Sam's Comic Relief: Joel

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Tuesday Oddities - Original Pencil Sketches

sketches are how every character design start out. Design conflicts have kept certain characters in the series back from being introduced earlier, and I never include a character unless I'm happy with the way they look. Today for Tuesday Oddities, I have for you a series of original pencil sketches of various characters.

First off are some Season 3 designs. Season 3 was a turning point, as pretty much every character in the series had an update to their look from the previous seasons. Sam's look in particular is important, as this design has remained the same ever since (give or take a few smaller tweaks). Megan and Joel, as new characters, were done in pencil first to see if I liked the way they looked. Nick was also done this way, but unfortunately I seem to have misplaced Nick's original pencil sketch.

Next for you, I have a Season 5 redesigns of Sam and Shannon. Neither of these designs actually caught on, and both characters retained their Season IV looks (and still do).

Finally for today, we have some Season Six sketches. Several characters were redesigned in this season, and as per usual, Kenzie's look was updated. Her redesign started before Season 5 had ended, and was still in question up until Season Six began. Her initial redesign was drastically different from any previous Kenzie design, as it changed her outfit completely by giving her a new striped shirt and jacket and removing her "Amer-Ican" logo. In the end, I decided the old logo itself was a part of Kenzie's character, and added the legend back onto her new shirt. Her hair design was changed last second. An alternate version of Kenzie was drafted, but never used that had Kenzie dressed as a "Hipster".

Kenzie wasn't the only one who was redesigned. Bailey, Molly, Elino, and Gabri all were redone. Molly and Elino's changes were simply to the lengths of their hair, so they didn't get new sketches. Bailey's sketch, similar to Kenzie's, gave her a new outfit including a jacket. One sketch had her with a scarf instead of her necklace, but in the picture below, I decided against the scarf and X'd it out. Her hair was an updated version of the Season 5 ponytail, which was an update of her Season 2 design. Gabri was given a new sleeveless shirt, sunglasses, and longer hair. In the earliest colored pictures for Season Six, Gabri's new shirt was colored blue, but in every subsequent appearance, it was back to grey.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Tuesday Oddities! - Behind "When Movies Become Reality"!

Hey all! Since I don't plan to start Season 7 anytime soon, I'm going to start doing what I'm going to call "Tuesday Oddities". I may not be able to do them every single week, but for the foreseeable future, these will be up weekly and will show you some of the cool things I do for the series outside of the comics and the artwork portraits. Today, I'm going to start off with the story behind the latest subset, "When Movies Become Reality".

This subset has been around for a while. It even predates Season IV, as evidenced by the pictures below only featuring Season 3 characters. It also played with alternate concepts, such as Kenzie being Elizabeth Swan from Pirates of the Caribbean, Molly being a Harry Potter/Hermione Granger hybrid, and Nick being Chief Brody from Jaws. It also played with more enemies than just the stormtroopers, including undead pirates, orcs, and telmarine soldiers from Prince Caspian. Sam was always Indy, Bailey was always Satler from Jurassic Park, Joel was always Frodo from Lord of the Rings, and Ryan was always a Jedi (even though the looks changed a bit). Sam's cat Buster was also supposed to be the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland.

Back when the subset was first being developed, I started doing concept drawings to give myself a better picture. I only ended up doing three, because before Season IV, I was unsure of how successful the series would turn out to be. The first concept art featured Kenzie as Elizabeth Swan on a Pirate ship, pointing out a shark (a subplot that didn't make it to the final story). The second showed Nick, newly rechristened as Doc Brown from Back to the Future, and Sam as Indy reenacting a classic scene from Back to the Future. Finally, the third showed Sam and Molly in the iconic scenario from Jurassic Park. This technically happened in the final product, but in a different context.

Even though I didn't do more concept artwork, I did do "cover art" in two variations.

Finally, I have some cover artwork done for the Season Six incarnation of "Reality". One is unfinished and the other still features Molly as Harry/Hermione. Kenzie is also still portraying Elizabeth Swan in one of them. One also has Elino as Gandalf instead of Dumbledore and Gabri as Lady Mary from Downton Abbey, who in the final product was portrayed by Caroline. Sarah also has a different character, being Spider-Man instead of Alice.