#1085 – Smitin’ Time

  

There’s a song hat goes along with it:

“Smitin’ time, smitin’ time,

Im so glad it’s smitin’ time

Gonna swing my flaming sword

Kill this jerk for my dear Lord

Smitin’ time, smitin’ time,

I’m so glad it’s smitin’ time!”

Sketch a Day, Day 61

Today’s sketch is a reminder of why I really should not try to draw my characters in profile (I’m not good at it). Three-quarters view all the way! Anyway, the joke is that Jerome is really bad at using tools and is very likely to injure himself.

Jerome may be a clutz, but at least he's aware of it.

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).

He looks kinda disturbing in the 2012 design, actually.

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.

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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.

The grin in the second model went from cocky to sinister when I inked it.

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).

I don't know when I made the number of spikes in his hair consistent, but it wasn't in 2003.

Sketch a Day, Day 52

In keeping with the trend I totally only established yesterday, here’s a model comparison for Earl the Archangel from 2003 and today. The most obvious and notable change for Early is the hair: I’m still not sure what that weird block/afro thing he started out with was. The shaggy style was established in the storyline where he joined a boy band (no kiddin’, it happened!), and I really liked it, so I kept it.

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