Going to jump onto a model sheet for the chair pot belly sits in - i warn you it'll be pretty gaudy color wise, because well.. i have a tacky color sense when i painted the original! Check out those ugly polka dots on it in the bimbo on the left cover.
But before that... i wanna jump back to Dana's Big box with legs.
Right now her face is just an simple little oval. This one isn't so much a model sheet, (you know, front, side, back views for sculptors) as just for ME...
Just drawings just to inspire myself. And maybe give Kim ... and you guys... some idea what it's texture and proportion will be!
There we go. She's a little slumped over, but i fan out of room to have her sit up too straight or she'd go off the page. Plus Dana's an shy introvert, so she'll usually slumps her shoulders a little.
This Box's 'toilet seat' is really an old horses yoke, but i have a back story why that's okay in this instance. (Most magic boxes need a toilet seat to work their magic, and yes i know this sounds incredibly stupid, that's the point.)
I'd like this living box's legs to be sort of like dinosaur bones, with leather cords wrapped around the leg bones. And clock gears where the joints bend too..
totally illogical, i know.
What I finally came up with was.. having BOTH types of box. Ordinary ones that don't breath or live. In the real world she sits around typing on these antique boxes that aren't really alive, just machines.
Then she has these blackouts and pops into this imaginary world in her mind.. where the same boxed move around like animals. This big box will carry her around sorta like a two legged horse or something..
Back to some rough potbelly ideas.. a few months back main toy dude Kim finished an amazing 'rough' sculpt of pot belly's standing body, which i'll post very soon. Meanwhile, i threw out the idea that since this seems like a guy's toy, bit add weird one eyed dude with a pot belly... maybe we could have some cute-ass crap in there too..
so we'll toss in some chibi figures, which can sit around by pot belly's legs. Something girly and so cute you wanna gag. Not just for chicks, it could be for dudes with wildly over-developed sensitive sides too. These chibi's be a little bigger than this ( and better looking - promise! )
So, that damned chair...
....keep putting it off. Drawing a chair (even one you designed in the first place) from all angels, is kinda boring.
I'll eventually add some olive green moss on the seat to jazz it up a little.
The moss will make the seat softer for him, eh? Notice how crude the original doodle looks on the left? I had to give Kim a better one than that.
Those pink polka dots really kill the color scheme, don't they? I could dull the saturation by hand, but easier to pull back the pink dot color in photoshop. I know, lazy of me.
Here's the dots a little less pink, more dull purple. Better? I think so. I notice i'll have to do it all over though, not for detail but proportion, i forgot potbelly has to FIT in this sucker! such a discpline thinking through psychical space.
Animators do this all day, but comic artists usually cheat the the devil, bend, distort to their hearts content.
As i look at the Box I did at the top of this page... i have to wonder? Does it look too much like a creature from the Outback? On the other hand, almost everything i draw looks like that. I mean, i was drawing that was before i created the outback. Weird creatures, i mean.
Plus, i don't wanna second guess myself so much that i pull my punches, trying to NVER drawing a story with an alternate world again, terrified of repeating myself. I over-think everything enough as is, right?
Plus, unlike the outback... Dana's world will be full of junk food with 1900s style candy wrapped in vintage trout advertising, and also have weird magic boxed creatures running, and hopping about, so maybe just weird in it's own right?
What do you guys think?
So, meanwhile, I keep drawing potbellys, and Kim keeps sculpting.. it based on my goofy little drawings! Now board of directors or media tie ins with fast food chains.. just two guys cracking themselves up. Communicating thru two different mediums.
These last three are not toy inspired, just another doodle from my sketchbook i had to do to unwind (between Aliens and IDW work for hire gigs!) ... gotta mix it up a little, right? Go NUTS drawing the same thing day in and out.
Next up, some photographs of the Kim's sculpture of potbelly so far, plus an interview with Kim, who turns out is a pretty damned cool guy.
