Coping With Fear

This was fun to do! Here’s the story by long-time colleague Jessica Yadegaran.

Open in a new window for a very large image.

This illustration was pretty much done straight from the initial rough. I tried to keep it cute –– as I often do –– but I tried to be cute in a different way. I'm trying to diversify my cartooning styles. I've been flattening things lately, leaning more toward an animation flavor rather than my Mad Magazine tendencies. Everything I do would look like a poor man's Jack Davis if I just sit back and scrawl.

Rough drawing on the left, line work and flat colors right. I made that blue guy less interesting as I went along, didn't I?

In preparation I spent time looking at lovely animation-style art on Pinterest and tried to lean on other artists’ tendencies rather than my own. I drew these character’s bodies while looking at other artists’ cute kid drawings.

In retrospect it looks like I drew my inspiration from artists who draw a little bit like me. I’ll be darned but the proportions of the final figures look almost spot on with my roughs. Oh well.

And my characters’ hands look like the kind of hands I’d draw, too. I was purposefully trying to do them differently but they looked wrong when I tried to steal their style from other artists.

Here's how it looked on the page. Ace designer Jennifer Schaeffer
always makes good-looking pages, no matter the dross I toss into hopper.

Drawn in Photoshop.