More Sci-Fi stuff...

I spent most of the summer working on a big, odd, sci-fi story that, while I'm excited by it, I'm also unsure about it. After slowly developing it for a few months, it occurred to me that it might not really be for kids.  It's not that it's too heady or violent, but I'm just not sure what it says to kids about the lives they live.  While it is a story that is meaningful to me, I simply don't know if a young audience would relate to it.  And truthfully, I'm not really interested in aiming at at adults.  This is a hard one.  I'm not sure if I'm going to go forward with it.

These were two sketches I put together.  In the top one I'm really trying to figure out how simple I could go with colors and solid blacks.

This one is a colored sketchbook page.  Some of the stuff, such as the lederhosen dude, just kinda snuck onto the page.

More Unit 77

I noticed that I have a big pile of stand alone drawings that don't really fit into any one category. I think I'm just going to start putting them up with no real order or agenda.  This is a finished drawing of the clone character "Unit 77." I like this one, but I didn't pursue this design of him much further.

Shortly after I drew this first image, I started working on a Wacom Cintiq.  This version of Unit 77 was one of the first things I drew on it.

Unit 77 sketches

While I am working away on the art for last Icky Ricky book, I’ve been spending a good amount of time trying to figure out what to do next.  One of the things I’ve been interested in is something that is true sci-fi.  I’ve always loved science fiction, and have gone through phases where I’ve read a ton of it.  But as much as I love something like Star Wars, I’m really interested in “hard” sci-fi.  I don’t want to read about magic, and I don’t think I could tolerate another story where there is a “chosen one.”

I’ve been messing around with a character called "Unit 77" who is a clone.  He’s been created to do one certain job, but he thinks that there has to be more to life…

That’s the short version of it.  I’ve been sussing out other characters, and locations, and how the stories would move.  Right now, I’m thinking about it as a graphic novel series, or possibly illustrated chapter books.  I’m not sure.  It’s still pretty early in the idea stages.

As I have said in other posts, I do believe that when one has an idea, it is good to make it concrete, and to get it out there in some way.  It becomes real.  I also feel that if I post these conceptual stages on my blog, I really force my self to keep thinking about the idea.

Here are just a few “Unit 77” sketchbook pages.  Mad Max made his way into the last one, but I guess I lose some street cred because he’s driving on the wrong side.  I kept that sketch in there because it also shows a bit of my process.  I spend a good deal of time trying to remember what got me excited about drawing and story telling when I was young.  I haven’t lost any interest in these pursuits at all, its just that I like trying to get back to creative ground zero every now and then, and see if there’s something there that I have yet to explore.