This is my three by six foot final project for my drawing class. Yes, I book ended my assignments for this class by making (what I think at least) is a bigger, better version of the first drawing I did for the class. The reasons I did this are numerous, but here we go.
The first assignment I had to do for this class was a free drawing with the subject of said drawing relating to what I want to do or focus on in the coming years in art school. Since I want to go into animation, I came up with these seven characters that look like they belong in an animated series off of the top of my head. These seven characters didn't have anything to them when I first drew them. But I've come up with stories for them all semester, and at this point, they have descriptions that go with them. First, there's the (gray) man with a mask who works as a museum curator. However, he's long stopped caring about a lot of things in life, and is a generally unhappy person to be around due to his lack of sympathy towards most anyone or anything. One day, because of this lack of caring, or maybe for the hell of it, he tries on an ancient mask that had just been delivered to the museum he works at to be put on display, and when he does, he becomes the boss of six super humans that happened to live in the same city he has all this time. The (blue) kid obsessed with candy, is also the proud owner of candy swords and spears he creates himself. The (red) old man who's a head in a jar, loves retro video games and has a body made out of giant toy magnets. The (purple) ghost woman who may or may not actually be a demon, was once the owner the biggest convenience store chain in America, but became a ghost under mysterious circumstances. The (yellow) man with a giant stern looking chin, has an effinity for tea but also had his brain replaced with a copy of a book detailing tragedies from the year 1912. The (bronze) six eyed beast creature he rides, has another gelatinous four eyed beast living inside of him that makes up two giant arms that carry him from place to place (this guy was once human, but underwent cruel experiments from an underground research society). Finally, there's the (green) college student who studies for class so much she sleeps during her work hours at the local library. But she also harbors the older brother of the four eyed creature that lives inside the beast creature, inside of her. So, she lets this creature cover for her at the library, due to him being the smartest one of the group. But no one in this group of misfits listens to what he has to say. Basically, now the museum curator, who feels like he's lost his drive to do anything in life, has six bizarre super humans at his disposal to order around.
The reason I'd decided to draw this for my final, is because I've been wanting to do something with these characters I've basically been obsessing over for several months now. I am also currently working on a small minute and a half animation (in the style of an anime opening sequence because I happened to come across a song that would fit this premise almost perfectly), but because the time I've had to work on it has been so infrequent, I decided to book end my assignments for my drawing class, with the more realized versions of the characters that appeared in my first assignment. There are several reasons each character is only one color. These are the colors each character were assigned for the more stylistic sequences in the animation that currently isn't finished. Not just because it cuts down on animation time, but because the more vibrant and interesting colors belong to the super humans, and the color that feels the most bleak compared to the rest, belongs to the depressed man in his mid twenties. There's also meaning I've attempted to assign to the shattered glass aesthetic I attempted to create with paint and tape. I wanted to have the glass shattered around the curator because I wanted to create a picture where the lull in his life is broken by the super humans he's now the boss of, and to have the contrast between the colored shards of glass (that are the colors of most of the characters) clash with the mood the color of the curator gives off, in order to emphasize the fact that he feels broken inside. Also, take note of how the shards trickle down the pages, filling an emptiness that also belonged to the depressed curator.
This idea was inspired by the works of one of my favorite manga artists Yasuhiro Nightow. He's the creator of series like Trigun, and and Blood Blockade Battlefront. The later of the two being one of my favorite things ever made, and a big influence on this project (the way the Nightow draws his characters was something I wanted to partly emulate in order to sneak in a shoutout of sorts). As I continue to develop this idea and these characters, I do want to have the Yasuhiro Nightow and Blood Blockade Battlefront influences strike a balance with my own ideas and narratives I create for these characters. With the setup alone, I feel that if I keep this idea in my back pocket for a while, I could truly develop it into a fully realized television series of twenty four (or so) episodes somewhere in the distant future. But until then, please enjoy this concept art!
Up close versions of the bottom page (it’s the biggest, so it’s hard to see):
I’ll update later with a batter picture of what the entire thing looks like without it being broken up to fit in my dorm for picture taking purposes.
