In Brittany’s workshop today, we looked at how to draw cartoon aliens.  Brittany showed us the work of three artists; Robin Eisenberg, H.R. Geiger, and Nathan Pyle.  I  thought these were great choices for exemplars because they cover a wide range of sensibilities.  Geiger’s work is baroque and dark, Eisenberg is colorful and contemporary, and Pyle’s is simple and the most like a cartoon strip.  I had these examples in mind, along with Brittany’s demonstration and the memory of Josh’s concept drawing workshop as I set out to create my own characters.  I just drew shapes and went with whatever weird ideas floated by in my office at the end of a summer semester of intensive and diverse art making.  I really enjoyed drawing on nice paper with different pencils, and just doing something fun.

For my first character, I came up with a humanoid sort of creature, with a stereotypical almond-shaped alien head.  It had slightly alien-likke proportions.  I hadn’t drawn the mouth yet, so I just decieded to put it up above the eyes, and I like what happened.  Next I had an idea for a sort of paranoid creature with tons of eyes and human-like legs but more of a spider-like posture.  I drew him with an angsty look.  This alien became the pet in the comic strip I drew, although it is not pictured in the comic.  Maybe it will show up in the next episode.  The third creature is a disembodied brain with four eyes floating in a jellyfish-like elongated sac.  You can see the neurons and dendrites making little plant-like branches.  It has jellyfish-like tentacles. I think this creature is smart but high strung.

I had the idea to make a 3 cell comic because I like 3 cells.  I had just seen some old Monty Python sketch about the best joke ever, and a version of the joke in the comic strip appears in the sketch.  (This is not the best joke ever in the sketch in case you are wondering.)  I changed it a little to fit the character of the pet.

Here are photos of my drawings:

Here is the comic:

I like these characters and it would be cool to continue drawing this and see what happens with the story and the characters.

I thought Brittany’s lesson would be great for elementary and secondary age kids.  I think that her way of introducing the lesson was very strong, and I really liked how she kept the topic open so that our imaginations could be free to come up with ideas.  I taught some comic book classes many years ago, and I think that it’s important to provide some structure in the form of good prompts and information about how to structure a story, and then to let the kids run with it and see what they do.