Metroburg: The Sketchbook

Page 58

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:42:00 GMT

Al and Beelzebub take a trip to the water park, and Al tries to encourage Beelz to loosen up a bit. Also, because nature abhors a vacuum, here's Brian in a fedora and a random chicken.

Page 57

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:42:00 GMT

I have to wonder, if only one head sees something, do the other heads still know about it? Questions like that keep me up all night. That and the Banana Boat Song.

Page 56

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:42:00 GMT

Something a little different: Scenery! This is the front desk at Carl's shop.

Page 55

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:34:00 GMT

More faces. I love doing Carl's facial expressions, especially when he's playing the fall guy.

Aside from computer repair and aromatherapy, Beelzebub's main occupation is a lawyer in Hell, defending the indefensible. Though he can't get you out of Hell, he can usually get your sentence reduced from having a flaming cheese grater shoved up your ass every morning for the rest of eternity to having to watch five hours of Jeff Dunham videos.

Personally, I would take my chances with the cheese grater.

Page 54

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:34:00 GMT

Hammering out some facial expressions.

Page 53

Mon, 04 May 2009 03:30:00 GMT

Tewksbury buttering himself up like the narcissist he is. Below him is Estelle D'Angieri, Al's sister. She's a hairdresser who has her own product line..

Page 52

Mon, 04 May 2009 03:30:00 GMT

These guys appear sometime late in the comic. I basically tried to come up with the worst animated kids' show imaginable, and these are the stars of the show.

Page 51

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:44:00 GMT

Design notes for Wiighra and Beelzebub, and something involving Wiighra and Mister So-Called Gordon Ramsay.

Page 50

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:02:00 GMT

Al arm-wrestles a certain Six-Armed Werewolf™.

Page 49

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:58:00 GMT

Design notes for Rachel.

Page 48

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:51:00 GMT

Centaurs in action! These are some tough poses I've never tried before, so they're not going to be very elegant or anatomically sound.

Oh, and there's Julian again. The genet who's so sexy he can seduce inanimate objects. Like, this one time he woke up with a poppy seed bagel around his…you know what, never mind.

Page 47

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:37:00 GMT

When a three-headed, nine-limbed, leonine god tells you to eat your soup, you eat your freakin' soup.

Page 46

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:18:00 GMT

I decided to draw Brian and Carl "realistically", just on a whim. There's Naoka, Dennis' Japanese girlfriend, who'll appear later in the series. I'd never drawn a non-Western person's face before (and I'm a little embarrassed by that fact). It was a challenge to get her to look like a Japanese woman, and not just an American with black hair and stereotypical slanty eyes.

I noticed some of my characters' appearances, Dennis especially, have been fluctuating and veering off from their original designs, mostly due to not having solid design rules to begin with, so I made a sort of min-model sheet to try to set things straight.

And there's a basketball-playing raccoon, for no particular reason.

Page 45

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:18:00 GMT

More character refinement. Reattempting Rachel's expression from this page. And I still can't settle on a set of proportions for Beelz's horns and tail.

It's getting close to "shit or get off the pot" time.

Page 44

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:05:00 GMT

Stuff, stuff, and more stuff. I tried to do some of the characters Anime style. You never really notice your own tendencies until you try to draw in a foreign style.

Page 43

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:05:00 GMT

Carl, Brian, the DUPES CHIEF. Carl's pose was a tricky one. I don't think I got it quite right

Page 42

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:19:00 GMT

Magic number 42! Al and Tewksbury face off, and some other stuff.

Page 41

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:21:00 GMT

Random stuff with Carl, and Pluto seeks revenge.

Page 40

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:57:00 GMT

Cheap gags ahoy! Maybe you've been wondering how Brian puts on his pants in the morning. So have I. I suppose it would look something like that.

Page 39

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 05:09:00 GMT

Some attempts at Brian dancing, and some exaggerated facial expressions. Centaur dancing is a pain in the ass to figure out.

Brian has this kind of pseudo-muzzle thing going on with his face. It's one of those subtly equine features that I threw in and I like to mess around with. It's fun to draw, but it's easy to overdo it and ruin that delicious subtlety. Part of the fun is keeping Brian's upper half just this side of being plausibly human.

Page 38

Sun, 8 Mar 2009 04:45:00 GMT

Trying to get my squirrels and badgers to actually look like squirrels and badgers. Another redesign of the DUPES CHIEF. I tried to do Rachel being smug, but her expression doesn't quite work. Female faces are tough, because you want them to be emotive, but you don't want to shatter that youthful glow with an ugly expression. A guy's face, I can stretch and bunch up and mutilate in any number of ways and not destroy whatever charm he has, but on a girl's face, one stray line could easily add about 30 years (or about 200 in Rachel's case), effectively turning a supermodel into a gruesome hag. I don't know why this is.

