"Precocious"

The Precocious website is up and running!

While the strip isn't officially launched yet, you can view the first batch of strips on the site. I want to complete this arc before I begin whoring myself out. That way new readers will have a nice arcive to read through right away! I'm leaving my old images/write-ups on this page for now. It's a charming view into the creative process!

Because knowledge is a weapon! "Precocious" deals with a group of children far too smart for their own good. These kids aren't exactly your usual innocent, starry-eyed youths. Let's just say they're more Legion of Doom than Justice League.

In honor of me getting shiny new comic-making art supplies, I present the first decent scans of my precocious children - also featuring my first digital coloring attempts. Woo! (Do *not* expect this strip to be in color. Clearly I am not that good at it yet.) Clearly I'm still working on normalizing body proportions, but they're not bad for the first official attempts. The proportions of the kids seems to vary depending on the size of the drawing. Once I work more on the strip itself the characters will begin to standardize in shape. These character sketches vary in size and material used, since the goal was to experiment in drawing/inking/coloring techniques. I gave up on fur-color outlines after Bud and Autumn and relied on good ol' black outlines for the rest. Jacob remains the hardest of the regular cast to draw and this version of him makes me cringe. The lines are bit rougher in Tiffany's image because the drawing was done in my sketchbook. He who cannot dance blames the floor. (He who cannot draw smooth lines blames the paper?)

Dionne, Suzette and Max are secondary characters in the strip. These three also live in the Gemstone Estates community, along with the four main characters above. The main group lives in Sapphire Lake, Dione and Max live in Diamon Bluffs and Suzette lives in Emerald Woods. They all play a role in the first story arc. The look a bit snazzier than the regulars because I got better at this inking/coloring thing as I went along.

Here are my first (decent) attempts at *actual* inking - rather than using no-copy pencil and then going over in regular pencil. Aren't those two the sweetest? I'm really pleased with how it came out.

A while back, I did teeny versions of the class of evil geniuses. The sketches are rough and about the size they appear on the screen, but they give a fair representation of the characters. I've gotten better at drawing the kids as time has passed, but it's nice to have them all together in one spot. The class has 13 kids, but I'm still not set on the design of the last one. Sorry, Xander, but you'd ruin the nice square anyway. The top four are the main characters of "Precocious." The middle row is the spicey group of supporting characters. The remaining are relegated to the background...for now. (Yes, I plan that far ahead. It's a sickness.)