CARTOON CUTIES stuff...

    Seeing issue 1 of Cartoon Cuties finally hit print (now for sale on Amazon) has really energized work on further issues. Here're some materials new and old. The top image is a tweaked pinup of Doris Flowers, who turns up in the second issue. Directly below is the ink sheet for another Flowers pinup, God willing to be used as the back cover of issue 3. I'm actually really pleased with this pinup, as everything seemed to come together perfectly. Still unsure what the planned dialog balloon should be, but I can easily picture as a running theme for back covers scenes from the studio dressing room like this.

   Now we have new characters to show off. So far, I've used sisters Beverly and Jeannie mostly for short single or two-page gags. These help me figure out the characters and their dynamic. Eventually, I'd like to give them longer stories (but with the materials already assembled, we'd possibly be looking at issue 11 or 12 before they could take center stage in any meaningful way). The basic idea here is a fairly old one. Beverly is something of a free spirit but more grounded than she usually appears -shallow but sweet, her sister Jeannie (the one with the pigtails) is intelligent but can be a bit scatterbrained. The solo page of Beverly (just below) may be published in issue 4 or 5. I'm looking forward to writing for these characters.

   Below are some materials I've had prepared for a while now. First up is a pinup I had planned for the first issue when it was to be a one-shot graphic novel about Crissy Carrots. The idea was to fill out the remainder of the book with pinup poses of the characters present, until it became a continuing series and I drew up "Stick Together" as a back-up story. Mala Winston is one of the heavies of the first issue. After drawing this pinup directly below, I saw that she had potential as a reformed character. She has a solo story in issue 2 regarding just that, and will become a major supporting player in the issues beyond. I'm looking forward to sharing those episodes with you.

   Daisy Poise, directly below, was my first "femanimal" character and I consider her one of the pillar characters of the franchise alongside Crissy Carrots and Minerva Mallen. This early pinup of the character captured a cute pose, though I've done better faces. Her ears are particularly huge here. I've since shrunk and stream-lined them a bit to make them easier to draw in the average panel. I'm not crazy about much of the earlier work I did on the series, but color certainly helps.

   Below are a couple of cats, because I figured there needed to be cats since one of my earlier commissions was to create a feline character akin to the work I'd done with Crissy Carrots. The result was Simone Grace, who is slated to appear in issue 2. Also appearing in issue 2 is Trudy Kitten, seen directly below. I don't really have a lot of material for Trudy as of yet. At this point she's more of a background character. Below her is Dixie North, who shows up quickly in issue 1. Dixie proved more difficult to draw than I expected, so she hasn't been utilized as much I originally thought she might be. She is slated to appear in future issues, however. Dixie is part of a comedy team with regular human being Trixie Hope, who has become one of my main characters.

   Lois Teppert I wrote about in a previous post, the character who became a star playing "Chickie Little" in a series of cartoon shorts. It seemed fitting to include a bird in the stable, given the volume of classic cartoons which feature birds (though their use as glamor characters has been few and far between, but there have been a couple so I figured I should include one). She pops up in issue 2 and then takes the spotlight in issue 3. She typically wears her hair pulled back. This is one of the few times I rendered her with her hair loose.

   Next we have Wendy Marco, who shows up in issue 1. Mostly, she serves as a sidekick to Minerva Mallen, both on and off the screen. She usually manages to be close to the action and has considerable coverage in most issues. The drawing below is supposed to be a candid snapshot which was printed in the local newspaper. This got her noticed by the studio brass and secured her a contract. Quite a bit of the series centers around Wendy, it turns out. She's a constant studio presence, Minerva's close friend, and her uncle is a fur salesman who sponsors programming on the local TV station. It points to how little I consider ethnicity that I made her a blonde of European descent and then gave her a Spanish Sir name! When her uncle pops up in issue 3, I drew him more swarthy to justify the name I gave her.

   One of the more interesting characters I came up with for the series is Louise Beaumont, who we meet in issue 2. Louise was inspired by an aging actress of the same name in an old episode of ALF. My Louise Beaumont brings in a bit of Hollywood history to the series, as she's been written as a classic starlet seeking to re-energize her faded career. Back in the 20's, she was the top female annie starlet (thus, her physical inspiration is as a cartoon version of Clara Bow/Louise Brooks). Her fame was eclipsed in the early 30's by the arrival of Betty Boop, who was only pen and ink (the concept being that some cartoon stars were flesh and blood and others strictly the invention of studio cartoonists). Since the real-life 1950's saw a renewed interest in 1920's film stars, the comic book finds Louise taking advantage of that and making efforts to re-establish herself as one of Creek Bend's stable of animated glamor starlets. Since annies don't age as normal people do, this means the projection of a youthful image like she once played to in her old cartoons. Below is a pinup shot which pushes Beaumont's status as a, as Mr. Moody once said of Lucy Carmichael, "teen-aged senior citizen." Louise is a bit opportunistic, and like many a starlet seems desperate to hold onto her youth and it's glory. Makes for some interesting story ideas. Another connection to Wendy Marco, Louise Beaumont is Wendy's grandmother. I need to tweak this drawing a little. Her hair needs to be bigger and rounder. The pose comes from an early 60's issue of Playboy, I think. It seemed to capture Louise perfectly.

   As noted last time, Sugar Chestnut is another rabbit who ties more closely to the movie studio than does Crissy Carrots. She's introduced in issue 2 and grabs the spotlight in issue 3. This pinup shot was based on a shot of 60's model and Playmate Lori Winston. The more human anatomy seems to offer the right look in suggesting that these characters live in the real world alongside the rest of us. There's also the fact that I began as a pinup cartoonist, so human anatomy is just more comfortable for me to draw. I never set out to draw cheesecake animals (in fact, given some of the weird communities that have risen in the internet age, I wanted to stay pretty far away from the theme). It seems a good fit for my particular skill set, however.

