Lancaster the Sketch Blog

Retrospective: Celebrating Shilliam Snakeback's 40 Year Anniversary

2006-10-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Shilliam isn't 40 years old, it's still quite a magnificent title, don't you agree? While Shilliam hasn't had much time to shine in the comic recently (which will change very soon, I assure you), he's easily one of the most fun characters I've ever drawn and written.

These three images of Shilliam are some of the earlier images I have. In fact the one on the far left is the initial design of him. Obviously his design contniued to be altered and changed.

Some more design sketches of Shilliam. His neck got far longer, and his body got wider. You'll also notice his 'Eyes in the Back of My Head' move from the opening of episode 8.

And here we are, the most recent and final design of Shilliam. He became a lot heavier on the bottom, but his long neck stayed. This sketch shows him in comparison to Terrance, to give you a general idea of his size. Shilliam is huge, and could probably give Cyro a real run for his money.

The Magical World of Edvard Alton

2006-10-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

Edvard was one of those characters that required very little tweaking in terms of character design. His final design isn't too far removed for his initial sketches; he came out looking almost exactly like I wanted him too. Edvard is a fun little character to write and draw for. I like his nose, his big ol' ears, and especially his fun outfit. That's part of the fun of creating characters; you can draw things that you wish you could be.

For those of you who are curious, Ed was named after two people: Edvard Munch, who you should recognize as the artist who painted The Scream, and Alton Brown, host of probably the best show on television ever, Good Eats. That's a little bit of trivia for you fans out there. When I originally put Edvard into Episode 8, it was just for a short sequence. But since then the character has grown on me, and his part has grown considerably. How much? Well, you'll just have to keep reading Lancaster to find out!

2006-10-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's get this party back on track. Recently I decided to pick up a new sketch book and dedicate it solely to character, gadget and location designs for Lancaster. There's not a whole bunch in the book right now, but as time goes on there will be, and it'll get posted here. My goal is to fill at least two pages a week (which I've been really lax with so far), but I am off to a fairly decent start. Want to take a look? Of course you do!

The first page of course has to have Lancaster himself on it. I've also been drawing quite a bit of the Attached spirits recently (really sharp Ghost Detectives will also know they're A3 Classified
Self-Aware Apparitions), even though they haven't yet appeared in the comic. But they will, and in a big way, too. Mark my words.

Character Style Sheet

2006-09-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-09-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Eclipse Technicians

2006-08-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been a bit lax with the updates here, but I've been pretty busy getting things done around here(some of which involve the future of the comic!), and you know how life can be. As long as I can keep the comic going, it's all good, right? Right!

Here's a recent character design I pulled out for small background role in the Lancaster story. Secondary and background characters can be just as important as main ones, and I like having Lancaster's world filled with unique characters who, while their story may never get fleshed out, you can easily imagine one for them.

The Eclipse Tech here is a good example. For the purposes of the story, he'll have very little dialogue and won't ever do anything directly impactful to the story. But his design and what mannerisms he'll display reveal that he's a character unto himself, and that a story could easily be told from his point of view.

As the storyteller, I can control the flow of the story, which can easily make reading kind of boring and just 'something else to do'. But being able to put in these quirky characters turns the comic into a bit more of an interactive experience, and part of what makes writing and drawing Lancaster so much fun.

Rufus has butterfingers

2006-07-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

This is some cahracter art of Rufus from the end of Episode 4. Originally, Rufus was to accidentally 'drop' Belknap's jar, thus letting him escape. Instead, of course, Lancaster plasters him across the face, causing him to drop the jar. Once again, Lancaster's temper gets the better of him and causes him even more trouble.

A Lifetime of Regrets

2006-07-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Starting Monday, a new plot is going to be introduced into Lancaster the Ghost Detective. A Lifetime Of Regrets features a special story written by King Cheetah and featuring everyone's fevorite Field Agent, Illeana Mordin. Who else will be involved? Let's find out, shall we...

Jasmine - Jasmine is, if you'll pardon the pun, a jaded teenager who is still trying to find her place in the world. In her internal travel to discover herself, she's seem to fallen in with a somewhat unsavory group of folks who like to go around calling themselves 'Fitcharians'. You remember those guys, right? If not, better go back to Episode 5 and read up on those bad boys, and know they're not fooling around, and if there's one thing they hate, it's people going around claiming to be a part of their group.

Jasmine at Work - Obviously Jasmine's parents don't pay for all of her mall-borne clothes, so she has to work hard for the money. She's holding down a steady job at 'See You Next Friday' as a waitress, but that means she has to be unnaturally cheerful, which makes her really uncomfortable. Even still, she still aches for some kind of change or validation in her life, so much so that she just might end up doing something she'll regret terribly.

