Detroit Mock City
If you’ve been following on Facebook or Twitter, and now Google Plus, then you’ve caught wind of our new comic strip, Detroit Mock City.
Does this have anything to do with the movie or KISS song, Detroit Rock City? NOOOOO!!! Not beyond the very clever (I thought of it) pun name. Not that the movie and song suck…We don’t mean to offend the KISS Army.
So what is it? It’s an all NEW comic strip we’ve created for the Cartoonist Studio contest. I’m not supposed to show you any of the strips (there are 3 finished, and will be 10 total in the contest), because I’ve gotta save those for the contest, which begins on February 6th and will reveal a strip a week. Don’t forget to come back and vote!
What I can do is tell you about the strip and show you my character sketch sheet for the main character.
The Premise: Detroit is a city in ruins struggling to rebuild itself and its negative image. Our happy homeless tour guide takes us through this once great metropolis and educates us on some of the more interesting facts about the Motor City.
The Character: Homeless Hap, a good-natured homeless man who lives in Detroit and always manages to see the bright side of even the darkest facts of life.
So this is something pretty different for us at Black Snow Comics. I’ve never done a traditional character sheet like that before, but it was pretty fun and helpful. I wanted to go with a really classic, lovable, sweet hobo type, versus a gross real world bum. My Disney version of a street dweller, if you will. I wanted him to be a nice stark contrast to the harsh realities of life in Detroit.
This whole thing came about very quickly. I emailed Alex about the contest (which I had wanted to enter since I just missed the deadline last year), he said he was in, the next day we got some Mexican food for lunch and talked over a number of ideas, I mentioned a thought I had about a bum with a skewed view of Detroit, and he loved it. After lunch we went to a Starbucks (where all real writers write) in a Barnes and Nobles no less, and we wrote the first five strips. Then I went home and drew this character sketch within a matter of hours.
Over the next 3 days I drew the first 3 strips. I have the next 2 ready to bust out. And I’m having a ton of fun. It’s a totally different art style then anything I’ve done before (you may be shocked when you actually see it. Hell, I was!). And don’t think you can judge it by just the character sketch, because it’s really quite different and striking.
It’s a very classic daily newspaper style comic strip (though a very original one), which is something I’ve always wanted to do. In fact that was what I wanted to do growing up. So I’m kind of living a life long dream!
Check back in February to see the strip and help us win the contest!