Roofus' Halloween Adventure: From Script to Strip

From script to strip:

I stumbled across the original script for the Halloween adventure. I'm including it here because I rarely write an actual script or outline; my writing process is usually done with rough sketches. According to my hand-written notes, the original idea for the Halloween adventure was much simpler: Roofus sees Halloween monsters and runs away. That small idea led to the final strip. As you can see, the next notations describe the basic outline of the story. According to my notes, an alternate ending to the adventure was to have the entire haunted house disappear.

Things that changed from sketch to strip:

Panel 1: Roofus has no hair. When I originally designed Roofus, he had three long strands of hair on his head.

Panel 3: I used a tighter shot on the haunted house

Panel 4: Roofus isn't waving anymore

Panel 5: The ghost design is simplified. I nixed the party favors also.

Panel 6: I drew a full body shot of Frankie J instead of a close up. Frankie J's alternate name: Karaoke Frank

Panel 7: I significantly tightened up the drawings of the skeletons.

Panel 8: Roofus was originally dancing with Wanda Witch. You can see where inspiration hit me and I doodled Lucy Van Pelt in the margins.

Panel 10: Alternate dialogue - "Looks like a distant relative."

Panel 13: Alternate dialogue - "Here's Wanda in a horrific black dress/pearl ensemble..."

Panel 14: Alternate dialogue - "Harry is a vision in hi-tops." (I actually like this joke better.)

Panels 17, 18, 19: Originally, Roofus ran out of the house immediately after he passed his hand through the ghost. I felt like he (as well as the audience) needed a moment to process what was happening. So, I added Panel 19 and switched it with Panel 18.

Creator Commentary: Here is Roofus' Halloween adventure in its original format. It was conceived and published as a full page comic strip. Later, I reformatted the strips into the daily format when it was printed in a daily newspaper. I think it reads much better as a full page. This story was a lot of fun for me. Growing up, I always looked forward to watching the annual Halloween TV specials, such as It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown & Bugs Bunny's Howl-O-Ween. If Roofus had an animated Halloween special, this would be it.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Roofus' Halloween Adventure Part 5

The conclusion to Roofus' Halloween Adventure.

Roofus' Halloween Adventure Part 4

Creator's commentary: The Big Red Monster from various Bugs Bunny cartoons makes a cameo in the second panel. The actual name of that character is Gossamer. True story. Also, in the second panel, you may notice the word, "Boo-urns." This is not a typo. It's a Simpsons reference. In the episode, A Star is Burns, Mr. Burns enters a ridiculously inaccurate biopic of himself into a local film festival. After watching the film, the audience loudly boos Mr. Burns' movie. Burns turns to Smithers and asks, "Smithers, are they booing me?" Smithers replys, "No, they're saying Boo-urns...Boo-urns." That scene ALWAYS cracks me up, so I snuck it in as an inside joke for myself.

Roofus' Halloween Adventure Part 3

The saga continues! I love all these gags with the Halloween monsters. It was so much fun to draw these. I love Roofus' reaction to the mummy's punchline. Frankie J talks like Isaac from the Love Boat. To be continued...

Roofus' Halloween Adventure Part 2

Here's part 2 of Roofus' Halloween Adventure. I really like Halloween. Out of all the holidays, it's my favorite Holiday to draw. I love drawing Jack O Lanterns, ghosts, draculas, witches, black cats, etc. It's a fun holiday. Things I like about this strip: Frankie J's groovy outfit and lounge lizard lingo, the band's name and Roofus' dance grooves. Bonus: a cameo by Lucy Van Pelt! To Be Continued...

Roofus' Halloween Adventure Part 1

It's Halloween Week! Tune in each day for the next exciting episode of Roofus' wacky Halloween adventure. As Count Floyd would, "Pretty spooooky, eh kids?" And if you don't get that SCTV reference, then you are missing out. To be continued...

Bannertime

Finally, here are some rejected banners that I designed for the anime club's website. I find it rather annoying that I volunteered to do these, and they were still rejected. This is another reason I'm not affiliated with this club anymore. This is my last anime club post, I promise.

Frequent Flyer

These are a few flyers I designed for the anime club. Why did I drop out of this club? Here's why. At a typical meeting, club members would participate in cosplay contests, art contests, trivia games and video game tournaments. Let's see. What's missing? Oh, yeah...THE ANIME!! Seriously, video game tournaments? During an ANIME CLUB MEETING? They NEVER wanted to watch any anime. Plus, these meetings would last like six hours. Who has the time for that? Unlike the club meetings, I had fun making these flyers.

Weird Wednesdays

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Disco Panda.

A Plethora of Pandas

I had a lot of fun creating this panda character. I designed him in Adobe Illustrator. I didn't do any sketches beforehand; I just started assembling random shapes until I came up with a panda shape. The bottom three really capture the anime "look". The sweat droplet is a device used in anime and manga. It usually symbolizes stress, embarrassment or excitement. My favorite is the grumpy panda.

Panda-monium

I like anime. I think, in many ways, Japan is years ahead of America in the field of animation. So when I heard there was a local anime club, I wanted to participate. The club needed help making flyers, so I volunteered my design skills to help out. I thought it would be a fun project and initially, I was excited. Let's just say it didn't work out the way I planned, and eventually, I dropped out of the club. This is the club logo that I designed.

I'm Noticing a Pattern Here...

This is another illustration from my college days. The goal of the project was to create an abstract geometric pattern. This is a perfect example of symmetrical design. I'm proud to point out that this piece was done entirely by hand. The medium is ink and paint on illustration board. To create the curves, I used a compass with an ink pen attachment. The pen attachment would be filled with india ink, similar to a fountain pen (which was very difficult to control).

