category “Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip” at the Ursa Major Awards 2010.
  • Sandra and Woo was nominated as one of five comics for the category “Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip” at the Ursa Major Awards 2011.
  • Sandra and Woo was nominated as one of five comics for the category “Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip” at the Ursa Major Awards 2012.
  • Sandra and Woo was a finalist at the ComicMix Webcomic Tournament 2013, beating Buttersafe, Axe Cop, Paranatural, Commander Kitty, XKCD and Ava’s Demon on the road to the final round.

Reviews

  • Review by Coyote Trax, the author of Coyote Trax’s WebComics Critique:
    • “So if you’re into Calvin and Hobbes, you will like this strip. It’s full of the witty and inspirational observations!”
  • Review by Eric Mesa [Mirror], the author of I’m Not Mad:
    • “I just finished reading through the Sandra and Woo archives and all I could think was, “Why can’t this be one of those comics that has thousands of strips in its archives?””
  • Review by Luprand, the author of Luprand’s Webcomic Musings:
    • “So in the end, has Calvin and Hobbes found a weekly successor? You’ll have to answer for yourself, but this pun tips the scales for me.”
  • Review by Mint, the author of Minty Musings:
    • “Thankfully, these [the characters] are balanced extremely well, with all of the characters being entertaining in their own way.”
  • Review by Onyx, the author of Haphazard:
    • “But on the whole, this is a well written, quirky and quaint humor comic that thus far has prooven entertaining.”
  • Review by Robert A. Howard, the author of Tangents:
    • “[…] and the result is a comic I highly recommend for the young at heart and those who are looking for comics that are more positive and uplifting to read.”
  • [Spanish] Review by Arriba de la Red, the author of Arriba de la red

Short reviews and opinions

Other articles

Articles about strip #500

Scientific articles

  • Philip Buchanan, Michael Dogget: “Transferring Characteristic Proportions to Modify the Artistic Style of Cartoons”, Proc. Computer Graphics International, Bournemouth, UK, 12–15 June 2012.
  • Philip Buchanan, Michael Dogget, R. Mukundan: “Structural Vectorization of Raster Images”, Proc. Image and Vision Computing New Zealand IVCNZ-2012, Dunedin, New Zealand, 26-28 Nov 2012, pp. 319–324.
  • [German] Ulrike Preußer: “Literarisches Lernen am Comic – Zur Visualisierung literarischer Verfahren”, kjl&m forschung.schule.bibliothek, 3/2013, kopaed verlagsgmbh, München.
  • [German] Ulrike Preußer: “Das war ein Schock, das mit der Schlange!”, Grundschulunterricht Deutsch, 2/2014, Oldenbourg Schulbuchverlag, München, pp. 16–22.
  • [German] Moritz Sommer: “Comic-Übersetzung: Zwischen Text- und Bildsprache”, 9/2015, Bachelor-Arbeit an der Universität Heidelberg, Institut für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen, pp. 75–81.
  • [German] Stefan Hartinger: “Programmieren in C und C++”, p. 37.

Miscellaneous articles

FAQ

How old are the characters?

Sandra is 11 years old from strip #1 to #219.
Sandra is 12 years old from strip #220 to #888.
Sandra is 13 years old since strip #889.

How did you come up with the idea for Sandra and Woo?

Sandra and Woo was my [Novil’s] idea. In summer 2008, I came up with some ideas for a comic strip featuring a girl and her pet raccoon. The script for the strip that eventually became Love at First Sight was among the first three scripts put to paper. Like many scripts, this one was re-written several times before publishing. The other two scripts will most likely remain unpublished because they are just not very good. I then started to work on the comic strip by writing more scripts and introducing additional characters. While Shadow and Sid were originally supposed to play a larger role, Cloud and Larisa were supposed to be rather minor characters, just some random friends of Sandra.

How did Novil and Powree start to work together?

