Lizzie Schwartz Story

This week I've been working intensively on the story for the comic book - both writing the dialogue and drawing the poses. The book has turned out to be a bit longer than I anticipated, so I'm not quite finished drawing the story out yet. I have yet to do the climax, where the wizard steals Sigmund and Felipe's senses of humor and Lizzie has to bust his crystal. Suffice to say, the story has gone in some pretty bizarre directions. Take a look at what I've been working on:

Lizzie Schwartz Progress

Hey, guys! I've been working more on the Lizzie Schwartz comic book; mostly I've been designing the characters, but I've been putting a lot of thought into where the story is headed as well. First of all, I made some character sketches for the three lead characters. I drew Lizzie out in a few different poses. I wanted to make sure to keep Lizzie's face and body elastic - sometimes cartoonists fall into the trap of making a character so cute that they can't really be expressive (sort of a Hello Kitty syndrome) and I wanted to avoid that. So here's what I came up with:

And then I drew some poses for Sigmund and Felipe - obviously, Sigmund is the uptight, angry one, whereas Felipe is more laid-back, like a hippie:

And then I designed and colored the other major characters. King Giffon rules the Land of No Laughter, the Schwinkle-Bird sends messages to the king to detect if there is any humor going on in the kingdom, Detective Doolick questions our three leads to see if they are at all humorous, the Grand Old Wizard Clamboozler has a dark crystal that can suck up comedy and leave a person completely serious and the Gluzzump is King Giffon's gelatinous pet:  

And lastly, here is a chart I made for the coming weeks:

The Curious Dreams of Lizzie Schwartz

The project I'm going to be working on over the next few weeks is a comic book. If you recall, I pitched for a comic book for the group project, and I've been sort of itching to do one since. This particular comic book will be one in a series featuring some characters I've been tossing around in my sketchbooks for a while. 

The series is called The Curious Dreams of Lizzie Schwartz, and it's all about a seven-year-old girl who has strange adventures in her head alongside her teddy bear, Sigmund, and her pillow, Felipe. 

There isn't a continuing story in the series; the characters will enter a different universe in each book, sort of like how the original Star Trek TV show had the same cast of characters, but each episode was a self-contained journey to a new world. And these dream worlds will usually relate to something going on in Lizzie's life. So, for instance, the comic book might start off with Lizzie feeling insecure about always having the wrong answer in school, and then she has a dream of Opposite World, where everything that's wrong in the real world is considered right. 

In the comic book I'm going to be doing over the next few weeks, no one understands or pays attention to Lizzie's jokes, and she has a dream about a land in which comedy and laughter is strictly forbidden and punishable by beheading. Here's the original sketchbook page where I came up with the idea:

As far as target dates, on November 20th, I'll have character designs and story sketches. On November 27th, I should have the story written out. On December 4th, I should be well under way with penciling in the comic book, and on December 11th, it should be inked in. 

Hopefully, this comic book will feel like its own thing, but a few inspirations going in are George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Charles Schulz's Peanuts, Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, Walt Kelly's Pogo, Carl Barks' Donald Duck comic books and anything by Milt Gross. 

Curse of the Ugly Dinosaur

Hey, all! This week I primarily did clean-up and color on the animation that I posted last week. The animation is finished now, and we're moving in to putting it all together.

The backgrounds here are by Kaleb Rice:

UPDATE: Here is the finished film. I present to you, The Ugly Dinosaur. Nice job, Lauren & Jinny!