Interesting Texture

This is an illustration that I did in college. The intent was to graphically create various forms of texture in an abstract environment. A lot of the imagery in this drawing was inspired by scientific illustrations from my high school Biology class. I really love pointillism or stippling. Making all those little dots take a long time, but the final results are well worth it. The medium is pen and ink on illustration board.

Friendship is Rare

This simple drawing attempts to illustrate a complex subject: Friendship. I believe if you want to be truly happy, you have to surround yourself with people who will positively influence your life. Thankfully, I'm fortunate enough to be surrounded by a wonderful group of people who I consider to be my good friends. They've been there for me during good times and bad. That's what friends are for.

Bull Monkey

Here's a drawing that was commissioned by a friend of mine. Her son was into skateboarding at the time and this is a reproduction of some skateboarding artwork. The medium is pen and ink. For the dot patterns, I used Zipatone screens. Zipatone screens are sheets of clear, adhesive paper with dotted patterns printed on them. You use an exacto knife to carefully cut out the area you want to screen. Photoshop has made this process obsolete, but if I had the time, I'd use Zipatone more often. It's hard work, but it really gives the original artwork a clean, finished look.

Weird Sketch Wednesdays

Here's a weird drawing I found tucked away in one of my sketchbooks. I don't know what it is. Feel free to take a guess. Whatever it is, I like it.

Bad Robots

The true story of the robotic metal supergroup, Bad Robots, is clouded with mystery, scandal and government conspiracy. No one truly knows the band’s origin. Some say they were designed and built to calculate artillery-firing tables for the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory. Others believe they were evil killing machines engineered by Adolf Hitler and hand-soldered by Satan himself. Regardless of their diabolical origins, these three robots, Eniac, Edvac and Binac, burst onto the metal scene in the 1980s.

Their popularity reached unparalleled heights resulting in sold-out shows at coliseums and football stadiums. Some maintain that this surge in popularity was due to the band’s constant threats upon the human race and their arsenal of deadly laser weapons. Despite everything, the band members adopted the practice of stage diving into crowded audiences during their concerts.

As a result, fans were crushed. Literally.

With half their fan base hospitalized and amidst the scandal of their stage-diving antics, the band released what would be its last album, entitled “We Will Crush You.” As a result, their record label dropped them indefinitely and the last leg of the tour was cancelled. For the robots, the dream was over. The bots were detained by the US government and stored in a top secret military facility until the release of their Greatest Hits CD which debuts this Christmas. Their hits include: Operator error, Does Not Compute, C:Dos Rock, Satanic Mainframe, Invalid Entry, File Not Found, Programmed to Bone, Binary Love, and from their country music album, If You Promise Not to Leave Me (I’ll Change My Vacuum Tubes for You).

Love in an Elevator

I like Roofus' speech. He's just saying what we're thinking. Plus, the idea of someone bursting into a dramatic monologue in a silent elevator makes me laugh. When I first started Roofus, I lettered the strip by hand, as shown in the original black and white artwork above. This was very time consuming and sometimes sloppy. A few years ago, I decided to letter the strip digitally using a comic-style font. Lettering on the computer is not only faster, but it also allows me to edit dialogue easily, which is crucial to the writing process.

Still Life Study

These are sketches of a still life study. I did these in my oil and watercolor class in college. I learned a lot from those classes. I learned that I suck at oil and watercolors. However, I did rather enjoy the experience of life study drawing. It forced me to work outside of my comfort zone and challenge myself as an artist. Of course, my cartooning tendencies prevailed as you can see from the third sketch. I feel that my abstracted still life drawing has a vibrant energy to it. I'm sure the art professor disagreed, since it was never developed beyond this sketch.

Cellular Envy

I drew this magazine illustration for an editorial column about our society's obsession with cell phone technology. Let me just say, I'm not obsessed with cell phones, but I do love my iPhone. I use it for everything including checking my e-mail, twittering, listening to music, playing games, checking movie times, checking the weather, updating my calendar and taking photos. Ironically, I hardly ever use the actual phone.

Roofus

This is my comic strip, Roofus. Not content with living a dog's life, Roofus enrolls as a full-time college student and hilarity ensues. He struggles with the trappings of college life, including homework, pompous professors and annoying roommates. I've been working this comic strip for a while now and I still love it. Roofus will be popping up randomly on this blog in the future. Also, check out the Roofus website.

As a bonus, I've included the original pencil sketch AND the original inked artwork. The rough sketch helps me perfect the layout of the strip and iron out the dialogue. Look at the bottom and you'll see some alternate punchlines that I was brainstorming.

Box Office Heroes

I drew this magazine illustration for an article about summer movies. I chose to re-interpret my favorite versions of each character. I drew the Star Wars characters in the style of Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars. Batman and Superman are fashioned after Bruce Timm's signature style. Finally, my version of Spider-Man is inspired by my favorite comic book artist, Mark Bagley. Colors by Matt Beckham.

24 Hour Comic Book 2009

October 3 was 24 Hour Comic Book Day. For those not in-the-know, 24 Hour Comic Book Day is an annual event in which cartoonists and comic artists all over the world attempt to create a 24 page comic book in 24 hours. This is my effort. I finished on time, working right up til the last minute. I stayed up the full 24 hours working on it. I started and stopped many times throughout the process. I nodded off in my drawing chair a few times and got discouraged. I shook it off and pushed through it! I didn't even pencil any of the artwork. It's all done with felt tip pens and Sharpies. It really speeds up the process when you don't stop to erase. If I made a mistake, I would just scrap the drawing and redraw it immediately. The writing is subpar and some of the art is crude, but that's to be expected in a 24 hour comic. For more information on 24 Hour Comic Book Day, consult your local library...or better yet: www.24hourcomicsday.com