Michelle decided last night to cut her hair super short. Now I gotta figure out how to draw it all over again.
The purple highlights look pretty groovy, though.
character model
Sketch a Day, Day 89
Several years back, my friend Chad kicked a webcomic idea my way about a guy (I can’t recall the character’s name now, sadly) who was a reality repairman. I loved the idea, and I did a few initial character sketches, but nothing ended up coming of the project because (1) I couldn’t manage my time and (2) I was actually busy as hell working full-time, just getting into my relationship with the woman who would become my wife, and taking graduate classes to earn my teaching license. And I was still doing Crooked Halo, so I had a pretty full plate.
So this sketch is based (loosely) on what I recall of the original character design. I still love the idea of him having kind of a frat-bro look about him, with the casual-looking-but-it-actually-took-effort hair and the douchey goatee thing. Also, I had this idea that he’d probably solve most of his problems with a hammer. What? It’s not any less-probable than the Doctor fixing everything with that screwdriver of his, sonic or otherwise.
Sketch a Day, Day 56
Today wraps up the week of Crooked Halo model comparisons with a look at Clyde. Clyde is based on my brother, Clif, whose nickname in high school was Clyde (so, y’know, only loosely based). I’ve never been particularly happy with Clyde’s character design (the early design made him look hydro-cephalic, and I’m not sure the new design works much better), though it’s getting closer to something I can at least tolerate. I hadn’t really come up with many plans for his use in the reboot yet, though I did know at least that he and Simon would still be working on music even though they were living in different parts of the country (just as my brother and I do).
Sketch a Day, Day 55
Today’s sketch is a model comparison for Cletus, the pint-sized hillbilly genius. Cletus was featured in two or three big storylines back in the day (including one where I totally snarked on the old Hatfield/McCoy feud), and he was always a fun character to write (a weird mix of country bumpkin and nerd). For the remake that fell apart, I decided to let him grow up (since it was supposed to be five years later) and ditch the overalls, fully embracing his nerdiness. He would’ve been Jerome’s personal assistant, a thankless task at best.
Sketch a Day, Day 54
Today’s Crooked Halo character model comparison is for Tim Tation, the anthropomorphic personification of temptation. Definitely one of the more more entertaining characters to write for back when I was doing the strip.
His clothes haven’t changed, nor has his personality. I did try to make the hair more hair-like; the weird spikes he had were always a source of artistic frustration for me when I came up with the character (drawing hair has always caused me frustration. All the unnamed extras who appeared in my comic over the years had only two available hairstyles, and both were ridiculous). I’ve finally hit on something I quite like; now, I just have to start coming up with horrible things for him tempt people to do.
Sketch a Day, Day 53
It’s later than I’d like, but here’s today’s sketch. In keeping with my theme, I’ve done a model comparison of Jerome. As usual, there is something I like about the classic, original model, which has very clean lines and a t-shirt that was always striped the exact same way regardless of what direction Jerome faced. He was tricky to re-imagine, though, because I really wasn’t sure how to give him a distinctive hairstyle and look that would harken back to the original but still show progression. The hair stayed basically the same, though I’ve added a bit more detail to it, and the beard made sense considering he started growing facial hair of various designs in a couple of storylines from the old comic (the Pirate Choir and the Lazy Summer, specifically). I also decided to give him a new shirt (in the planned-but-abandoned Crooked Halo 2.0, he’d have gone on to become a game designer who’d made lots of money creating some game for smartphones, and the shirt would’ve been either his company logo or the main character from his game).
Sketches From Memory 