No takebacks! (Or are there?)

It's time for more experiments with a pen! Once again I'm sketching without a net! If I make a mistake, it's there. Nothing can erase ink! Ink owns all!

Ok, fine, I can still photoshop out some screwups - namely the right Max and Roddy, which were the first two sketches done, of course. It takes time to warm up! That's how it works for all of them. On the right is my first pen attempt, with the follow-up on the left. (It's a left-handed thing.) As you can see, just a bit of practice and I did get better. Go me!

I like these sketches because it's always fun to get into the Precocious supporting cast. Scripting is underway for the next big storyline, and these things give everyone a time to shine. (Bonus: I also FINALLY have next week's strips scripted. I cut that awful close.) Now I'm ready to start churning away at the strips, ideally building up a buffer - but there's a big difference between having the next 14 strips SCRIPTED and having them DONE. Motivation, I chose you!

Please?

The natural look

You know, with all the recent costume changes, it's been a while since I consistently drew my kids in their standard Precocious looks. With the supervillain follies going on now, I look below and see a full Dr. Oven in yesterday's sketch. (He was just supposed to be wearing the glasses.) Since Dr. Oven in full is probably funnier anyway, I left him in the Sunday strip it inspired, but I have to laugh. So many times when I drew Bud in baseball gear or lab coat, I had to go back and erase his black vest. Instincts said Bud = vest! Now I've done gone and reversed everything!

Don't tell me, I'll get him back to basics just in time for fall weather to put him in a jacket!

The art of screwing up!

Today is hammer-at-the-bloody-website-until-the-brain-snaps day! I was hoping for be-awesomely-productive-and-finish-lots-of-strips day, but the stars were not aligned.

This image is the lone non-tedious task I did - and also completely unnecessary! I spiced up my 404 page. After all, I'm going to be doing lots of hand coding, and a typo is bound to creep in - I might as well entertain them with my failure! Try it out:

http://chrispco.emeybee.com/precocious/archive/thislinkistotallybroken.html

Sew it goes.

Today's painting mission was aborted when I discovered I had somehow mortally wounded Etruscan Blues. (Man, those guys can't catch a break!) At some point I managed to stab the painting with something, causing a nice big tear. (If you click on the image to see the larger version, you can spot it on the right of the lower right eye-thingy.) Well shoot, that makes things difficult. So it goes. (Hey, you can see my Vonnegut collection in this photo!)

Can this painting be saved, or will it become so meta it falls into obscurity, damaged and incomplete? Maybe I can sew up the wound. Maybe it'll still work. A scar reaching across the most visible eye form in the painting? POETIC! I could stitch it up, paint over the back of the painting to seal it - red paint, of course, so it can seep through a bit - and, hell, PAINT THE WHOLE BACK with something Roman. That way, when held up to a back light, it gets OPPRESSIVELY LITERARY! Or not. Who knows.

The mass of paintings in the picture is to show the different fates of the recent work. Dana's painting is finished, and it is marvelous! Everything went right with that one, and it is both large and in charge. Kickass! Andrew's painting, meanwhile, got stabbed. Oops.

(The flower paintings are there to fill space in the composition, which is fairly symbolic of their nature as well when you think about it...)

All the old showstoppers

Without any coherent idea in my head or theme in my sketchbook, I am going to do an early sketchbook leftovers post. It's not like I can work on a comic. (A cat is sleeping where I need to sit!) I have lots of nice sketches, so it works. In order to match them up, extensive Photoshopping was needed, but whatevs. The post title is a New Pornographers song. I've been listening to them and it seemed appropriate enough.



This adorable curtsy isn't that great of a sketch (where is the tail attached?) but I thought it funny enough to share. In related news, I seriously need to learn how to draw a curtsy, because I clearly have no sense of mid-pose skirt dynamics.



Obviously, these are three sketches from three different times. Jacob has been scrunched to fit. Dionne's sketch isn't even finished. Really, I just wanted to share Suzette (sans-collar for some reason) and needed some extra sketches to justify it.



As mentioned before, I had a failed attempt to draw the parents at a party. Just because, I scanned Sydney and Sky anyway. Maybe I should revisit this idea down the road.



It's the MARAUDERS! Max and Roddy! Get it? Meh. I probably should have saved these sketches for a day when I don't have anything else to share. I could write up a decent Max/Roddy analysis. Oh well, I just have to be awesome everyday now...



