THIS is why you hire a REAL artist!

So... I laboured over several concept sketches of NinjEel on my own before I decided I might want to try and find an artist.  I liked the sketches I did that were more "hero-realistic", but they took me hours just to sketch, there was no conceivable way I was going to be able to stay consistent throughout an entire comic book and still manage to get the first episode finished before the decade drew to a close.  I also tried a more campy, cartoonish look but I was never really happy with it - I'm just now learning how to create purposely disproportionate characters and, while I really like the look, it's just not natural for me yet.  So (as you already know) I went ahead and sent out a feeler tendril to my first-choice artist for the project, Nate Hammond of Jazz and Jess, who eagerly agreed to join forces.  We had our first concept meeting this last weekend, and after a few rounds of questions and some quick sketches he held the final sketch up to the webcam:

This sketch took him somewhere around three-minutes.  I didn't realize it was possible to so intensely hate and love someone all at once.

Nate did an amazing job at asking the right questions, not only nailing down the look of the character but also what types of gadgets he'd be using, how he'd carry them, how his personal powers would be used, and how those powers could be represented in the costuming.  My only regret in the entire process is that electric eels are so damned ugly - not exactly an aspect within our control to change.

Now, I was already a big fan of Nate's work and I became an even bigger fan after browsing through his deviantART page, so I wasn't surprised by the detail and skill in his sketches.  What did surprise me was how instantaneously looking at the final character design sketch solidified the writing style for me.  Now that the character is in my head visually he's talking to me much more clearly, setting the tone in snarky shades of Sarcastic Scarlet and Ostentatious Orange.  He's taken a clear side-step from what little I know about @NeuroPunk's personality and walked boldly into his own.  The whole comic has taken on a slightly darker tone, less silly and more sardonic, but there's still plenty of humor to keep the education flowing and stomp my ever-present urge to preach the good word of Science.

I'll be sending him the character profiles for NinjEels team next - three fellow scientists who keep him informed, keep him in gadgets, and sometimes... keep him alive.

More updates to come!



* Side note - I'm spending waaaay to much time with the UK, Australian, and Canadian blokes.  I actually added "labour" to my spell check because it's become a force of habit to add the letter u to everything.  Or... since proper English started in, you know... England, perhaps I should say it's become a force of habit to stop omitting the letter u from everything.