Thursday, July 12, 2012

Old comic ideas

Long before I started posting drawings on the internet, I used to be able to come up with comics and comic ideas lickity-split, which must've been the reason why I thought having a webcomic would be a good idea. Alas, I have not been able to maintain this one on a regular basis, perhaps because I now have higher standards and it takes me longer to finish comics than before.

One of my older comics featured a Microraptor. (I mostly didn't bother to come up with names for my comic series, though I think I considered calling this one Microraptor's Diary.) It was essentially a Dinosaur Comics ripoff, with each strip using the same illustrations but different dialogue (though I sometimes cheated by changing the expressions slightly). I'd like to gloat that at least my comic actually talked about dinosaur-related topics, but, having found and reread it, that claim would not be true at all.

The general storyline of the comic was that the Microraptor came down from its perch and chatted with a Caudipteryx Similicaudipteryx and a "Cryptovolans" Jeholornis. In the last panel a Volaticotherium and an Eomaia two Liaoconodon would comment on the dinosaurs' discussions.

Updated template for my Dinosaur Comics ripoff. My original drawings are a bit too poorly-drawn and inaccurate for my liking, so I've redrawn and updated them for this post.

Then there was this series about a group of dromaeosaurids who lived in the same household for some reason I never bothered to specify.

From left to right: Updated designs for Ripper the Utahraptor, Snapper the Austroraptor, Slasher the Deinonychus, Chomper the Dromaeosaurus, Pouncer the Velociraptor, Leaper the Microraptor, and Nipper the Bambiraptor.

The comics I drew for this one were mostly short stories spanning several pages rather than four- or six-panel comics. I didn't draw it long enough for me to flesh out most of the characters' personalities and characteristics, though most of them shared a macabre sense of humor. The exceptions were Pouncer, who was essentially a prototype of Savape, being obsessed with killing (the others, though they appreciated black comedy, were not as into the act of killing as her), and Nipper, who was her personal butt monkey. A running gag was to have Nipper killed in one panel only to have him inexplicably alive and well in the next. This was really a fate that could befall any of the characters (frequently courtesy of Pouncer's bedroom doorway, which was a guillotine that decapitated anyone who passed through it), but only Nipper was ever actually deliberately killed by the others.

Personally, my favorite out of my old comic series was one starring an unnamed Microraptor Graciliraptor and its friends, Buck the Incisivosaurus and Quill the Psittacosaurus.

Redrawing of one of the strips I drew for said series.

Running gags for this one included the Graciliraptor possessing or being aware of anachronistic objects (as shown in the above strip with a book), Buck being berated for being a plant-eating theropod, Buck gnawing through things like a rodent (and making carvings of various things by doing this), and Quill being able to use his tail bristles like porcupine quills (hitting objects or other characters with his tail and turning them into pincushions).

And then there was that time I drew the entire plot of Raptor Red in comic form, but that's both too horrible to post here in its original form and too long to redraw as a more updated version.

3 comments:

  1. the entire plot of Raptor Red? wow

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  2. I remember the old Dinosaur Comics I did when I was like 12. They were based on Newspaper Cartoons (mainly the Peanuts) and had only about 5 panels or were at most a single page. Among the characters were a bipedal prosauropod/sauropod named Bronte, an Oviraptor who´s always wearing a cap to hide a bump he got while trying to steal an egg, an Anatosaurus named Edmond, a Velociraptor named Rick Raptor (got the name from a JP game), a black Psittacosaurus with red cheeks and whatever nice dinosaur species I could find in my books. Those comics were bad and too short and every character was as fleshed out as a skeletal, so later I then made several-page comics focusing on two T-Rex brothers named Stan and Steven (got the names of the specimens from the WWD Making-Off). The only other recurring character was a Compy whose role would pretty much be what TV Tropes calls "The Chew Toy".
    But as I´ve grown up I can no longer match the style of these characters (and they´re inaccurate with pronated hands and no feathers etc.) so I´ve now moved on to more “realistic”-looking characters (well, as realistic as the Roadrunner-Coyote cartoon can be…). But like you used to come up with several comic ideas I still have a mess of new ideas in my head, I´m currently working on a second Roadrunner comic and already have ideas for a third and a fourth and even ideas for longer, more serious stories with talking dinosaurs (even a superhero story based on the Amazing Spiderman). But even without taking my procrastination into account it would take too many years to make all of these ideas real.
    RickRaptor105

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    Replies
    1. Ah yes, Peanuts was an inspiration for me too (though mostly for comics even older than the ones I presented here). And I certainly know how it feels to have a ton of ideas that you can't churn out on paper fast enough.

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