Cleaning house
I'm getting rid of my iPad which means i have to save off all my old Procreate drawings for posterity. There are hundreds of them, done since 2016, most long forgotten. Roughs for most of the original Dark Horse issues of Steeple, endless neatly coloured little figures and pages and pages of total madness. I lost the fun sketching habit over the last few years, alas. Hopefully it will come back through another channel.
I won't put too many up right now, but here are five I thought you might enjoy.
1. 2016, Robert Cop cast
2. 2019, pre-scripting sketches for Giant Days 49, an issue that I did half the pencils for. The "angel investor" vampire didn't make it into the issue.
3. 2020, some "tidy Shelleys" according to the file name
5. 2018, very early Steeple concept sketches
Comments (18)
Good to see Bobby Bobby make an appearance!
Robert Cop!
I need more of Esther and Charlotte confronting vampires. (I won't say "fighting vampires," as it appears that Charlotte is already well prepared to argue them into oblivion.)
Rev Penrose seems to have made it from draft to print basically unchanged, but Brian must have gone through a few revisions to go from "Responsible" and "Excellent at Paperwork" to the "enjoys a big bag of drugs" we know and love.
Tidy Shelleys make my day!
Thanks for the fine scribbles! Very enjoyable!
Needs more BLAT. 😁
I always love these glimpses at origins & dead ends. I see our friend Brian evolved a bit in the actual comics.
Steeple was originally designed as a webcomic, and would have worked better (for me) if it had had the benefit of a bit of directionless spread. Instead it was very plot-driven (and inherently space-limited due to the nature of publishing) which crowded out the character development. The 2023 stories, where I knew there was no danger of a fourth volume, hint at the unfettered sprawl it might have had.
"I am ze French friend of Robert Cop, as you see! My chair, it has two wheels, oui oui!? My gun, it shoots LE BLAT BLAT!"
I think that's just the muzzle flash.
For some reason it occurs to me now, for the first time in close to 20 years, so I must ask - is Shelley's given name Michelle?
Haha! No!
What a lovely bunch.
I hope you find your way back to fun sketching! What's replacing your iPad? And on a related note, I'm still hunting for a utility to convert my archived Procreate files into something I can view on my laptop without having to export them one by one from the app (which, god love it, isn't set up for that) — would love to know if you found something.
It is set up for that Rob, just select them all and export in one go.
(HE IS THOUGH)
BLAAAAT! Excellent stuff!