My little girl rollerblading in the house

Bedtime Comic

This one was last night, Ethan said we should start with a submarine and go from there....
The Hammer Head monster turns out to be less of a threat than we first thought.

bedtime 2

Another little half hour bedtime Comic with the kids. We Saw "Despicable Me 2" so we all have Minions on the brain!

Page 10, Cosmo's Apples

The Final Page!

Thanks for reading my early attempt at story telling.  I hope you enjoyed it.

Originally I had the troll stand up greet the children.  In this version he looked more like a monster than a magical creature the kids could appreciate.  So I reshuffled the panels again and created a seated Troll instead. I brought back the idea of Cosmo's Apples as a closure with Lady Ellis and tried to imply that the apples were a result of Cosmo's friendship with the Troll and the Trolls connection with nature.

    

Nasty Little Rabbit!

Practice in inks and trying to put more story into a piece.  Looking at "the Bean" and Travis Hansen .
I really like his craftsmanship and themes in his work, very playful and great illustrations.
In this piece both dragon and little boy are nervous about the dangers that are hidden in the woods...not that they would have much to worry about from the nasty little rabbit....need to work on black placement...didn't get the dragon's face to pop enough....used a custom brush on the leaves and some to the dragon scales.

One more before bed.

 Struggling with a duck character I have been working on. The kids have voted and given me their favorite.

Minion fish

 Four panels at bedtime with the kids, instead of a bedtime story.   Very fun, and good practice!  They chose the topic and we all worked together.

Page 9, Cosmo's Apples

Please come back next Monday for the final page of Cosmo's Apples!
And the Troll was near beside you the whole time.
After looking at the whole story I needed to add this page to tell Lady Ellis's story from the Troll' point of view. I tried to wrap up the story in the last two pages and which may be rushed.  We see how the troll's story was a misunderstanding, trying to reinforce the idea of patience and understanding for children. The thumbnails come easier with a clearer idea of what I want the panels to say.  I am still not writing a script at this point and I did not have dialog either...Next time I will  take the story to this level and add dialog before and final inking, digital or not.  Sounds obvious, but what is good as a principle is not always as easy in practice.

 

Bad Kitty

He is always in the shadows ready to pounce just when all seems to be going well.  He enjoys the attack, the chase and the end, the spoiler, the fly in your milk.  I don't have a name for him yet,  but he will be the fear in my hero's eyes and the reason for the chase.  Still to come are the back stories and a few more characters....

Gruff Character Study

Worked on this character last night, these are more like the original character sketches done with the kids. I am wondering if this guy looks to old and grumpy...instead of more puppy and floppy as last night...I still need to put more of a back story to this guy.  Gruff is a good guy who will be the helpful muscle for my little lost mice in the story.  I need him to be kind but also a tougher side when challenged...more to come

Struggling

Struggling tonight with this character... Tried  to simplify shapes but not getting what I want, looking for insecure little puppy.

inks for bugze

the kids enjoyed feeding little Bugze

Page 8. Cosmo's Apples

Please come back next Monday for page 9!
The kids decide they have been watching Cosmo long enough, time to find out what he knows about the forest Troll....

Originally the confrontation was the primary focus of the page.  Looking at the story in sequence I decided to again bring more a focus on what the kids were thinking.  So I added more panels with the kids perspective. I have to find a good balance between the thumbnails and script.  I really like to put the visuals together first, sketching key shots, but need to refine a script and dialog in tandem. This is something I really need to work on.

 

Swoop

 A few more sketches with different Views and expressions.

Character Study, help

      Before bed working on a older story I never finished.   Its about a mouse and a hawk helping each other...Any suggestions,or good examples of,character development or of back-story character sheets would be appreciated! After my last story, I am really trying to improve my characters prior to flushing out details of my story.
http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/tagged/design   this was a great reference article. I am Looking for more like this,  or examples of how others do this differently.
How much detail do you put into characters, and how do you format or use that reference?
Thanks

One missed click to save her!

Working on my trusted tablet tonight... had a nice thing going. .. She was a beautiful little Sketch.... the one that got away.

Page 7, Cosmo's Apples

Please come back next Monday for page 8!
So many friends in the forest....
This page was one of the early pages made.  I liked the idea of forest animals visiting the children as they were supposed to be watching Cosmo.  These faces and characters drove other pages out of sequence and forced me to backtrack and add earlier pages leading to this scene.  Again, I should have spent less time on the finished images and more time in the thumbnail phase. Focus on story refinements and preliminary dialog before getting into inking....also a few character pages at this point were needed to lock in the character's appearances.  I found that even in this short story I had trouble keeping faces, body shapes or clothing looking consistent.

Who lives here?

Anyone faced 2nd and 4th grade classes?  Drawing or teaching? Any ideas on lessons that last less than 15 min. and can engage 20 to 30 students?  Please let me know.

 Thinking about some sketch pages that ask kids to think about character sketches and storytelling in a fun way.  I am taking environment thumbnails and asking the class to add story and character designs and explain how they are related.
I want to show sketching techniques as well as get them thinking about story.....