Cranston Silvernose Concepts

Hey folks!

This time, I bring to you some concepts of a minor character in "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," Cranston Silvernose. Cranston is the town science man. He invents, discovers, pokes and prods at things, and is an infinite source of wisdom. Naturally, though, he is very eccentric.




The pen and ink concepts were done during work at the video store a couple weeks ago. It's all in chronological order. You can see that the character started out looking really different from what I ultimately ended up with.

Admittedly, I much prefer the wide-eyed, vibrant Cranston seen in the pen and ink concepts to the one from the colored concept. I feel he does not have the same liveliness about him, but that's okay. I can instill that later.

The colors are not final, I should say. Something feels off about them. But it's a good start.

The thing on his back is sort of a clock...it ticks away as the hot moon rises and sets. Cranston is rarely seen outside of his little laboratory, so he needs some method of knowing what time it is. ;D

Cranston will not be a particularly prominent character. His real introduction beyond just being present in the background will probably be somewhere around issue 3. That's the plan right now, anyway.

Alrighty, g'night folks!

~Drew

Turnover Concepts

Hey folks!

Work on my upcoming webcomic, "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," has been going well. My main focus right now is tying up loose ends and getting a better understanding for the environments (because I've got a pretty good understanding for the characters at this point, hehe). Today, I share with you some concepts for the little castle town of Turnover, the central setting of the comic.



Turnover is super-tiny, consisting of a main castle, surrounding homes (made from old "castle parts") that house the residents, and the seedy underbelly of Turnover, "Dark Turnover." It is not a particularly populated little kingdom, consisting of only a handful of people and located in the middle of a vast desert.

Turnover is located on planet Rockstead. Rockstead is unique in that it has two moons: one is the "hot moon," a source of light and heat for the daytime, and the other is the "cold moon," which is much larger (a concept not illustrated above, unfortunately) moon that causes the nights to be chilly and sort of bright. The left is day, the right is nighttime...you get it. I reckon the cold moon might actually be a full moon at all times, with the hot moon being a crescent moon as illustrated. Still tinkering with the idea, so we'll see.

And of course, there is a circular courtyard in front of the main castle that has a neat little whale fountain. This design isn't finalized...I actually dunno if I want it to be so cute. I might go with something a little more mysterious and stoic, but we'll see what works.

Anyway, lemme know your thoughts!

~Drew

MON concepts

Hey folks!

It's time now for another round of concepts for a project that is either defunct entirely or put on the waaaaaay-back burner (as in...anything that isn't Yoki Safari). Spotlight: MON.



MON is a project I never actually got around to revealing to anyone until this moment, and it was only created recently, dead as soon as it was born. I'm only just now noticing that a lot of my favorite artists and creators are pulling from the things that influenced them as children: Tartakovsky's take on anime teenagers in mech suits in the form of "Sym-Bionic Titan," McCracken's observation of a world in which imaginary friends live relatively peacefully with ordinary citizens in "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" as well as his cheerful interpretation of formulaic superhero tales in "The Powerpuff Girls." So...what influenced me heavily as a kid?

It was somewhere from 1998-ish to the early 2000s that the "collecting and battling colorful monsters" craze was at its very height. Most kids had chosen to jump on the popular bandwagon of Pokemon, which I certainly enjoyed, but I found a much richer experience in the detailed designs and character-driven plots of Digimon. For a long time, I have nerdily thought to myself "What would I do if given the reins to the horse that is the monster collecting/battling genre?" The answer is "MON."

Telling the tale of an inner-city 20-something with no aspirations and plenty of problems who is swept up in the interdimension-protecting agenda of a small, orange dinosaur named Karondo, MON is an action-oriented, gritty take on the monster collecting/battling genre. It was meant to follow a similar path of the first season of Digimon, with some of the grittier, darker tones and themes found in the excellent third season.

Ultimately, when I realized that the only project I REALLY want to be working on right now is "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," I put "MON" away with the rest of my stuff. Maybe it'll resurface one day, maybe not.

Anyway, I know I just lost cool points for admitting that I chose Digimon over Pokemon and was ever actually considering doing a webcomic inspired by it, but hey...at least I'm honest.

Best,

~Drew

Catch Up

Hey folks!

Wowza! My last blog entry was one of those awful "I need to update" entries, in which I promised I'd update the next day or so. Well, it has been a couple weeks now and still no update, haha. So, here are a couple things that I decided to put on here finally.

First, as announced on my Deviantart page, I have canceled "Charlie Dubai." I got very tired working on a project I did not feel passionate about, so I pulled the plug to save myself from going nuts. As a nice send-off, here's a piece of concept art for Castle Mermalot, dwelling of the merfolk and setting of most of the first issue of Charlie Dubai.



My focus now, then, is "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," which I will be doing as a webcomic instead of the originally proposed print comic. I'm finally locking down some character designs, most notably Yoki, Jules, and Durango, all shown in the following image (sketch and complete).




I will make some noise about the details of the webcomic, particularly its launch and location, when I know more. ;D

Finally, to cap things off, here are some fun "Duncan Button" doodles and concepts.



From left to right: A full-body image of Denise (drawn with the Pencil Tool); a side-view of Pac; Ridley's new design featuring less face fuzz; Ridley playing a video game in his underwear (don't lie, you've done it too); the current design for Ridley's friend Maria Grind; A failed image of Ridley that came out WAY too fat; a concept for another one of Ridley's friends, fighting game fanatic Seth.

And there you have it! I finally updated! I will try to be more active and up-to-date with my blog. I feel bad for neglecting it!

Hope all is awesome,

~Drew