Once I had decided to create a cartoon strip I had a new problem. How? Suddenly I needed characters and a setting and a style and all of these had to amount to something a syndicate would want to sell to newspapers.
Idea #1: Dylan and Druff, a comic strip set in the present day about a boy (very much like Calvin) and his imaginary dragon (very much like Hobbes). Original huh? Well, you gotta start somewhere and since I have been such a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes I made a strip that essentially mirrored it. It was obvious to all my friends that this was a direct rip-off and they let me know it.
Idea #2: Take idea number one and move it into a medieval/fantasy time. Now Druff could be a real dragon thus removing the correlation to Hobbes. Dylan, the little boy, could be an apprentice wizard. When he transmogrified it was real! A couple problems with this idea too. First, I was competing with Harry Potter, Sabrina and the whole pagentry of children wizards and witches. Frankly it has been done to death. The second problem was that it was still to reminicent of Calvin and Hobbes.
Idea #3: My wife, Melitta, suggest ditching the kid and introducing Gunchello, one of the characters from my old college strip, Lint Man. I was hesitant. A short, old man as the star of a comic strip? What about youth and beauty and all those other things that sell products? Who's gonna buy a strip about an old man? Well, I worked with it and before I knew it I was in love with him. So now I had it, Gunchello and Druff, the dynamic duo.
Another favorite cartoon strip of mine was Bloom County. One of the best parts of that strip was the big cast of characters. With a bigger cast, they could undertake all manner of interactions without having to introduce bit players. First I added Sir Baxter, the gung ho armored knight. He was modeled after a D&D character my friend Greg designed. Second, came Theo. Theo is a Monk. Honestly that's all that is known about him. The character design is great but he has yet to appear in a strip and his personality has yet to be determined.
Then came Taxman, the bureaucratic arm of the kingdom. A little bit of my politics comes through in Taxman. There aren't any flaws in government that Taxman can't embody.
Last came Princess. I knew I needed a female character but what kind was the problem. A princess seemed an obvious choice. Her personality took months to develop and ultimately she became the voice of reason for the group.
This is the part that may shock you. I spent eight months on character sheets, inking styles, and format before I drew a single cartoon strip. I was determined to have a good solid foundation to build a successful strip on. In the next segement I'll tell you what happened after I did the first couple strips.
Next Chapter - Improving the Strip
Check out Gunchello at http://www.Gunchello.com!