The Comic Book That Never Was

As I've posted elsewhere, I do a lot of drawing but very little of what I actually draw is ever seen by the public. Almost everything I draw for Billy and Mandy is redrawn by the animators in Korea, so it's a special treat for me to be able to do something finished that people can actually see. That's why I was so excited when I got an offer from the lovely and talented Voltaire to do some pages for his new Deady comic. Those of you unfamiliar with Voltaire might know him as the singer/songwriter/musician who brought you "Brains" from the Billy and Mandy episode "Little Rock of Horror". Voltaire's also done a new song for the opening titles of the upcoming DVD.

After finishing the two pages for Deady, I got bit by the comic bug and decided to do my own. I'm always happiest when I'm working (at least mentally) on two or three different projects, and I've had a story I wanted to tell in comic form so I started screwing around on my then new Wacom screen.

I knew if I was going to do a comic in my "spare time", it would have to be something I could do relatively quickly. The images below were tests I did completely on the tablet just to see if I could crank things out fast enough to actually get it done.

The images above and below were roughed out freehand with the pencil tool in Photoshop, then cleaned-up and filled with the polygonal lasso tool. The above image came out pretty good, all things considered. The one below feels too jaggy to me. Eventually I abandoned the method.

The image below is a variation on the female character up top. This one I sketched out with the pencil tool and then colored over top as though I were using markers. It came out okay. Of course, finally, I dropped the entire comic because Billy and Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure dropped in my lap like a ton of spiked cinderblocks.