I blame the Democrats.

Page 37

Thu, 5 Mar 2009 22:57:00 GMT

Some more random expressions and ideas.

Page 36

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:24:00 GMT

A few characters who show up late in the series, Tewksbury finally gets to have a little fun, and Carl and Brian have another run-in with the unexplainable.

Is it just me or is there some Hanna-Barbera style creeping in?

Page 35

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:38:00 GMT

One thing the "graphic novel" route means is that I can take a breath, relax, and go back and do all the fleshing out and nailing down that I didn't have time to do before. I worked on this page while watching President Obama's press conference on the economic stimulus bill. I sketched out some head-on shots for some of the characters, going back to try to establish some rules on things like proportions, shapes, defining traits, etc. No actual model sheets to speak of yet, but those will come. I've found that the head-on shots are the toughest to get to look right, and that's mainly why I do those first.

There's also a really nice bit with Brian and Tazel. The expressions came out great, but the proportions need work.

Call this part of the "rebuilding" or the "restructuring" process. I don't know if this is the right way to go about it, but sometimes you have to let yourself do everything wrong, and it may turn out that you were right about a few things after all.

Page 34

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:47:00 GMT

Holy Gryphon Tits, Batman!

Refining some of the characters' looks. Lichtschau and Ellice still need a lot of fleshing out. And then there's Wiighra amusing Mr. God with his gummi worm Cthulhu trick.

Page 33

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:45:00 GMT

Trying to do various characters in the old Spümcø style. I think I failed miserably, but I also think this is the sexiest pic of Rachel I've ever done.

Page 32

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:29:00 GMT

Carl making an offer to the football gods, and Al getting excited about something. So far, Al is one of the most difficult but most fun characters to draw. Usually when I do multi-headed characters, I like to try to convey roughly the same emotion or reaction on each head, but in subtly different ways. Or I'll use multiple heads to show a single action at different stages, sort of like picking frames out of an animated sequence.

Page 31

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:29:00 GMT

Wide receiver DeLucas Corvison, makin' it look easy.

Page 30

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:34:00 GMT

A couple of players from Al's college football team, the Great Northern Royal Imperial Electric Steelworks and Petrochemical Solutions Company Technical College Electric Oysters.

In case you're wondering, the guy on the right is a Yatagarasu, a character from Japanese mythology that often appears as a three-legged raven.

Page 29

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:29:00 GMT

Thumbnail roughs, some more Beelz and Al, some random heads. This is all going to be very important someday…maybe.

Page 28

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 06:37:00 GMT

Brian again, and his cat, Van Dyke, the cat with three butts.

Occassionally I'l doodle some random abstract stuff to fill up space.

ZINC! ZOMG!

Page 27

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Tewksbury, the Secret Service cerberid husky.

Page 26

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Cartoony Bob with his lucky cigar, some headshots of Dr. Seng, and some kind of abstract lion design.

Page 25

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A sketch that later became this.

Page 24

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

More character sketches. What is everybody looking at?

Page 23

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Dr. Seng gives Carl a very thorough once-over, and we meet a couple of stoned foxes.

Page 22

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Finally, a drawing of Carl's shop! And can you tell I have a thing for Wile E. Coyote?

Page 21

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

K. W. Sherman, AKA Shermy, Sprinkles' political rival, along with his running mate, Bruce "The Hurt" Masochrie. We also have another new character. Tewksbury, a cerberid husky secret service agent. A snooty fellow who had his fun gene removed. He's built from the same model as Al, with pointy ears and bushier fur.

You may also notice that I've swiched to a harder lead for some of these sketches.

Page 20

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sketches for the front page banner, plus a diva genet and a "snale".

This is what happens when I listen to Captain Beefheart while drawing.

Page 19

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Not really page 19 (the original sketchbook was lost, and I had to buy a new one), but this is the 19th page I'm posting. Here's Beelz being silly, a better view of Dylan being…Dylan, and a newer, edgier J. Antony Hurrey (for the 21st century youth market, no doubt).

Page 18

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A character sketch of Dennis Fonzarelli (yeah, he's the freakin' Fonz)

Page 17

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sprinkles, the Epileptic Shar-Pei, current president of Amrickland, and the Mad Doctor Seng, the most talented (and most insane) plastic surgeon in the vast temporal sphere.

Page 16

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A character sketch of Mr. God