Clicking and Clacking

Draws a homicidal cartoon cat guy, also cries about a ball of trash

So it is that I now talk about Carl Bastard, a side project I’ve lovingly imprisoned in the dungeon for probably six years now. It’s a celebration of action movies, more than anything, but I’m putting a few spins on the idea to make it more fun to look at, and of course, more fun to draw!

Alright, here’s a good little spread of the guy. watch out, he’s NEKKID!!

I’ve been drawing this guy for years, but my dumb ass has never established a model for him. So, being the professional working artist that I am, I thought it prudent to put the most pressing information about drawing this guy on a spread. It was fun! And, of course, I learned some pretty important stuff about him as well.

I swear, every time I pick up a pen I learn something. That’s the BEST thing about this.

There’s also a model for a few short action sequence comics that I want to do. The first one I want to work on is set in the 1960s. That’s one of the fun things about Carl Bastard, all of the different settings I’m gonna play around in, but more on that later.

I just love the aesthetic contrast of that chunky adorable shoe with the snub nosed .38 holstered right above.

Carl’s a pretty husky big guy, you know, so I figured he would go for a loose-fitting bowling polo when it comes to mod-leisure wear, and his classic-fit pants will not be pressed or ironed. And, expecting mischief to strike at any moment, he rocks his fresh Oxford athletics. His enemies in this case are loyal muscle working for a thuggy casino magnate, so they’re going to dress in more fancy-like clothes, but short sleeves, since it’s a pretty hot day.

What will they get up to? I can tell you that every character in this short comic is armed, so that should give you a hint. It’s gonna be fun.

One more thing:

I’m working on making the guns and cars and other tools in this series look kind of toylike. More chunky, fun, and like they’d be satisfying to use, accompanied with nice, shklunky sound effects. It’s part of the aesthetic, I’m inspired in this by the Metal Slug aesthetic and Akira Toriyama’s car designs, among many others. As far as I can tell it’s kind of an 80’s anime thing. I talked more about that in a previous newsletter.

But it’s hard! You can see me struggling with it here. It’s both a perspective challenge, and a style drawing challenge. The first drawing, top left, looks closest to what I’m going for because it’s based on an image straight out of my very favorite reference book for drawing guns. There’s only that flat side angle in the book, so obviously I had to visualize it in 3d using my imagination. That’s a hard thing to do, and it takes practice, and that’s part of what you see here. Some work, some don’t but all build towards me understanding missteps and getting closer to achieving the goal.

I think that I could probably find 3D imaging resources to help out here, but I want desperately to strengthen my visual library. So that’s what I’ll do, damn it!

It will take a lot of pages like this to get where I want to, but It’s fun and I think interesting to look at the process, so I’m officially inviting you on that journey!

PS: some of the scans came in kinda blurry because I’m drawing everything you see here in a cool bound bristol book. Got to try and keep the drawings away from the gutter in the future.

I’ll be filling this sucker with Carl Bastard drawings, studies, references, whatever! It’ll look really cool when I’m done and be a useful tool when I get to the real production steps.

Extra: Some Reading

I have never been moved to weep by a piece of writing before. I felt violated, how could you do this to me, Ken??

The title story, to be specific. It’s short but the emotions that I felt while reading it were so violent that the closing paragraph left me choking back tears of… What? Was I sad? Was I happy? Was I just having a weird day? I guess you should read it and make that call yourself.

It’s a fantastic anthology altogether with themes of the mundane mixed in with subtle supernatural and sci-fi elements. I wholeheartedly recommend that you pick up a copy of the paperback for yourself! You will love it.

That’s it! Did you like it? Did you hate it? Do you want to hate-read more of my newsletters? Sign up if so! Get a fresh delivery every Wednesday!