New Characters Poll!!!!

For the first time since Season 5, new characters are finally going to be added into the group of friends at Lakeville college! There are eleven possibilities that we can go with. All eleven of them will be in the upcoming Season 7, but here's the deal: Since the series already has over 20 recurring characters, only a few of these new characters will become regularly occurring characters.

A new poll has been opened over on the side! (this won't be visible for mobile users). You have until November 21 (I think?) to cast your votes! At least two if not three winners will be added into the series as regulars!

Who are they? Well, meet them down below!

Alex, a newcomer and explorer of the internet, jumps into school head first with style.

 Practical and to the point, Amelia attended business school prior to coming to Lakeville Collge (that's the college in the series)

 Though perhaps abrupt, Andy is not afraid to make himself heard.

 All around a cool, cool guy, CJ could rival even Nick and Ryan at sports.

 Formerly a student of film while in high school, Jani is a fearless young woman with a vision.

 Joey, a friend of Carl's, joins him and the rest at school.

 What Leo lacks in tact, he makes up for with his passion for learning.

Monica's power of sarcasm can easily rival that of Shannon's or Kenzie's.

 Kinda nerdy but full of fun, Morgan is a bit obsessed with Batman and Scifi originals.

 Robin, a great creative mind, comes to school hoping to make a big splash in his life.

Last but not least (he got stuck at the bottom because of alphabet), Zach is another cool cool guy with great ideas.

 Please cast your votes! The winner will be announced the day voting ends!

Season 7 Update!

I finally have some details about Season 7 of the series! It took a while for me to crack this season, but I finally have come up with something I can roll with.

My first decision is to not have any subsets. This is for two reasons. Firstly, I have no good ideas for a subset. Secondly, I want the entire season to be story-driven.

Going off of what I just said about the entire season being story driven, I mean that there will be an over-arcing story interwoven throughout. There will still be the same amount of funny comics, but every so often, there will be serious ones thrown in to advance the story.

What is the story? You'll just have to wait and see. I will say this, however: It deals with moving on and growing up.

Another thing I plan to do is to have at least two new characters added in! I haven't made a decision as to who they will be, but I'll let you know when the time comes!

Tuesday Oddities - Artwork Portraits that didn't make it

I don't always put up all the artwork portraits I make. But when I do, I prefer to use the good ones.

Bad memes aside, I make more artwork portraits than what goes up on the blog or on Facebook. Here are a few "rejected" portraits that weren't used for one reason or another.

First off, here is a Season 1 teaser. The reason it says "We're Back" at the top refers to the fact that I took a break during Season 1 around the end of 2006/early 2007. It also has the original series name (that only lasted for that season).

Next, this is an artwork for the Season 2 subset "Christmas Countdown". This one wasn't used in favor of another one that depicted Sam and Santa.

I don't have any for Season 3, as there was only one made for that season and it was used. I do however have a few unused artworks from Season IV. The first one was definitely made before the season began, as it features the Season 3 Joel design. The second one shows an abandoned storyline where Sam, Ryan, and Nick receive a visit from their future selves (I just couldn't make that one funny enough for myself, let alone anyone else). Finally, an unused artwork for the subset "The Origins", which feature several different designs than the ones that ended up appearing in the final. Most noticeable are Nick, Frank, and Shannon. Ironically, Rachel is exactly the same as she is in the regular series.

Next, a Season 5 artwork. As Nick's shirt is blank and Ryan doesn't have his goatee yet, this one is also early.

Finally, here are some Season Six ones. The first one was an accident. I literally spelled Comics wrong. Instead of throwing it away and redoing it, I made a joke out of it. This one nearly made it, but was dropped in favor of the one that showed every character with their colored backgrounds. The second was one that I started but realized I had undertaken a drawing too complicated to spoof. I'm talking the Sgt. Pepper album cover. I stopped it before it was finished.

Tuesday Oddities - Other Things I've Drawn

I don't just draw comics. I doodle all the time, things from Star Wars characters, to Harry Potter, to Grumpy Cat... there are a lot. Here are just a few. There was one other Pirates of the Caribbean drawing even better than this one that I wanted to include here, but I can't find it.

Tuesday Oddities - Just Some Cool Misc Stuff

Tuesday Oddities are all about the oddness of some of these drawings that I don't normally put out. That being said, here are some more cool miscellaneous drawings for the series that I've come across.

First up, here is a random drawing, circa Season 1 of the four lead characters. Of these four, only Sam and Bailey survived "the purge" of Season 2, in which Jessica only appeared once. This drawing appears to have been done later on in Season 1, since Sam's hair design has gotten slightly longer than it was earlier in said season.

 The following set of drawings were done specifically for Instagram, and have never been shown elsewhere. They all feature comic characters as the characters they portrayed in the "Avengers" artwork portrait. Carl's "Captain America" one turned out so good that it made me wish I had done it in pen so it could be colored (doing a colored version of a pencil drawing with my limited resources is difficult and almost not worth it).

 Next on the list is a pencil sketch of the "Minecraft" artwork portrait. I had the idea initially and couldn't find a pen, so I sketched it in pencil to redo later in pen.

 The next picture I have is a very different one. I can't quite remember what it is supposed to be, but it has more details put into it and both Sam and Gabri wearing different clothes. This picture more closely resembles the concept artwork for "Sam's Comics: The Movie", but it can't be from those, as Molly's design is clearly from her Season IV appearance and Gabri was not yet added into the series (nor had I even met her in real life at the time I made the concept art for the film). I honestly have no clue when or why I made this. I have no memory of it.

 Finally, here is a map that I made. I've done a few variations of this map from Season IV onward, but this one is the most recent and hasn't changed since the end of Season 5. It takes into account locations from Sam's Comics: The Movie, Sam's Comics: The Origins, the Camp Awesome subset, and other places featured in the series, showing that Sam and Bailey live on opposite ends of the park (shown in The Movie and referenced in The Origins), The Old Abandoned Storehouses (The Movie), The Forest (The Origins), The Camp (Camp Awesome) and that Gabri and Frank live outside the town, making them "Outsiders" (The Origins). There are a few other niceties thrown in, including Three Mountain Heights (misspelled I know), which is implied to be what Sam's T-shirt currently depicts.

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 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.

Well, here is where I will leave Tuesday Oddities for now. Look out for some more cool stuff next week!