Illeana Mordin - Of course you all know Illeana, one of Eclipse's toppest of the tippiest Field Agents, and she's had a pretty spot-free record. Well, until the Gormothyn incident, and then of course there's that ordeal with the blind girl... Anyway, Illeana is going to have to do a bit of struggling to get back in her boss' good graces, and this may be her last chance... ever.

Rufus Steeg - Illeana's cycloptic boss, and head of the Northcod Lake branch of Eclipse has been very unsatisfied with his employees as of late. Most of the plans put into action have either been fumbled, foiled or otherwise defeated, which has casued him to start taking a more 'hands-on' approach to his projects. One of these steps is recruiting new agents, and another one of these steps invovles... more drastic persuasion methods. Rufus still has one last chance to make sure that everything goes according to plan, and Project HARVY is going to be his last shot.

??? - What would a comic about a ghost detective be without a ghost? However, this ghost is a special one, unlike any seen before in the comic. Because of this, though, you'll have to wait until later int eh comic to find out more about this one...

There's even more characters that will show up in this story, but what do you know; you'll have to keep readin Lancaster the Ghost Detective to find out more. And don't forget, A Lifetime Of Regrets begins this monday!

Early Lancaster Pages

2006-07-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

You'd be surprised at some of the things you can find in the bottom of a pile of miscellaneous papers....

This is a page from the very second Lancaster comic ever, which was more serious than the first attempt, and was only five pages long. Some ghosts stay around because they hunger for revenge. Other ghosts stay around because they simply... hunger.

I didn't think I could ever do long, winding storylines, so the original idea for Lancaster was to do stories in small, 5 page episodes. 'The House on Pundit Hill' was started right after this, and I realized there was no way I could tell the story in just five pages, so I kept it to twenty, thinking I'd never be able to write anything longer. I think you know how that ended up.

This is a page from a story I started right after 'The House on Pundit Hill', but I never got past the first page. Northcod Lake is gripped in a fierce heatwave, and Lancaster discovers that it's the doings of a Heat Shade spirit
(not unlike the Electric Shade spirit in Episode 2).

The Heat Shade itself had posessed someone's body and was making life difficult for everyone by generally raising tempratures in the area, as well as busting up everyone's air conditioning units and cracking the water lines. The character designed for this comic will be seen again, but not in the Lancaster comic...

Gus Goes Home

2006-07-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

'Gus Goes Home' is an extra page I did near the end of Episode 4, 'Ghosts "R" Us', that shows Gus arriving home after a difficult night at work. It was posted as a voting bonus after Lancaster and Gus leave the toy store, and helped give a depressing and foreboding hint of things to come.

I purposefully left the ending of this ambiguous, because sometimes I like for you, the reader, to fill in some of the story gaps and have something to think about. Here, you can decide if Gus's family are either ghosts, or just a complete delusion of Gus' mind. Or maybe both. Or, it's possible his family is completely invisible.

Whatever the case may be, I didn't have a specific 'idea' for this in mind when I wrote it, and odds are that I'll never, ever touch on this subject again (especially if Gus appears in the comic again). So, if you think the conclusion you've drawn from this strip is correct, I'm not one to tell you you're wrong ;)

Rufus didn't always work for Eclipse...

2006-07-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

One of the original ideas for Lancaster was that he would continually be up a collective of spirits, each representing one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I only got around to designing two of them, one of them being the representation for Sloth, seen here. The Sloth character would carry around a small plush bat character, which was fused with the spirit of a fierce monster. In true Sloth style, the doll would do all the fighting, transformed as a giant bat with a missing eye.

A friend who was commenting on my work at the time mentioned that the Seven Deadlies had a pretty widely used plot element, so I decided to ditch that idea, but kept a few of the character designs. Aside from Rufus, you've seen one other of these designs in the comic. More on that later.

I liked the one-eyed bat thing, so I kept the character design around and kept tweaking it. Rufus played many different parts in the original story ideas I had, from being a masked serial killer, to a mysterious ghost who would help Lancaster track down Belknap, to being a rival ghost detective. After I came up with the Eclipse storyline, Rufus became the boss of Eclipse's Northcod branch, and we all know what happened from there.

Being the boss of an Eclipse branch is very difficult work, and involves a lot of planning and management. We'll see if his efforts are appreciated when he unleashes Project HARVY on Northcod Lake...

A Real Chicken-Duck

2006-07-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

And here's everyone's favorite coward, Dane Wattleson! The basic 'House on Pundit Hill' story I wrote stayed the same when designing Belknap and Dane, the biggest change being to Belknap's personality.

Usually when I design a character, I can get the design I want in very few tries. Dane is a prime example of 'hitting the nail on the head', so to speak, but there are quite a few other characters who go through design after design after design before they look the way I want them to. Both Terrance and Rufus are prime examples of this, as you'll soon see.

