David Redesign

He could some cucumber slices for those eyes.

I spent the last couple of weeks changing David's look. I originally had him in a straight jacket to get the idea across that he's a rather nutty guy who acts on impulse, but I ultimately decided that the look separated him too much from the rest of the group. Like the others, he's a high school kid from the same school (or at least he was when he died), so I gave him a school uniform. But, he's been dead for a while, so I wanted his uniform to be of a different design to show that he's from a generation or two ago. As for him being a bit crazy, I figured his actions would get that across.

You can also see from the eraser marks in the turnaround that I was figuring out how tall he should be. At first he was as tall as Reason, but if I want Reason to be tall for his age, I better make sure he's at least the tallest of the group of main characters. So I made David half a head shorter.

I also drew him in various expressions, which was rather fun since he's a lot more comical and exaggerated than the rest of the main characters. I want him to be like Spongebob Squarepants in that the design of the face can change drastically for the sake of making a funny image.

Samantha Turnaround and Reason Hair Redesign

Her curlers must be huge.

Continuing refining these characters in preparation of a (hopefully) future comic. 

First I did a turnaround of Reason's new hair style. I decided to avoid doing the Flinstones flip, where the part in the hair will suddenly change sides depending where the character's facing.

Then most of this week's work was spent on Samantha's hair. I've always liked her hair, it's almost like a bonnet made of circles, or a real cutesy lion's mane, but I never drew it outside of a three quarter and head on view. I also had to create a process to make sure I draw her hair consistently, as her do is the most complicated out of all these characters. I ended up with a method similar to drawing Lisa Simpson's hair, just replace the spikes with circles.

Shiina Redesign

A female who's more bad-ass than the male lead?! Well, I never!

After messing with different hair styles for Shiina in my last post, I wanted to flesh her out a bit more, both to try one of said new hair styles and to giver her a look that differentiates her from the other female lead, Samantha. Other than the hair, I've made her a bit taller and gave her boy uniform pants with the legs rolled up instead of a skirt (I figure it'd be funny if she were very intimidating to the school officials, so they'd let her wear whatever the hell she wants).

And now for a flashback. When I first got the idea of these characters (I think it was in my later years in high school), I originally made Shiina an African American. I eventually decided that she would be the most action prone character, being very capable of most any physical task and knowing various martial arts if fighting were ever needed in this story. With that change, I figured a Japanese heritage would be more suited for her, but I was always a little bummed about losing a character of color. Than it hit me when making these drawings: "DUH! Just give her both heritages!" There's no rule saying she couldn't have both Japanese and African genes! I'm already starting to get excited about what her parents could be like, one being black and the other asian.

And now for something completely the same. I'm starting to get serious about making a comic out of these characters that have been floating in my head for forever. There's still tons of preparation involved, so there won't be any comic anytime soon. What will happen is that you'll see a lot more posts of sketches of these guys and other aspects of the story as I continue to flesh things out. But there also may be less work posted in general, as making an ongoing comic means I gotta spend time leaning how to write a decent story.

So on that note, if anybody knows of any books or websites that are good resources for fledgling writers, please tell me about them in the comments or Twitter.