And the Cartoonist said "Let us make man"...

Or: How to Design a New Character

I think this post would come under the file of “Process”. (If I had a “Process” file)

If you’re a follower of my comic strip, Between Friends, you will know that my character Maeve has opened her own consulting firm and is on a gig in Paris at the moment. To give non-followers of my strip a very brief overview: Maeve is in her mid-fifties (like all my main women characters), is a successful and savvy business woman, is a divorcee and her love life sucks. She gets dumped or she does the dumping but somehow things just don’t seem to work for her romantically in the long term. I have given her some fun times though. For example, she had a lost weekend with Viggo Mortensen once. I was hoping Viggo might contact me to tell me how flattered he was that I put him in my strip and ask if he might have the original…or meet for coffee…you know, something. Alas. You can’t blame a gal for trying.

But back to the creation of man.

Every cartoonist has their Achilles heel for drawing certain things. Mine are horses, (I would never even attempt trying…not that horses come up in my strip very often…or ever) cars, (I admit to tracing at times) and men. I don’t have a problem coming up with women characters but I’m just not very good at drawing men. My solution to this is Google images.

For Maeve’s stint in Paris I needed to draw the client who hired her consulting services. (Benoit…he’s the President of the company and her age or maybe a little bit older) I already had his character fleshed out from a previous story line. I also needed to create a new character, “Jean”. Jean is a mid-twenties, good-looking intern. Here’s what he looks like…

I don’t remember exactly what I googled to find a drawing reference for Jean. It was probably something like… “young French male”…or “French intern”…or maybe even “hot French intern”. Whatever it was, below is the image that popped up and I decided he was going to be Jean. Not bad, eh?

I skipped the beard. Beards are a pain to draw in comics. I’m not sure if I’ll ever have a reason to draw his hairy chest but if I do, I’m ready.

So that’s it for process. Google plus drawing your image over and over until you get the feel for how your character looks and how to draw that character from different angles.

Extra Sneak Peek Bonus Post

For followers of my comic, Between Friends, I’m going to give you a little heads-up about what’s going to happen in the Paris office shortly. (You non-followers are welcome to read this too…maybe you’ll become a reader!)

That’s Benoit in the front on the right of the image. (from a past strip) See how he’s looking at Maeve and Jean? I don’t know if BF readers picked it up or not, but Benoit is feeling a little jealous of Maeve’s friendship with Jean.

In the next few weeks, Maeve is going to request that Jean become her assistant. And it’s not going to go over well with Benoit. Stay tuned.

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