Dane is also one of the half of the cast that actually has a last name. Dane's first name comes from one of the most awesome people I've ever known. Every now and then, I'll name a character after someone I know in real life who is particularly important to me. Moe Jayas, anyone?

Other times, I'll name them after something else. Lancaster and Belknap both have these kind of names. They're named after something, but they're not towns. You'll have to wait for a later post to uncover that mystery!

Characters That Never Were

2006-07-20T00:39:00.000-07:00

This is a character idea from when Lancaster was beginning to work for Eclipse. Originally I had a story sequence where Eclipse push Lancaster through a rigorous boot-camp type scenario, complete with a Lee Ermy-type drill seargent.

During this ordeal, Lancaster would have met up with Gus and various other recruits for Eclipse, and it would also be where Lancaster discovered that Eclipse was sniping his technology and using it for their products.

Of course I bypassed all that and just made Lancaster a field trainer. How nice of me!

This is a design for a character that I didn't really like too much. Obviously he's an older character, where most of the characters in the comic are between 20 and 28. I may come back to this character, but I wasn't a big fan of how his design was turning out, so I ditched the premise of his story.

This little guy should be recognizeable to some of you older readers; it's the hulking, ghost-eating beast, Gormothyn! This is the first design I made of Gormothyn, but when I went back to prepare Episode 5, I souldn't locate the original image. I had to redesign her as best I could, but maybe it was for the best.

Originally, Gormothyn would appear in three stages; the tiny bug form, which would be wandering around in different parts of the background, the mysterious cocoon that would be found later, and then would hatch into the terrifying Gormothyn. Obviously I went a different way with this story, as there is no larva and the cocoon looks vastly different. The larva, when it shows up in the comic (...if! I meant if!) will look different as well.

Finally, this large character is another whole story idea I developed. It involved a taxidermist who would use ghosts to posess stuffed animals to do horrible things at his whim. He used lots of leftover animal parts to construct a massive creature with a ghost posessing every different part of him. Especially formidable, as the taxidermist would keep thread, needle, and a sack full of spare animal parts with him and would instantly repair any damaged part of his hulking creation.

I really like this idea, and I think I may use it as a future story, but do some more designs to the character and a lot more tweaking to the story.

You killed my boyfriend!

2006-07-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

Easily the most popular Lancaster character is Eclipse's sultry elite field agent, Illeana. Maybe it's her mysterious good looks, her firey personality hid behind a stoney gaze, or maybe people just like imagining chameleons with boobs. WHatever the reason, it's clear Illeana is a big driving force behind the story of Lancaster, and amazingly enough, her guise as an agent for Eclipse wasn't a last minute decision. Making her Gort's girlfriend was, though :p I always planned for Illeana to be an Eclipse agent, but instead of introducing her as such, I thought it'd make another neat twist in the story. Here's some really early Illeana designs.

Why, Frank? Whyyyy?!

2006-07-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

When I created the character of Frank Nurd, his original story involved him keeping his half-brother half-alive in a run down wooden shack in the middle of a swamp. His brother would have died at the beginning of the story, and brutally haunt Frank, who would pay a great deal of money to Lancaster to get rid of the ghost of his dead half-brother. I couldn't get the plot to work very well in my favor, so I ditched the idea and made Frank work for his uncle Hoyton. Now that I'm a bit more experienced in story writing, I may eventually come back to this plot.

Oh Snap, it's Belknap!

2006-07-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

This is the first design of Belknap I came up with. Originally, Belknap's character was just going to be a one story deal, where he haunted a basement because an item precious to him during his life was buried underneat the floor there. I didn't give him any legs mostly because I hated drawing legs, but also because I thought he looked a bit creepier that way. He also had several different names before I decided on calling him 'Belknap' and making him Lancaster's eternal rival. His attitude wasn't nearly as nasty back then, either.

Lancaster's Early Days

2006-07-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

This is a page from the very first Lancaster story. It was crazy, wild, out of control, and completely pointless. I'm so glad I did it. None of the characters from this comic will ever show up in the regular one, of course. Well, maybe one. We'll see.
Here's one of the earliest Lancaster designs. You'll notice I really had the Plasmata Palm worked out, but then didn't use it much at all in the comic itself. Also, I really liked pockets and buckles back then. Also, buckled pockets. I also made sure Lancaster got a nosejob before we started working on the comic.

Welcome, Ghost Detectives!

2006-07-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Lancaster the Ghost Detective Sketch Blog! In this blog, I'll be posting different sketches and drawings I've done for my comic, such as alternate pages, early character concepts and maybe even some guest art! I have a lot of stuff to add, so keep an eye on this page, because I'll be updating it very soon. Also, shout outs to Dynamic Sketch for the awesome Lancaster picture!