And here we have nice sketches of the main twosome. Autumn, fittingly, can be very difficult. Her large tail, hair points and big honkin' ears take up a lot of room - which means it's easy to draw her at a different proportion than the rest. Autumn is especially large and in charge because I had to Photoshop a bunch to get the two sketches to match. Bud's original sketch is large, so I had ample room to get the features in. Autumn's was smaller, so she had to be stretched to fit her features. And I still didn't finish her dress. Go me!

Lessons learned via aftermath

I decided to try another colored pencil sketch and the character of the day was the dreaded teacher, Bette Monster! Mwa ha ha!

This a rare casual shot. As we all know, seeing one's teacher out in the wild is a frightening experience. The whole authoritarian mystique is destroyed. Bette sometimes shows up at the Et house to hang out. The conflict has clearly left her psyche shattered.

In a class of genius psychopaths, Bette has learned the best she can do is let the kids go and try to nudge them in the right direction. Direct opposition results in war wounds. Using their personalities against them: Sadistically satisfying!

This was the first attempt at coloring, and only when I finished the drawing did I look up what collies actually look like. I have the coloring wrong! My god, if we can't trust walking, talking, clothed cartoon animals to have natural coloring... what can we believe in?

Just as I simplified my calico (Tiffany) and tabby (Sky), I'm going to have to let my inappropriate collie coloring to stand. That, or I can just not do my typical hatching in drawings to indicate shading in Bette. I guess we'll find out when I get to the comics.

Blue is gray. War is peace. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

I didn't feel like working on the strip today (maybe later) and I had this new pad of Bristol board with a small selection of colored pencils. I've been wanting to see how Sky looked with her conceived gray tabby coloring. I didn't bring any gray pencils with me; nor could I find a pencil sharpener, which further limited the options. Fuck it, light blue is good enough!

Gene was added for balance and practice. Now that I look at him, I think his hair color needs to be changed. The joke is just a bit *too* obvious at this point. I guess I can play with various hair colors... or just continue to work in ink and ignore color completely.

I'LL! (not) MELT! YOUR! BRAINS!

In reply to my decision to go cute wizard in the previous post:



Awwwwwwwww!

(I'll maim him again soon. Don't worry.)

I'm a Wizard Wizard a Wizard Wizard a Wizard MAN!

This is example of a sketch done just so I could use a silly post title. (Which I have likely misquoted.) Due to time constraints, I went with a nice wizard instead of the "electricity shoots from my finger - NAILS!" and Jacob-melting type of wizard. In hindsight, this entire concept wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped.

Edit: Fixed the headline with help of YouTube. One wizard was out of place. I hate when that happens!

Enjoy:

Webcam Supervillains

Ok, so it's not quite a scanner, but I can still capture the bigger drawings in recognizable fashion. That's all I need, baby.

Following the lead of Doctor Oven, here are the other two initial sketches for Autumn and Tiffany's villain identities.




Autumn is... The Scarlet A! Originally, I wanted to turn her mask into an A-shape, but that did not prove feasible when dealing with big cartoon eyes. I also stuck an A on her forehead at first, but decided the "joke" behind two A's appearing on her outfit even though her name implies "The...A" was far too weak. Overall, the joke with this outfit is Autumn's woeful naming ability. Not only does her identity unintentionally label her as an adulterer, but she also named the "Super Villain Union" - or SVU. There's not another well-known SVU, is there? (Something about victims?) Visually, I'm not sure what sort of pizazz to add to her outfit. I was tempted to put her in a catsuit look that all evil chick villains seem to get, but that is for foxy ladies...not fox girls.



Tiffany, the Chaotic Butterfly, has once again confused "evil" with "adorable" - something I tend to do, myself. Originally she was going to have tiny unambitious wings - but, like bows on Dionne's pageant outfit, they would not be visible from standard comic angles.

Do you see the mistake in this drawing? I'll wait while you guess. Or read ahead to the next sentence. Yes, Tiffany is too tall! This is a mistake I do a lot. See, Autumn's dress ends at her knees; so I grow accustomed to drawing girl legs from the knee down. Tiffany's dress goes *beyond* the knees. If I'm not paying attention, I just do the Autumn treatment for Tiffany and give her a second pair of kneecaps. I mean, the girl's an oddball, but it's more brain wiring than Tick-level villainous genetic absurdity. Tiffany's tendency to have her tail wrapped in front of her legs only makes things worse, as I want to leave enough space to keep the legs and feet well defined. Why do all my little touches in characterization undermine my drawing ability?

