Designing Dino

So before I wrap up the second story, I wanted to show my original designs for Dino.

With Stickboy and Psychoboy, I was going for funny looking, exaggerated characters. For Dino, since her character is more normal and grounded, I wanted the design to reflect that. Yes, I've said that normal people look boring, but it can also be a lot of fun to capture the likeness and essence of a person in caricature. So the design is based off my ex-girlfriend. Here are my early attempts...

Yeah, not that great. I don't why, but I don't like glasses with rounded bottoms on my characters. I was debating whether to go with doing a caricature or maybe try an intentionally cartoonish, humorous hair style with the curly hair.  The design in the bottom right corner was a Charlie Brown swipe, since Dino is essentially grown-up Charlie Brown in this story.

Obviously I want with a straight caricature, which I refined in this next page of designs....

Caricatures are challenging. but this one turned out okay. The shorter hair and her full figure gives a unique look among my characters. It also makes it a challenge to draw. It's more difficult to capture feminity in a character like that. It's far easier in someone like the skinny, hot female cashier in the story. Most comic characters tend to have perfect, toned, muscular bodies, not because comic artists are pervs but because it's easier to draw (though some artists are still pervs). I actually originally drew the story with Dino skinny. Not sure why, since no design I have of her was like that, but I eventually corrected it.

Dino doesn't appear that often in my plots. Stickboy is more often teamed up with characters that lend themselves to more outrageous stories (like Psychoboy) as more of my stories lean in that direction. However, very few supporting characters get their own solo story, so I guess it evens out.

Most of my supporting cast won't appear for some time since I can only put out a few shorts a year, so it's good that one of them got their moment in the sun early on.

And here's Psychoboy!

So designing Psychoboy was the opposite of Stickboy. For Stick I had a design idea I just needed to test and make sure it worked. With Psycho I had no idea how I wanted him to look. So I started with a design that resembled my friend who inspired Dogmeat in the defunct comedy concept I had (shown below in the upper left corner). But again, I found real people to be boring, so I tried a lot of variations.  

 

I wanted Psycho to be a beefier, more normal looking guy than Stick, but my problem was most of these guys looked too normal. They don't match the name at all, with the exception of the one sketch with his hair sticking up...

 

So I tired a few more things, I almost went with modern hair like someone in an Alternative band (shown below in the center), which still felt too normal. Finally in the lower left corner we get to something very close to what works, with the spiky hair.  Also on this page I drew some minor characters from the series along the upper left hand corner and a generic character (with the bald head) trying to get the feel of what the whole series might look like and how Psycho would fit into that.

 

 

 

So the punk hair was working for me and I decided it needed to be spikes around his face. This way Psycho looks like he's always got a star burst radiating from his face, like he's always excited, which is pretty appropriate for the character. While Stick's shirt is neutral because he's our everyman, Psychoboy would have an eight ball shirt to show his...eccentric nature.  

 

Since I use him less than Stick in the series, his tryout sketches were of scenes I thought might be in the actual first story, complete with the trench coat he'd wear in most of it.

 

 

 

 

Well, Psycho passed his "audition" and I honestly love his design. He only appears in some stories in the series. I try to use him sparingly. He's just one of those character you keep behind glass that's labeled "Only break if you're ready to get crazy." But he keeps getting in there. He's a lot of fun, and we'll be seeing him once I get a few more pages into the story...  

 

Stickboy's Audition



Character designs are a bit like an audition for a movie or show, making sure the character can perform in any given scene. So having got the design for the character down, I needed to figure out how I could express emotion with him. Could his face and body show a wide range of emotion, even with his eyes just being dots?

The first pic is me going through a range of facial expressions with him.

The next page is seeing how he would move, having him express emotion just through body language.

The third is a combination of the two with more experimentation with the eyes.

The biggest goal with the character was that he be expressive and could show the reader, almost without dialog, what he was feeling. I feel like old Stick passed with flying colors. Now I just needed to give some him friends....

Next: Designing Psychoboy

Lo unto thee, a Stickboy is born!

Below is the front and back of the page I originally designed Stickboy on. I had already plotted dozens of stories with him and had the concept of what he looked in my head, I just never put it on paper before I drew the first issue in 1999.

 

There's some caricatures of myself on there too, because I was questioning if I really wanted to go with my original design idea, or instead do something that more resembled what I actually look like. I was also a bit concerned about how expressive I could be with the eyes when they're only dots in his glasses (hence you see alternative ways to do the eyes on the right).

 

Of course, I did go with my original design, determining real people look boring. If you were going to have to stare at this guy every panel, he needed to look distinct, interesting and fun. And thus a Stickboy was born!

 

 

Next: I see what Stickboy can do

The Secret Origin of College Follies

Nothing was funny in high school.

 

At least nothing in my comics was. I drew or plotted tons of superhero comics, some science fiction and fantasy concepts, but not one comedy series. Not sure why that was.

 

I did want to do a comedy series. I had an idea for one, a buddy book with two characters inspired by me and my best friend. It was going to be like Wayne's World, but with more action, kinda like Archer and Armstrong or something like that.

 

Before I say the concept's name (and it's a horrible name), let me put it in context.

 

Me and by best bud both read Dark Dominion from Jim Shooter's Defiant Comics, and there's a scene in there where the villain (Chasm) is taunting the hero (Michael Alexander) and calls him "old stick," an odd term that we both thought was hilarious.

 

We also played a Sega CD game called Sewer Shark where you fly a plane through sewers while shooting mutant rats...or something like that. Your commanding officer in the game shows his, um, confidence in your abilities by repeatedly calling you "Dogmeat," which we also found hilarious.

 

So the title of my comedy concept was going to be....Dogmeat and Old Stick (yeah, I know, I'm cringing just writing that). Old Stick would be a long haired blonde guy with glasses who fights with a bo and I'm not even sure if I came up with a look for Dogmeat.

 

The concept went nowhere in my head. As far as I can tell, not a single word about it made it unto paper, nor was any sketch ever done of it. I don't know if I even came up with a single story for it.

 

I've had a few ideas like that that never even made it past the initial conceptual stages, but usually there'll be some nugget or element that'll be developed into something else that works.

 

And thus in college, a combination of the funny things I'd see and experience while living in a dorm, and the animated comedy series I was exposed to there like The Simpsons and the amazing first season of South Park, gave rise to a concept that actually worked. Why not just do comedy about life itself? No action or fantasy element needed. Just a dude in college that stuff happens to. And thus Old Stick became Stickboy and College Follies was born! 

 

So when I was designing Stickboy (which I'll be showing the sketches for in my next post) I already had a fairly concrete concept for his look in my head. And I think I was probably thinking of the initial comedy/action concept when I did this page among the initial sketches:
 

Stickboy's gonna knock you out!

 

Next: Designing Stickboy