Roughs!

Here are a couple of roughs I did a month or so ago, giving the team in Paris something to work from for environments. I drew a big pile of these using my famous "ball point on printer paper" technique, before switching to the more grown-up-sounding "brush-tip markers on bristol board" approach.

An interesting thing, drawing these background images ~ it makes me realize that for everything I know about Gloomy's world, there's still a lot that I don't. A luxury I've had since Little Gloomy's inception in 1998 has been that I could "cheat" the backgrounds. If a scene called for a specific feature in Gloomy's house or Simon's castle, I could just pretend it had always been there from the get-go, draw it there and tah-dah! There it was. Now, I have to think far, far ahead: will Gloomy need a telephone in her foyer? A pot rack in the kitchen? Is there a tree in her front yard? Yup, that's the stuff that's gumming up my brainworks right now, a veritable logjam of maybes, possiblys and I-don't-knows. Plus, things like "agh! This marker is drying out already! I just bought this thing, and it wasn't cheap!", and "must drink third RockStar of the day. Too tired to go on..."

...but I digress.

I am still producing these environment roughs right now (well, not right now, since it's 5:00 am, but you know what I mean), giving everybody involved as clear an idea as possible of what Frightsylvania looks like. Here's hoping that I don't forget anything or, barring that, that I can at least pin it on Landry if I do.

-Eric