After writing two dozen scripts for Sandra and Woo, I [Novil] posted a job offer in the ConceptArt.org and DigitalWebbing.com forums in October 2008. I got over 60 replies and Powree, who read my offer at DigitalWebbing.com, was my first choice. Just one week later, we published the first Sandra and Woo strip on our website.

What’s your process when creating a strip?

Our process is like this:

  1. The Work on a new strip starts with Novil having an idea for an interesting scenario or a funny dialog line. Usually, but not always, he then makes a note of it in a Word document.
  2. At least a month before publishing, Novil sits down and writes the full script based on this idea. This involves re-writing the dialog so that it’s shorter or sounds more natural. The full script also includes a detailed description of the environment and the poses and facial expressions of the characters.
  3. At least two weeks before publishing, Powree draws a sketch (the ones that you can see as voting incentives on TopWebcomics) with her Wacom tablet and Manga Studio and shows it to Novil.
  4. After having a look at the sketch, Novil often requests a few minor changes. This often involves changing the facial expression of a character in one panel which just doesn’t look right in his eyes yet. Major changes to the layout of a strip are almost never necessary.
  5. At least one week before publishing, Powree draws the final strip with Manga Studio, including the word bubbles, and sends it to Novil.
  6. Sometimes, Novil is of the opinion that some late changes are necessary, for example if one word bubble turned out too small. He is usually able to do these minor changes himself using PhotoImpact.
  7. When the artwork is completed, Novil puts the dialog into the word bubbles using Photoshop.
  8. Novil then makes the strip ready for publication using PhotoImpact and IfranView and posts it on the website.

Can I post a Sandra and Woo strip on my website / blog / forum?

Yes, you can, as long as it’s noncommercial. Sandra and Woo is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. See the Legal stuff chapter for details.

Can I translate Sandra and Woo into another language?

No, you aren’t allowed to change the English or German text of the strips. Here are my main concerns regarding fan-made translations:

  • A translation is different from any other kind of fanart in that it’s unclear for a casual reader whether the translation was approved by the creator or not. He may therefore think that it’s an official translation and get a wrong impression of the original comic if the quality of the translation is poor, which it usually is. I myself, however, have no control over the quality of the translation since I can’t understand the translated text. Nonetheless, we once gave it a try with a Spanish translation of Sandra and Woo, but another native speaker informed us a little later that the quality of the translation was indeed poor.
  • Apart from this, the lettering of fan-made translations usually looks unprofessional, casting a poor light on the comic as well.
  • It’s also rather the rule than the exception that webcomic translators lose interest quickly and translate only a few strips before giving up.
  • The translated strips are also usually published on commercial websites. While I see it as a form of advertising when a couple of strips from our comic are posted elsewhere, this is no longer the case when large parts or even the entire comic are made available there. The readers then no longer have any reason to visit our own website while the owner of the other website profits from our work.

If you want to post a Sandra and Woo strip on another non-commercial website (see the License chapter above), you should provide the translation beneath the strip. Posting Sandra and Woo strips on commercial websites is forbidden without prior approval.

Do you do link exchanges?

No. Each comic listed on our link page is there because we believe that it’s a good comic that our readers might enjoy, not because we had to put it there in exchange for a backlink.

Can you draw a comic/illustration for me that I need for…?

No matter what you need the comic/illustration for, the answer to that question is most likely “No.” It’s already a lot of work to maintain our regular update schedule, so we have basically no time to do other things on top of that. At least not for free.

Is Sandra and Woo suitable for children?

Sandra and Woo contains swearing, serious topics and adult oriented jokes, but nothing explicit that might traumatize children.

Why is the size of the word bubbles inconsistent?

The word bubbles are drawn by Powree and the text is added afterwards by Novil. It is therefore possible that some word bubbles are a bit too big or small. But that’s by far not as important as the fact that all Sandra and Woo strips are published in German and English. German sentences can be twice as long as their English equivalent. Because of this, some word bubbles may appear unnecessarily large in the English version although they’re just right for the German translation.