sketchbook: absinthe (1/3)

[egypturnash]

The past week or so, Nick and I have been kicking around some ideas for a comic based around a few drawings I did a while back. I want to do something I don't have to worry about getting right, the way I do with the ever-pushed-back Drowning City. I want to be able to just throw out a page here, a page there, without worrying about it not living up to what it neeeeeds to be, because it's just going to be fun, pulpy, naughty stuff.

I've got a sketchbook half-filled with designs and narrative fragments now. Stylistically, this story will owe a giant debt to one of the major things I learnt from John K: how to merge dramatically disparate styles and urges together. It's set in a world inspired by a few M.C. Escher drawings and a bunch of Roger Dean's album covers. The female lead is a narcissistic, thieving raccoon who tends to drift into being drawn scratchily. The male lead is... a paladinic cop, slightly inspired by Sam Tyler from "Life on Mars". As played by Huckleberry Hound. There's queerness and gender-weirdness and air pirates and governments going awry, there's humans and furries mixing with complete casualness, there's bottled grandmothers. It'll be pretty surreal, if I get off my ass and start drawing. Also definitely adults-only. A prog-rock Barbarella crime caper story.

First I gotta get some paid work stuff done, and maybe finish off another spider drawing, though!

Anyway, here's a chunk of sketchbook excerpts of me and Nick batting it back and forth. This is a lot of it but there's a lot you're not seeing, either - this just gives you a hint. There're pages full of text with Plot, stuff cropped out of these scans, and so on.


This girl is sort of taking off of bunnythe13th's art. Some time after I drew her, we decided that she fills the role of the Thug, who is a minion of the Powerful, Large Man. Yes, we're treating this partially as a film noir.



I'd done some doodles on loose paper of the Inspector a few days earlier. Here I am trying to remember what I did so I could show the idea to Nick.







Back to the female lead. Her working name is Absinthe.




She may fill the role of "thug" but she's got some interesting things going too.


Back to the Inspector.





Playing with the thug again.


"Too fat" applies mostly to the face.





Back to Absinthe and some of her motivations.




[ REDACTED ]

Comments

[zenmouse.livejournal.com]

Mad inspector is so cute!

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Ain't he just? But my favorite is still him in the scarf, lookin' all casual and happy -- undoubtedly one scene before all hell breaks loose. :)

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Seem to be a few broken, love...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Actually, there are a few that weren't uploaded because they're all-text and would give too much away. I forgot to make the holes in the numeric sequence. I'll fix that.

[grrrowly.livejournal.com]

I've really been digging your art lately! So many fun sketches :)

[robocoon.livejournal.com]

I can't get enough of The Inspector's HEAD. He reminds me of Achewood.

[merrycalliope.livejournal.com]

I loves me some thug. ^_^

Looks really interesting! Everyone must be getting spring fever...I've been seeing folks all over my flist starting up new projects!

Yarrr!

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

I apprrove Pirrates!

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I hardly like to mention it, but isn't this kind of a gendercrossed Sly Cooper?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

'Raccoon steals things' does have a bit of that, doesn't it. Especially when there's romance with the Law. The similarities end about there, though...

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

If you'd sat in on the brainstorming sessions, you'd accuse us more of making a furry version of À Bout de Souffle. It's pretty fucking pretentious. Of course, Sly Cooper may have been equally pretentious for all I know, having never played it. But I suspect that'd be a "no." :)

[zeeth_kyrah]

Ms. Thug looks a bit Fogliostic, like some character from Girl Genius.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when I'm lazy and draw people straight out of my head, they tend to expose my Phil Foglio influence. I ate up everything of his I found at one point, and still have a soft spot for his work.