Mothers Day

Ok, so technically that day has passed and Fathers Day is closer. Whatevs - I hope to have the daddy sketches ready for display soon enough.

Continuing to share sketches of the Precocious Cast, I offer the two main moms yet to appear on the blog. They also happen to be the last two characters that appear in the first arc of the comic strip. While the first arc is all about the Poppinstock kids, a cross-neighborhood epic tale invariably passes through the homes of our players. As three of the four houses are fairly hetero-normative - with the husband out working and the wife at home - it's the mommies that play the parental roles in this case.

Granted, these women don't always enjoy the housewife role. Ivy Pingo is "between jobs" and refuses to say that keeping the home from disrepair is a valid career option. (Don't glare at me, housewives of the world, that's *Ivy's* cognitive dissonance there!)

Deirdre Linkletter, however, is the natural homemaker. She cooks, cleans, organizes, enjoys charity work and is active with the PTA - all the wonderful mommy stuff. Even better, she does it with cheerful and bubbly innoncence. This is not your typical bored housewife harpy trying to grab any power she can. Deirdre is a sweetheart despite working in a realm where sticks up one's rear are common. It's so improbable; she might just be a robot.

Sky Et is the other true stay-at-home mom. Unlike Deirdre, Sky never saw her life taking this path. She was going to be a biologist... maybe a doctor... cure cancer... do awesome science stuff! Then she got knocked up. Ok, that's fine too! The former free spirit now has five children (aged 9, 6, 4 and a double-dose of terrible 2's) and spends her time wrangling brats.

Let's put it this way: At a PTA meeting, Deirdre can effortlessly maneuver through the egos and bureaucracy to get things done. Sky would sit to the side, make sarcastic remarks and sip from the flask she sneaked in. (If you're wondering about the other moms: Ivy would only attend if someone else volunteered to drive. Yes, the school *is* within walking distance. Sydney Oven would send a check to fulfill her obligation.)

Here's another set of sketches I did last night. Like my constant botching of Tiffany's details, I forgot to color the tip of Sky's tail. Deirdre is also a bit thin, but who doesn't want *that* bank error in their favor?

CHARACTER BOMB!

I've yanked a bunch of sketches out of my sketchbook. Enjoy.



First up is a Bud Oven progression. The most notable thing here is that flipping the image horizontally made everything look really messed up. Behold the mysteries or art, composition and the human brain!



Next is a shot of our gals, just 'cause. Autumn is concerned, while Tiffany seems awfully cheery considering her dress' smiley face is gone.



This is the first image of Quincy Wozwax to make it online since the itty bitty class roster posted months and months ago. As he is the token super nerd, he is wearing a Flash shirt. (Or, to go with current events, a lightning bolt from Mario Kart!) Quincy won't be making an appearance in the strip as anything more than a background character for a long time (and, yes, I've already scripted it despite it being at least a year down the road) but it's always fun to share class members.

Unlike Quincy, Suzette Grady is a regular character in Precocious. She's the militant one who always has something to be angry about - be it feminism, class warfare or being excluded from whatever group is relevant. It's always fun when Suzette shows up! What really makes me love Suzette, however, is that she is by FAR the easiest character to draw! Considering my artistic aspiration for the strip, it's a nice change of pace to have something simple to draw. The biggest challenge with Suzette is the bell on the collar she wears around her neck. (To symbolize the discrimination she feels she faces constant in everyday life.)



Because these things haunt me, I want to correct something I said below. When I mentioned Dionne is a character that changes her clothes, that wasn't entirely the case. Like most cartoon characters, Dionne has her default outfit she wears on most occasions - which is pictured above. She is just more likely than the others to change clothes when the need arises. In the first story arc, Dionne wears three outfits, which makes this nascent cartoonist sad. Of course, Bud and Autumn change their clothes during the arc too, so maybe I just like pain.

Contrition

"Was that wrong? Should we not have done that?"

I have to pry myself away from Mario Kart (I've unlocked everything!!) and get back to work! It's about time to get back to producing strips again and it's very scary.

To keep this blog moving along, it's time to share more sketches. Here we have Autumn, Bud and Tiffany (whose left ear isn't properly shaded) getting in trouble. We go from "I'm very sorry," to "I am shocked at this accusation," to "That was wrong? Huh?" Why I didn't draw a sorry Jacob - the only one of them who genuinely feels sorry in these situations - is beyond me. Oh well.