The Story
SpaceCoast is the first book that I have both written and illustrated. The idea was based on the episodic cartoon adventure shows on TV in the 70's. Each episode featured the same characters who encounter some sort of situation and work together to beat the villian or monster and all come home at the end. I even envisioned the art to be very similar to the look of a Saturday morning cartoon.
Designing the Team
The goal was to create a fun well rounded group with some diversity. Even though this was a book, I wanted to keep the look and feel of a 70's animated show.
Designing the Copernicus
Every great space story has to have a cool ship. I knew that the ship would be seen quite a bit, so I wanted to make sure I had a solution that would help me to not have to draw it from scratch every time. I decided to use a 3D modeling program to build the ship and then I could turn it around to the angle I needed. I could place the base model in my page art and add any extra details that were needed. The name of the ship came from Nicolaus Copernicus, the astronomer.
Inside the Copernicus
Because most of the story takes place on the ship, I needed to create all the interior parts as well. Since I was using classic animated cartoon style art, I decided to treat the backgrounds the way its done in television animation studios. So all the backgrounds are separate, and the characters and action are placed on top.
Character Design
As far as character design goes, I basically knew what each one should look like, but when I was done, they all looked completely different than they did at the beginning. In the image above, you can see artwork of my space dog, Rocket. He went through many different looks before he ended up the way he looks today.
Of Course There's a Robot
I have always loved robots. From Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, to the B-9 robot from Lost in Space, and C-3P0 and R2D2. So the world of SpaceCoast needed one too, and his name is DEKE. Many things influenced me as I was coming up with his design. His head was inspired by a floor lamp in our family living room when I was a kid, I was always fascinated by things that defied gravity, so he floats around with zero-gravity technology called Z-GRAV. He also has hidden laser guns, and electrified grabbing claws—what robot wouldn't?
Behind the Scenes
With every project—the initial concepts go through many changes before the final piece is complete. As you can see above, original sketch is not exactly how the final scene ended up. At first, my character, Hutch was going to have to find his way back to the ship in the meteoroid storm by himself. But the scene ended up with DEKE the robot rescuing him and getting him back inside. After a rewrite, the scene needed more excitement and character interaction. Several other ideas, and even completed artwork ended up on the cutting room floor.