All art and characters (c) 2019 Rock Baker.

More CARTOON CUTIES materials

Cover inks for issue 4. Minerva (right) will have a balloon reading "You better cool it down, girls, the lifeguard just swallowed his whistle!"

   For those interested, a few more bits and bobbles from my development of Cartoon Cuties as a continuing series now that the first issue is on sale through Amazon. We'll start with a few odds and ends...

Crissy doing housework around issue 10 or so.

A more finished ink sheet which was shown in-progress in an earlier post.

A Doris Flowers pinup, from early on in trying to find her character. The body is okay, but I think her head needs some work.

   Since this all began with Crissy Carrots, most of the supporting characters I developed early on were also rabbits. I also dabbled a bit on developing a larger backstory for Crissy, for which I drew the first image below. As the series took shape, however, Crissy's rather subdued previous life hasn't had much chance to take center stage. I did figure she might've been a cheerleader in her school days, though. In fact, I originally planned a prequel book which would do a sort of Archie aesthetic with my femanimal characters as high-schoolers. I thought better of it, though, and realized further adventures were more interesting than earlier ones.

A yearbook shot of Crissy?

An early Crissy pinup

   Crissy, I was originally concerned, might be mistaken by some as a play on Lola Bunny, a character who boasts a bit of a following despite being generally under-used by her owners. When I saw SPACE JAM again, I saw I had nothing to worry about (in truth, Crissy owes a lot more to the similarly under-used Minerva Mink, and in fact boasts similar coloring in acknowledgement of that). Sugar Chestnut was a rabbit character who I felt could offer some differences from Crissy -chiefly in that Sugar would be an established annie starlet and live closer to town, where as Crissy really wasn't interested in a film career and preferred her privacy. When I designed Sugar, I did notice some similarities to Lola Bunny (mostly in her short hair and huge bangs). My original plans to make her a blonde were subsequently changed to make her a brunette. It was in designing this character, though, that I noticed every character in the series likely draws inspiration and influence from some established character I might've seen at some time or other. The fact is, there are so many cartoon characters that some similarities are going to be inevitable. Of course, the Cuties depart pretty radically from most of the characters who might've inspired them -having skin instead of fur and a full compliment of fingers, so when all was said and done, Sugar here bore little resemblance to Lola. What makes Sugar interesting is the domestic situations she offers, being married to a rabbit who is a star in his own right. This allows for the sort of industry inside talk that I've always enjoyed. This spot illustration will likely be used either as a back cover, or as a bug on the copyright information/contents page which opens a future issue.

Sugar Chestnut

   Crissy's Irish cousin Rosie plays a fair part in issue 1, but since she was only on vacation to the States I haven't had a lot of chances to bring her back for more stories. These pinup pages should keep her visible until I find an excuse to move her to the States. Of course, I don't know yet if readers are even keen on Rosie. Feedback from readers will be instrumental in telling me what directions I should go in and what characters to take with me.

   Below is an early pinup of Minerva Mallen. It will likely be used as a spot illustration for the contents page of issue 2. Although one of the featured players, I did find she didn't command as much of my attention as I expected her to. I thought she'd be my main focus in the book, what with her being one of the more original characters (or so I'd think, as I don't immediately recall a lot of pulchritudinous cartoon skunks). Indeed, as I've found enjoyment in creating more and more characters and expanding the run of the series, my 'main' characters aren't the ones I've been tinkering with as much as I figured would be the case. Still, she plays a fairly large role in the first few issues.

   Now we get to some new characters previously unmentioned, and at this point still without names. During the early development of Cartoon Cuties, I made a conscious decision not to do any female duck characters lest readers think I'm making reference to Daisy Duck. When the design for this duck came to me, though, I decided to go ahead and use it because I wanted another bird-based character who didn't look just like Chickie Little. (When it came to crowd scenes, I found I used a lot of male duck characters to represent the annies working at the movie studio, so including a female duck seemed an obvious choice.) I'm not sure yet what the dialog for these two pages are, but I've slated them for issue 2, God willing. There's something vaguely familiar about this design, though I can't place it. Did I draw an original, or was I influenced by some obscure character I've forgotten?

   Finally, a character who is my latest, and God willing subject to a special future issue (in a story I was so fond of I moved her spotlight from issue 11 up to issue 6). As yet unnamed -though I'm leaning toward something like Tina Pebble, the character has been developed with animation in mind rather than a comic book (but that's sort of fitting, since the comic book is about starlets of animation). Hence, the focus on music. She's a singer who has come to feel trapped in her role as "the Rock And Roll Teenager" in a string of one-reel cartoons. Unlike the other characters in the book, she actually has more cartoon qualities like being very short and sporting a squeaky, high-pitched voice. Her efforts to escape her child-like type-casting makes for a fresh scenario in the series, and the idea is to feature her up front and center in the sixth issue. Below are the planned cover inks and an interior page showing the same scene.

   This spot illo below shows her in character from her cartoons.

   Lastly, we have what was actually my first drawing of the character. I did try to make her look shorter than most of the other characters of my book, which was a challenge since several of the characters are already pretty short. I hadn't yet the hang of it when I drew this, and in subsequent pages her nose has gotten even shorter and her curls bigger. Still, this gave me an idea of who the character was and how she would work. The resulting storyline I have in place is actually one of my favorites so far (and finally clears up the mystery of the annies). I look forward to sharing it with you.