BTB 4: Billy Origins Part 2 of 2

Welcome back to another Behind the Bones where we dig into ancient burials and unearth long dead secrets. Today we're completing the second half of Billy's adventure into existence! After a few years on and off tweaking Billy, the idea went dormant. Never fully formed. Never given enough time to become something more.

A rough estimation of Billy's design around 2018

That was until 2018! When I began a new creative endeavor with two former companions. Such endeavor reignited my interest in creating Billy and I had finally decided to draw the dang thing for myself. I'm going to chronicle the couple of years working on this nameless project, developing Billy in full and how it all kinda fell apart horribly in the end.

Should be fun.

First how it all started. One Halloween party back in 2018 I was vibing to, of all things, the Halloween 2018 reboot OST. No one else was in the room at the time so I was just chilling when one of my friends approaches me. For our story we'll call them Angie and Alex, not their real names obviously. Angie, the one hosting the party, asks out of the blue if I'd be interested in helping them develop a comic idea that Alex had.

I was more familiar with Angie but had been on good terms with Alex as well so I was interested to hear what they had to say. It was a pretty light pitch, not much story yet but an interesting hook that, with the right framework, could be really cool. So I agreed and while we were at it we decided to spend our time getting together to also work on any personal projects we may have. We all had Tuesday free, so we'd meet Tuesday every week.

While developing that comic with Angie and Alex I also got back to work on Billy. It was then that a lot of the overhauling that went into the final comic we have no was done. Characters like Zindy, Oltan, Georgie became much more realized. I ditched the magic lake idea. I ditched the love interest. I ditched the old couple. Sort of. His town had a name by now, Serling, though I came up with that previously for a short story project "Welcome to Serling" That I really need to get back to. It's a sort of prequel to Bone Boy Billy, telling the legends and tales of his home town.

A rough, quickly sketched recreation of Georgie's introduction comic.

My original plan was to draw Bone Boy Billy on paper and scan it since I didn't have a tablet at the time. I drew quite a few comics, not a ton, but at least several as I recall. I doodled tons of concept art for all the characters. Expression doodles. All of it collected in what I call the Big Book of Billy, a massive binder full of all that stuff. Somewhere in my house. I gotta find it. I swear it's around here somewhere.

Work on Billy was fairly slow that first year or so. I really put a lot more work, energy and time into the comic we were all developing together. We got a lot of work done on it from concept drawings to storyboarding out entire first chapter. It was a truly collaborative effort. I have so many fond memories working on comics and art with them. 

It was around 2019 I was getting more confident in Billy's story and making the comic real. I had my characters decently established. Zindy the powerful hippie witch who brought her son back. Georgie at the time was Alister, though I changed his name back after a while. He went from super villain, to just a nuisance for Billy. Oltan was fairly well established early on as a funner, lazy side-character to Billy's more go-get 'em attitude. 

Early on the idea was Billy would remain similar to it's roots in a classic 4 panel comic strip style. My main idea was to make it fit the Instagram format better. Something I sort of regret as I feel it really limited my scope and creativity as a storyteller. I was never entirely satisfied with it and in the end I feel the series is much better without that constraint. 

My attention on Bone Boy Billy was always divided, which was a bit of a struggle. Things changed among the group as our work on the comic got diluted. Priorities changed and when the pandemic hit in early 2020 we struggled to maintain our connection. Sadly, like so many stories, the team quietly disbanded. I'll always be heart broken over the awesome comic we all worked so hard on and how it'll likely never see the light of day.

Tribute to a fallen awesome comic idea.

Honestly the loss of the team really hit me hard. I was trying another short comic project that I stagnated on and Billy soon followed. Eventually I lost all passion and drive to work on my comics. 2020 was a dark year for a lot of people, myself included. It took a long while for me to really bounce back and I'm not even entirely sure I did bounce back, to be honest. 

While I still poked and prodded at getting Billy done it wasn't until 2023 I started to get serious again. One of the big benefits of that former creative team was I got to try digital art for the first time. While I wasn't a fan at first and was rather clunky with it over time I really grew to like drawing digitally. Especially with the Back button. That is a divine invention. So in early 2023 when I started cooking up getting back on the horse with the Billy comic, I knew I wanted to do it digitally this time.

I found a lot of great benefits to drawing digitally. It finally made making the comics fast and easy. So through 2023 I got a bunch of comics done and finally had a proper direction for Bone Boy Billy. While it took me a little while longer to really get the ball rolling in full, it's finally here, real and in the world with all of your eyes on it. 

As you can see from these two articles it's been a very long journey for Billy. From a random school doodle, to a character I couldn't get out of my head, various possible adventures and false starts. Through it all the little guy persisted. He would not be allowed to go without existing. I hope you've enjoyed his stories thus far, because we're just getting started!