Post Apocalyptic Cartoon Days Revisited

Once upon a time (around 2006 to be specific), I had this idea for a project I was going to work on outside of college. It was going to be a graphic novel; a post-apocalyptic, cartoony, Urban Vinyl thing in which a composite Romeo and a composite Juliet were a Mad Max-esque survivalist couple trapped in the all-too-cliche setting of demolished urban landscape and terrorized by cartoon bunnies and teddy bears.

Not Romeo was going to be this cocksure, persnickety, foolhardy tough guy character the likes of which an actor like Bruce Campbell might play, while Not Juliet was going to be his cool, collected agile equal, the likes of which Sandahl Bergman could play, much in the way she played Valeria in Conan the Barbarian (1982).

Again, it was that marriage of dead serious and yahoo (sometimes I'm Yahoo, other times I’m Serious) that really appealed to me, especially the thought of combining both a graphic novel and a product such as a toy line together. But sadly, after toiling away on it for a decade, I abandoned it in favor of other projects I had on the backburner.

After going through previous projects yesterday, I came across several of the renderings for the composite Romeo character and remembered thinking at the time how they were all horrible. I’ve always been far too hard on myself and far to critical of my work. Anyway, I fell in love all over again with this character, so I cleaned him up in Adobe Photoshop. Go on. Act surprised. I’ll wait.

I kept the idea that the couple would have this polar opposite Yin Yang thing going on, Not Romeo in white and Not Juliet in Black, etc. I also made him a little thinner, since I model myself for most of my male characters. I dig it!! Hope you do too.

The rifle is supposed to look like a cartoon. I was thinking in terms of simplifying and embellishing objects, like the Flintstones. I’m sorry I don’t have the original photo here for comparison. And I always liked that semi...almost goth quality he has, with the exaggerated Billy Idol spikes and the black junk under his eyes. The only other change I felt it needed was a new belt buckle, as the original didn’t seem to quite belong, so I gave him this sort of cartoon bullet for a belt buckle. (Images below).

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I’ll continue to have more frequent posts for my readers in the future. Your contributions matter a great deal to me, after all. They really do!!!! Bye for now.


SLiM All images copyright © Stephen L. Morris All rights reserved.

All images copyright © Stephen L. Morris All rights reserved.

All images copyright © Stephen L. Morris All rights reserved.