Off Model Character Flaws

This is one of the earliest submissions for the '42 Plain Street' comic strip as seen in it's Japanese setting (above); followed by the same episode's reinvention years later for use in a collected-works anthology book in English (below).

While the addition of colour is pleasing in the early version, I'm not at all satisfied with the character drawing. I'm surprised at how far 'off model' I allowed them to be. Especially with the boy. He looks more like a co-worker of the father - as if they're both heading off to the pub for a beer - instead of what he should look like, which is a 9 year old child.

Plus there's a stiffness in the father's walking cycle that should never have left the drawing table without a drastic redo.


But I have to forgive myself, because it really was one of the first episodes of the series and I was slow to get familiar with their sizes and shapes. Even the early episodes of 'The Simpsons' had a few growing pains in their artwork. The problem with my characters was addressed after a while (probably due to the constant drawing of them) and in the second version, Raymond no longer looks like a short 35 year old man. Jack seems more satisfied too; he now walks with a jaunty groove rather than with the tell tale signs of hip replacement surgery.

In the early days of the strip, there was always an open sea of comical ideas to fish from and I rarely had to deal with the dreaded cartoonist's version of writer's block. But as we'll soon discover in later blog entries, it seemed that the better I executed the drawing portion of my 4-panel feature, the further I found myself from any quality scripts and gags. It was frustrating, because if I could have found a way to match them up on a semi-consistant basis at that critical period in time, we'd all be looking at a multitude of 42 Plain Street collectible items for sale on every street corner today. And who could say no to a Wanda coffee mug?