Just a Tad

Model sheets

The characters of my comic project have been with me a long time but I haven't been drawing them constantly. My lead, Rocket Wylde, has mutated and changed constantly but I think I've finally settled on him -- something I've said many times before. But it was a doodle in the margins that made me think I had a final design to play with. I went in with black and declared it good. Or good enough to start. Your designs are going to morph as you draw them but I use model sheets as a way to explore the design. But those loose doodles can be invaluable. I did another one last week.

The breakthrough for me was two-fold. First, my animal character is another one whose proportions are constantly changing but I was sure I wanted him cuter to contrast his natural wildness. Secondly, this loose sketch definitely was filled with appeal and entirely doable because THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE ANIMATED. The sparks between my lobes started firing in a slightly different way. I don't have to worry about the character "turnarounds" or how their arms can't scratch the tops of their heads. It just has to work for the panel.

Rocket's head is bigger than I want but the plant and mineral guys are the default design that I've drawn consistently since the beginning. The major change of the animal are the horns. They are insanely big. They are about as big as the rest of his body. I admit that I was heavily influenced by the Zootopia kid designs by Cory Loftis. In fact, his design of Finnick gave me mental permission to go nuts with the horns.  It's not the details that make a strong character design, it's the basic shapes and size relationships. I tried nailing some of this in another model sheet but it's a little stiff and remains a work in progress, but certainly focused enough to rough a comic.

 

I realize that a very useful step would be to create some "final art" in the way I intend to create the comic: rough digitally, print it out in non-photo blue and ink by hand. That should add freshness and spontaneity to the drawings which is the goal.            --Tad

Finally...

It's a year earlier than expected, although some people thought it would never happen. I've retired from the animation industry. There could be projects I work on in the future but as for me creating new shows, I'm done. So I now turn to the other storytelling medium I love, comics.  I'm taking one of my favorite series pitches that never sold and turning it into a series of graphic novels. At least, that's the plan.

"Normally," I would have to pitch the idea to a publisher and try to get them interested, just like pitching a TV series. It's frustrating because you have to make the other guy see the potential of your idea in the fewest words/pictures as possible. Why? Because you don't get money for developing your idea until you've convinced someone to take a chance on it. But since I don't have the need to feed my family with this project, I can just move ahead with it. If there's no interest in it, I publish digitally on Kindle or a website. And I gotta tell you, that is really freeing.

On the other hand, I don't have an editor to point out potential weaknesses or paths best avoided. I've outlined the introductory chunk of the book, the sort of story you'd see in a TV pilot that sets up a series. Ideally, I'd then move onto two "episodes" that play as separate adventures even though they continue the overall story. I stopped after that first bit because I knew I would learn more about my characters as I told that first story. But I spent several days trying to thumbnail the first three pages meant to be an action teaser. I asked myself why I was having a problem and mentally replied that it was because the action didn't matter, it was just a promise of future adventure. Didn't matter. Light bulb moment - if you're struggling with something that "doesn't matter," then it probably shouldn't be part of the story and certainly not the opening pages of the book. Instead, it's a single splash page that will be fun to draw and funnier in contrast to the next scene.

An editor probably would've gotten there before me.

I hope to chronicle the creation of the book, although I don't want this blog to take away from the actual production of it. So I'll be keeping things short. Here're some character designs. Just this morning I decided to shrink the head of my lead character considerably. I'll give you the before and after.

 

That's it. Thanks for watching.                                                                                                   --Tad