Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! What, it's still Christmas week, right? And there are still some cookies left. So it's still Christmas in my book. So have a scene of festive and ornamental adventure for the occasion! From my webcomic, The Wayward Queen!

Sketchy Sunday: Snowy Owl

Whee, it's snowing in time for Christmas! So sketches of snowy owls might be appropriate, no? This guy was stalking around on big fuzzy feet on a log at a raptor rescue center. I think he was somewhat outside the usual range for snowy owls. (These were done in the same session as the owl series I posted earlier... So yeah, sketched several years ago. Still cute, though.)

Character Development Special: The Singlebeeste

The Singlebeeste, currently wreaking havoc in my webcomic "The Wayward Queen", is so named because there is only one of it. And one is enough. This tenacious creature has a bottomless appetite, and can be found raiding kitchens, larders, and pantries wherever food is left unguarded. Once installed in a kitchen, it can be quite difficult to remove.

Yes, those are totally ear-wings. Yep, like Dumbo. Six limbs seemed strange, so I figured "hey, why not evolve ear-wings?" aaaand... yeah. This happened.

The Singlebeeste is another character with a rather long history. Like the Queen and Vitalia, it goes back to an earlier story I dabbled with as a sophomore in college. In its earliest form, it was a rather vague camel-like creature (actually, it changed every week, but the camel-form is all I have records of.) Here's an ancient tiny doodle, and some early comic pages from a short-lived comic based on the early story (yes, Vitalia was pretty obnoxious back then.) (And a princess.) The Singlebeeste was originally "tamed" by the then Princess Vitalia, and became sort of a companion and mount... How and why it was tamed never really made sense, but most of that story made no sense anyway.

Later, when I started developing the Wayward Queen around 2005-2006, the Singlebeeste happened to fit nicely into the plot, so I added it in. And redesigned it completely. Here's some of the development doodles for the current Singlebeeste... It seems to have changed from a winged-camel-thing to some sort of horned-dog-bear with ear wings... I'm not sure which version is more goofy and implausible, but this one's cuter.

And somewhere along the line I toyed with the idea of having Vitalia ride around on the thing again... Unfortunately this doesn't seem to fit the current plot. But I reserve the right to make it happen sometime, somewhere! Because, this scenario is too cute:

Character Development Special: Slope and Mrs. Bailiwick-Stout

Time for another Character Development Special! This is Slope, the Royal Publicity Manager, and Mrs. Cornelia Bailiwick-Stout, head of the QPC (Queen Preservation Committee.) Both of them made their first official appearance on page ten of The Wayward Queen. The QPC is ostensibly dedicated to preserving the Queen’s safety, but their real agenda is to prevent the Queen from wandering, concerned that she endangers herself and the stability of the realm by continually straying from the palace. Their efforts have so far had no effect whatever. Slope is in agreement with the Queen that government ought to be entertaining. Between them they probably present a considerable hazard to the good management of the realm.

Slope goes back pretty far, to the very first story featuring the Queen... The first two doodles are from waaaay back (the mini color cut-out Slope was part of a set I made to track the cast of the old story.) The weird hat and rotund figure made an appearance early on. The other doodles were ideas I was knocking around while developing the plot for The Wayward Queen. In the end, Slope ended up being based pretty heavily on a guy who used to run a local business in my 'hood - the dude had a way of looking totally mellow and unfazed no matter what chaos was going on round him. I thought that was perfect for Slope. The last sketch in this bunch was the first official version of Slope, which I used when I started drawing the comic. I've changed his outfit since then, but for Chapter One he's wearing the old outfit, obviously. (I don't think he'll have an opportunity to change before Chapter Two.)

Mrs. Cornelia Bailiwick-Stout was one of those rare cases where I pretty much drew one doodle and said "yeah, that's it." (Granted, this was back in 2006 when I had a more slap-happy approach to development - nowadays I would probably do a few more doodles just to be sure.) So here's doodle #1 and the first official version based on that. She hasn't changed much.

Figure Friday: Final Life Studies for "Moving Target"

All right, we had the unused life studies for my "Moving Target" cover back in this post and this post, so here's the later studies that were actually used for the final cover. And if you want to compare, the finished cover and progress shots were posted here. (Ha, yes, I did totally wing it on the smallest figure. Yep. No studies for him!)

Figure Friday: Unused Life Studies for "Moving Target"

Here's a batch of life studies I did for my "Moving Target" cover... These are the older studies based on the first round of sketches. Those sketches were later supplanted by a totally revised composition, so none of these poses ended up being used in the final painting... But I thought it would be neat to show the process anyway! I'll post the studies for the final poses later.