Character Style Sheet

To help out people who will be submitting to Northcod Residential, I made up a quick Lancaster character style guide to show some of the basic parts I use for making a Lancaster character.

Like any other cartoon or comic, every character is made up of a collection of simple shapes. These shapes make the character easy to draw from different angles and in different poses, too!

So now that you've got a basic idea of how a character from Lancaster's world is put together, go check out the guidelines for Northcod Residential and think about what character you want to make!

Lancaster goes to Print!

One thing I always knew I wanted to do if I ever printed Lancaster was to redo all of the art and the story as well. Lancaster started out as more of a 'let's see if I can actually do this' sort of thing, so a lot of the early story is really loose. Also, and not to sound conceited here or anything, my art has really improved over the two years that I've done Lancaster. So much so that it almost hurts to see some of the older pages.

Here are three pages from Episode 3 - Hotel H-E-Double-Hockeysticks. Lancaster arrives at Angston Suites and has to deal with Frank Nurd, the surly bellhop. I originally had Frank play a bigger role in the story, but I think 4 antagonists would have been too much for one story, so Frank just played a bit part.

And here is the same sequence as it will appear in print. Admittedly, the art didn't improve much. In my defense though, the entire first part had to be done in a week. The bell joke remained (come on, who can't resist a desk bell?), but a lot of the dialogue was tightened up, and Frank, as a character is a lot more fleshed out than before. In the first strip, he just seems kind of grumpy. In the new one, it's a lot easier to tell he just plain hates his job, but the only reason he hasn't been fired is he's Hoyton's nephew.

Sorry I can't show you folks more, but if I did, you probably wouldn't be inclined to pick up Furrlough #162 to see the rest! It should be at your local comic book store within the next week or so, or you can order it when it pops up in the Radio Comix Online Store. If you're feeling particularly saucy, pick up Hit the Beach #13 for some more art by me. Non-Lancaster this time, but who knows what the future brings?

Of Goats and Pandas

Terrance was one of the characters I spent the longest working on before I finally started his story. Initially I didn't plan to take Terrance into Episode 8, but so many people really liked Terry, so I decided to alter the plot a bit to include him. Hey, he may even find some use beyond Episode 8 as well. As you can see, his design has changed a whole lot. Even earlier designs have him way chubbier, too. Here Terrance is pictured with an early version of Lowe the gravedigger, who will show up in Episode 9.

Here is another early version of Terrance alongside some early versions of Gorton. He started out being more grunge than goth, but that wasn't what I was going for. I altered his design a bit, and as you can see in the middle, made him one of the shorter members of the cast. This gives you an idea of how long Terry was in development; I was working on him even before Episode 5 started.

Surely by now you've heard that Lancaster is being thrust, kicking and screaming into the print dimension via Radio Comix. Since the earlier pages have a lot of really bad art(and some good ones! don't get me wrong!), and because I've wanted to change a few story ideas without any kind of retconning, I'm redrawing the whole story from scratch.

Lancaster is being serialized into Radio Comix's 'Furrlough' magazine, and though the issue of Lancaster's debut is about to hit the stands, that's not gonna stop me from showing off some of the pages a bit early. Be back here tomorrow to see a few side-by-side comparisons of the original pages with the new ones to give you an idea of what to expect.