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Today's Slasher is brought to you by a Double Feature of Spooky and Odd Creatures! Greg Jolly and Ed Quinby represent what good craft and creature concepts mean to them!

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Welcome back to the Saturday Slasher! We've got a double feature for you today! First up is a nice black and white scene of skeletal slashing by none other than Ed Quinby! After Ed's selection, stick around to read our first of several scary concepts and interviews with the creator of the upcoming strip Hamm*Starr!

You know part of my goal and job is not to just provide you with content for the 31 Days of Halloween. It's not just about showing you a few one and done pictures...no it's gotta be more than that. What would Halloween be without the many tricks to equate these threats..err, treats we're showing you? One awesome aspect of what I get to do as the host of ghosts of future's past is sharing the work and the insight of fellow creators."

Greg Jolly is about to embark on a crusade outside of man or animal's normal destinations and he's created and crafted a few friends along the way...as a special treat we'll be showing you, the viewer, each one of Greg's concepts and the thought process behind them as he nears the debut of his long awaited comic work!"

"Hunter,
Here is my attempt at what you were asking me about"

What is this:
I'm developing a webstrip called Hamm*Starr. I wanted to do an homage to old time Sunday comic strips like Flash Gordon, so I could play with a lot of sci-fi clichés. Time travel, paradox, evil twins, humanoid aliens. And I wanted to do a comic strip that had no humans at all. Most pop sci-fi aliens look like humans with matching suits and bumps on their heads, or pointy ears, or green make-up.
So I set out to populate a planet with as many races as I could dream up and no humans whatsoever. I've been filling a sketchbook with ideas for the various races for the last few years, as I've developed the strip. Next to the main hero, the winged bat race shown here is probably the most humanoid, and more recent sketches have the wings and upper arms combined as they would be in a more anatomically correct bat.

Process:
I decided early on most of the races would be homages to old cartoons, comics strips and comic books. So I would start with a basic direction, say I want my fuzzy little band of heroes to meet Garfield or Hagar the Horrible, what would they be if they were on my planet? And I play with ideas over what type of animal or creature would best represent the character, bug, alien, dragon, dinosaur, turtle, fish, bat... Usually I would just grab a sketchbook (a little letter sized pad and some regular number two pencils), and plop down on the sofa next to my wife, half paying attention to the TV, and just sketch out whatever came to mind. For just mind wandering kind of idea sketches I love working on the sofa in front of the TV, you never know what will catch your eye or what sentence fragment will stick in your head and send you in a different direction. It's great for just rough sketching, brainstorming new concepts.
Later in the studio I'd grab a black marker and flesh out the ones I liked best, eventually adding color if I was liking where the sketch was going. I generally use Prismacolor markers and pencils, and anything else that works, even highlighters or pelikan white. I'm starting to try and use computer coloring, but I'm not comfortable with it yet.
The next step is to create a more finished version of the creature, less cartoony more anatomically correct. Details, clothes armor and weapons if needed. I like to do a few different ones with a little variety to them to get a feel for the creatures as a race. Show what they would look like tall, fat old, female etc... And when I'm done with that the last step is to flesh out the actual characters that will play major roles and do different emotions and poses, and whole model sheets for characters I plan on using a lot.
Wow! Thanks to Greg Jolly for a rundown of his process, hopefully as he advances we'll be able to talk him into showing it with pictures or dare I tempt fate, video?
And Tune in Sunday for the Sunday Slammer for more Ed Quinby artwork and a few thoughts from the man himself as well!









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