Recently, I signed up to the nifty freelancing site UpWork to give myself a broader range of opportunities to do interesting projects - and boy, has it paid off! This is my first big project from the site: a full-colour, 10 page, one-of-a-kind comic book story created for the partner of the client, whose impending birthday demanded a very special gift indeed. Their instructions were simple - create characters based around the pet names he and his girlfriend have for one another, write a story combining a few 'in-jokes' related to their relationship thus far, and have a couple of real-world locations (Boston and Maine) thrown into the mix. Beyond that, I could do whatever my twisted little psyche desired! It was very interesting to do a complete comic story that had nothing to do with my other series - The Fight Squad and Cosmos, although I couldn't resist sticking a couple of sneaky cameos, just for the fun of it - and add a pair of completely new characters to my roster; ones who I would glaldy work with again, if there was the chance of a sequel....
1) The front cover, featuring a simply awful pun for a title and a very nice vector art 'topographic map' background. 'Shovelmouth' and 'Cuddlemonster', of course, are the aforementioned pet names I mentioned earlier....
2) See the little green plushie sitting up on the shelf in that first panel? Yep, that's one of my little friends from Cosmos. Shameless, aren't I?
3) My research for this comic included getting reference images of some of the (very lovely) red brick buildings in the south end of Boston, where the lucky recipient of this comic lives. Although the story is only in Boston for the first few pages, I wanted to make sure I at least made the place look vaguely right. And also on this page is the first of the 'must-have' plot points I was instructed to include: that Cuddlemonster, at some point, runs around looking for her keys....
4) Since the first panel on this page features a street scene, I needed to have some background characters on the footpath - which gave me a chance to stick in a few more unofficial 'guest stars'. At far left is Hector Catt, from my sci-fi series New Century Starship Synergy; on the opposite side of the tree is Tony Corvell from Cosmos; and hovering next to the 'sale!' sign on the right is another character from Synergy, a Venusian. I'm not sure who the dinosaur in the sweater is, but I'm sure he'll get a name someday....
5) / 6) The real-world equivalents of Shovelmouth and Cuddlemonster occasionally go vacationing in the forests of Maine, so that became the main thrust of the story; as there were all sorts of crazy hijinks they could get up to..... including, apparently, the incredibly ill-advised sport of 'moose racing'
(quite possibly the funniest comic panel I have ever done).
(quite possibly the funniest comic panel I have ever done).
7) / 8) Here we meet the second 'must have' plot point of the story - Shovelmouth (living up to his name) had to eat an inadvisable amount of junk food, and suffer the consequences. Since the big deal eaterie in Boston is the eponymous 'Tasty Burger', and my client loves eating there, it was suggested that this be the source of Shovelmouth's feast. Works for me.
9) / 10) Well, it wouldn't be a Jon Kay story without some kind of slavering monster gumming up the works - and since we're in Maine, what better creature the world-famous Bigfoot (and his plucky raccoon pal)?
11) The most time-consuming part of this project was definitely pencilling, and then inking, and then colouring, the forested lansdcapes of Maine - being an OCD perfectionist, everything had to look like a plausible forest environment should, with canopy trees, shrubs and bushes, grasses and herbs; all laid out in correct proportions and distributions, to say nothing of making sure there were the right number of this species in this location, fewer of this species deeper in the forest versus at the edge of the forest..... Yehh, I don't get out much.
12) The back cover of the comic - Cuddlemonster's enthusiastic 'Shenanigans!' comes from one of my class mates from design school (you know who you are), who used that exclamation to refer to any fun / exciting / crazy activity we were about to get up to. Since that is exactly what happens in this story, I thought it was more than appropriate to, well, appropriate it....
