Hard-Boyled Hanna-Barbera, Part 2: The Impossibles

 Another one of my favorite Hanna-Barbera shows was a trio of superheroes called The Impossibles. These guys were rock n roll hearthrobs who also happened to secretly be super-powered crime-fighters. So life was pretty much just awesome for them 24/7. They were the coolest.

 So, as I started taking a really good look at these designs, I realized that they must've spent all of five minutes on these costumes. They're painfully generic. Being that they're 1960's rock stars, they should have been super-cool & mod, but apparently their stylist wasn't available when they chose their costumes. And a lot of it doesn't even make sense. Why does Coil Man have a shark fin on his head? If anyone, Fluid Man should have a shark fin. Coil man is bouncy, there's nothing shark-like about him. I don't get it. And why the hell is Multi Man wearing pointy elf boots?? Did he used to work at the North Pole? So as I started sketching out ideas for these guys, I made a few costume changes while still trying to remain faithful to the feel of original designs. Multi Man's elf boots were the first to go. I kept the rest of him pretty much the same, just made his gloves make more sense with the rest of his costume. And I played up his shaggy ginger awkwardness. I made Fluid Man a little cooler, got rid of his beer belly & slimmed him up a bit, and gave him and actual superhero costume as opposed to just a boring olive green wetsuit with an big F on it. And Coil Man...okayyy, I reluctantly kept the fin and just rounded it out a little. In fact I rounded him out overall, so he looks like a chubby guy in tights would look like, while still managing to be heroic. Here's the finished product, hope you guys like them as much as I do.

The blueline sketch:

And the color rough:

One of these days I swear I'll have time to post some actual finished art...

Hard-Boyled Hanna-Barbera, Part 1: Fangface

Inspired by Paigey's recent roller-derby X-Men, and Gris Grimly's "grimlified" cartoons, I've decided to try my hand at re-designing the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters that I grew up with and loved as a kid. First up is Fangface. I've always had a thing for monsters, especially werewolves. (Still do!) A Saturday morning cartoon starring a goofy-looking kid (I could relate) who turns into a werewolf that fights monsters and solves mysteries, that was pretty much as good as it gets for 10-year-old me.

I even had this board game (check out that car!):

So Fangface seems like the best place to start. I just streamlined him a bit and put a little bit of my personal style into him. I gave him 2 little bottom fangs, like any respectable werewolf should have, and really pushed his mouth and made it this big silly slobbery thing. And I got rid of those Groucho Marx Eyebrows, but still tried to keep him ferocious-yet-silly. Overall, I'm really happy with him and can't wait to do the next one (I'm totally open to suggestions, by the way!). Hope you guys like it!

Here's my blueline sketch:

And here's the big furry guy in color:

Larry Potter

Here's the story: My girlfriend and I were watching The Deathly Hallows, Part 2, and during a conversation she slipped & called Harry LARRY POTTER by mistake. And since I have the sense of humor of a 10-year-old, I find slips-of-the-tongue like that hilarious. And so this spawned a lot of jokes speculating about who Larry Potter is, anyway? We decided he's Harry's ne'er-do-well younger brother, who's always screwing things up for Harry and didn't quite make the grade at Hogwart's. So just for laughs, I did this quick sketch of him, and thought I'd share it with you guys:

Zombie Pirate Pete

So, I've been posting lots of character designs on this blog, but something I haven't really posted yet are facial expressions. So let's start with Zombie Pirate Pete. ZPP is one of the adult characters from my animated show idea that I've been talking about, "Witchamazoo". He lives in a cave off the shore that's filled with piles & piles of "treasure" of virtually anything imaginable. So he's the guy the kids in Witchamazoo come to when they need any kind of bangle, bauble, or trinket. The trouble is, he has no short-term memory. So every time the kids visit ZPP they have to remind him that they're his friends and they're not there to steal his treasure. They only have a few seconds after they convince him before his memory fades and they have to start all over again. (Imagine if "Memento" was a comedy.) So as his memory & mood shifts so do his facial expressions. So I roughed out a few that would happen during the course of an average conversation.

Here are some blue line sketches of a few facial expressions from our befuddled buccaneer:

Cleaned-up black line roughs:

Color roughs:
And color roughs with color line art:

Who's Who in Witchamazoo

 About this time last year I introduced you to Mikey the Wolfboy, one of the characters from a pitch I'm developing for a children's animated tv show called "Witchamazoo". What is "Witchamazoo"? Well, if you took "Strawberry Shortcake", Lauren Faust's "My Little Pony", and Disney's "Recess", and mixed them all together and poured it into a land inhabited by friendly monsters, that gives you an idea of what the show is all about. But this post isn't about the show itself, it's about the designs.

 This is the main cast of characters from the show. (from left to right: Marrina (a gossipy gyspy girl), Ermagard (an earthy witch girl), Tad (an athletic fish boy), Alex (a vegetarian vampire boy), Mikey (an adorable werewolf boy), and Basil (an awkward man-made boy).
Here they are in blue line cleanups:

Converted into black line art, feet lined up, prepped for coloring:

Color roughs:

Color roughs with color line art:

  As you can see, Mikey underwent some minor design changes since last year's post, as did the rest of the cast. More on that, and the evolution of Witchamazoo, in my next post...

Even Zombies Have Gestures

Alec Stevens, one of my instructors at the Joe Kubert School, use to stress the importance of gesture drawings. Capturing the essence of the pose in its most simple form. At the time, I was a perfectionist, holding my pencil in a death grip and drawing every line with a concentrated purpose. I did very little sketching, and even when I did, I would never ever show these "imperfect" drawings to anyone without a lot of internal pain & embarrassment. As much as I tried, I could just never loosen up to do some decent gestures. Not even in life drawing class. Thanks to Alec pushing me, his lessons stuck with me over the years, even today. I'm a much different artist now than I was then. Gesture drawings are the beginning of every great pose I've ever done. And cartoon zombies are no exception! I'm working on a project for a friend that I can't discuss at this point. But I can tell you that I'm drawing cartoon zombies. As I'm fleshing out some of the zombies, I wanted to share a couple of gesture drawings with you. Why? Because I rarely show anyone these early-stage sketches, and because I wanted to say THANK YOU, ALEC STEVENS.

Sug-ARRRRR Me Timbers!

I know it's taken a bit longer than expected to unveil the winners of the "Design Your Own Breakfast Monkey Villain" contest. But now that it's finally almost time, I thought I'd lead into it by showing you a few BMonkey villains that you haven't seen yet. Beginning with CAP'N ROTTENMOUTH. Cap'n Rottenmouth happened when a girl I was dating did the WORST pirate impression I'd ever heard. It came out sounding more like half pirate/half leprechaun. It made me and Gerard laugh so hard that it became a running joke between us, and we decided that he needed to be a BMonkey character. But the question was, what do we do with a leprechaun pirate? Well, we know that Crazy Boy is addicted to sugary cereal, and the sugary-est cereal we could think of Cap'n Crunch, who's kind of a pirate-like character. So the leprechaun pirate became our Cap'n Crunch. He'd be the mascot of Crazy Boy's favorite cereal, "sailing the seas of cavities" as he rotted the teeth and minds of not just Crazy Boy, but of cereal-loving children everywhere. So here's my updated design of that character. What we have is a bearded red-headed midget with messed-up teeth, wearing a green pirate outfit and carrying a shillelagh. The hat is an obvious nod to Cap'n Crunch. As always, here's the color rough and the uncolored blue line clean-up.

 

COMING UP NEXT: The Breakfast Monkey's  arch-nemesis, COLONEL SUPPER! Stayed tuned!