A few weeks ago, I had an inspiration to start drawing cartoons again. About five or six years ago, I started to create my own "doodles" (I'm not really a cartoonist) as a evolution of my sketch notes. I tend to doodle or draw pictures when I take notes. Sketchnoting took that ability to a whole new level. While I was drawing and note taking, I discovered that I needed to be able to draw stick figures. I'm unskilled at drawing stick figures, so I set out to figure out how to fix that. I came across an image on Pinterest titled, "Gesturefest" then I tracked down the website of the artist who created it. His name is Luis Decrevel. His images gave me the idea of how to express emotion without facial expressions. Only, I didn't have the ability to sketch quite like him, but it lead to me realizing that I could take my current set of skills (drawing circles, boxes, and lines) and turn them into an interesting stick figure.
Generation one of these characters had no real faces, I used two colors to demonstrate orientation. They were attempts to express emotion through movement and then add dialog to create something amusing.
Lost in Place Second Generation
I really enjoyed creating those characters... until the business that was driving them dried up. I focused on esports and startups as part of growing Bravous esports. When I had to close Bravous, I lost the motivation to keep the strip going. Recently however, for no reason I can put my finger on, the spark came back and I started to create a newer, simpler version of my "little people".
I added eyes and went to a single color for each person. In truth, the inspiration came from the four-color framework. The primary colors of yellow, red, blue, and green made it simple and I imagined a world populated with people who lived those temperaments. That lead me to create Sonny Star, Ruby Blaze, Fern Willow, and Indigo Frost.
Each character represents one of the four temperaments as follows:
- Sonny - yellow, is the Spontaneous Motivator.
- Ruby - red, is the Driver.
- Fern - green, is the Relationship Master.
- Indigo - blue, is the Analyst.
At present, I am just figuring out who these characters are, what they do and how they interact. Julia Cameron said that creativity is more about "getting it down" than "making it up" and right now I tend to agree. These little characters amuse me and so I am sharing that with you in the hopes you find it amusing as well.
And with that, I will introduce the first series from 2024:
