(Click to enlarge)

Today’s sketchblog date is a little disingenuous, because I actually did this work back in October, but I’m, busy working on Episode Three, and while it’s not ready yet, I wanted to put something up on here. Consider this the first entry – over the past three months, I’ve had three (!) gigs in which I was hired to draw robots – in what is the clearest sign that I am becoming “That Robot Guy”. *sigh*

Blue Flavor wanted a cool, accessible spokesman for it’s work, and because of their heavy expterise in the web and usability, a robot seemed like a great idea. Their sloagna was ‘We Speak People’, and the notion of that coming out of a robots mouth struck everyone as humorous. On top of that, they’re all comic book nerds at heart (aren’t we all?), and so the possibility of using comic art to appeal to their clients excited both of us. Below is some intial sketches, finishing off with the finals they went for. I’ll be doing an actual comic for them later, too. Dude! Comics for money! Sweet!

Oh, and Rebholz, this post is for you, sucka.

Click on images to enlarge.

• I worked with Dennis in LA, where we both escaped teaching animation to kids with our sanity barely intact. He’s got an easy way with the pencil that drives me up the wall with jealousy.

• Matt Glaser’s sports and politics blog, The Zong, is like a poke in the eye with a Tootsie pop: it still hurts, goddammit, but somewhere, somehow, you can’t help but want a little more of that sweet, sweet center.

So I got an email from Aida in Iceland (!) who asked about my character development process, and how I decide what someone should looks like: she suggested that since I’m going to be drawing that character a great deal, I had better like them. I couldn’t agree more.

For my part, I always have that great quote by Matt Groening running through my mind:

“The great, memorable characters in cartoons in the 20th century are characters you can identify in silhouette.”

Above is my sketch when trying to come up with the look for Hector. Hector is…well, I don’t want to give anything a way, but he’s of a group of folks in the comic that have been physically altered in some way. As you can see, the guy I drew in the bottom right corner was the one I evenutally went with: because Hector is essentially a ‘good guy’ (albeit reluctantly), and a main character, I couldn’t have him be too grotesque. But don’t think that these other guys won’t be showing up somewhere along the line. I especially like the guys in the upper right. My Troma love contiues to rear it’s ugly head.