BTB 1: Concept Art
Welcome to the first edition of BTB, Behind the Bones. Where we take a look at the early stages of Bone Boy Billy comics. I thought it would be fun to give you all a peak into the design process and early doodling of characters/concepts.
Often a doodle will start out formless, no strong idea, and it becomes more real as I draw it. If that makes any sense.
Mr. Radical Deer Mouse. I really need to go back and fix the dialogue in his debut comic because I forgot to add the Radical part. Since BBB is set in a nebulous year in the 1990's I wanted to bring in a lot of my own childhood hallmarks. When growing up in the 90's there were few names bigger than Sonic the Hedgehog. So I wanted to give Billy his equivalent. I looked up random rodent species and found Deer Mouse, figured it sounded good enough.
Then came the actual process of drawing a Sonic knock-off, which isn't as easy as it sounds. I want the attitude/feel of Sonic but also my own thing that fits more in tone with the style of Billy's world. It took a couple reiterations as you can see. His earlier design felt too squirrel-like. I was much happier with the next pass, doing for that simpler cartoony vibe. We'll definitely see this guy pop-up again. Billy's line "This is my entire personality now." After discovering the game is one of my favorite gags.
I don't thin any character changed as much over the years as Nancy did. Even her name wasn't really finalized until I made her debut comic. I'll be honest, the name was a compromise. Her debut is a Nightmare on Elm St parody, so naming her after the famous heroine of that classic was an easy pick. She's had several names over the years and I was never really happy with any of them. At first I was going to call her Nance just to be different but it felt weird. Nancy is a name that fits our own plucky young heroine well.
Designing her was very tricky because I wanted to create a character that was a tomboy who still liked girlie stuff too. She still wears her favorite dress under that bulky biker's jacket of hers. There's a story there, both her choice of outfit and weapon. Though it's one I'm not ready to tell. She's the muscle of the group and very no-nonsense when it comes to danger.
Her jacket was inspired by Danny Ketch Ghost Rider. I considered giving her chains, but I'm too lazy to draw 'em.
Mr. Scoopsley, my obvious Freddy stand-in. I really wanted to avoid doing the same gag that Rick and Morty did. So I kept it pretty straight forward. Something about getting stabbed with spoons sounds super painful now that I think about it.
First draft of the Howler from our first Halloween special, Morbid Expanse! A lot of the concepts for that comic were me trying to get a good vibe for my own out space body horror nightmare. When I was plotting out the story proper I knew I needed a big bad at the end for Billy to take down. I wanted to channel the big Leviathan thing from the first Dead Space game. A mass of other undead things all smashed together to the point you couldn't tell what it once was supposed to be.
I ended up ditching the extra faces in the Howler's body. Felt too distracting and he already had a lot going on as is.
More Morbid Expanse art. A lot of this was random doodling body horror monsters I figured I could get a way with in an All-Ages comic. How well I succeeded is hard to say. I had a lot of fun trying to take what I loved about Dead Space, as well as other great space horror like Alien and Event Horizon and work them into my silly little skellington comic.
I was really happy with the design for Billy's Engineer suit. Though I realized after drawing all four pages I forgot that his mask was supposed to be more flat, like a welder's mask instead of how I drew it more beak-like.
Kinda bummed I didn't get to use the split-faced raptor guy. I really liked his design, but since I was doing the splitting skin guy that gag was already done. Some day I'd really love to come back to this AU. Though each year we're going to do a different story/series to homage.
Oltan was an important character for me to get right because he's essentially Billy's right hand guy. I wanted something simple and easy and a living Jack-O-Lantern was just the thing. Much like Nancy Oltan went through a lot of change over the years. He was originally going to be a human with a pumpkin head, but his backstory felt much too grim for the comic. I reworked the idea into a living Jack-O possessed by a lazy demon.
My main vibe in mind for Oltan was The Dude from the Big Lebowski. Carefree guy that's not really got anything going on with his life besides whatever crazy stuff his friends drag him into. Oltan's got a lot of fun stories and bits as we continue.
Also yes, that's a Tom Servo quote.
So that's it for our first BTB. Stick around for this week's comic, part one of a two-parter. I'm also going to start posting character profiles in the near future. Give a little more of the world's backstory and lore. So stick around for more fun stuff!
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