Friday, January 21, 2011

Fraggle development 1/3

I'm still pretty much blown away that I got to do some real, live Fraggle art. Here follows an account of the project.

I'm going to break it up in three parts, 1. How this project came about, character studies. 2. Thumbnails, roughs, and drawings. 3. Final art.

* * *

At Comic-Con 2009 I met Joe LeFavi, an awesome guy who worked for Henson and wore a Zelda t-shirt. Fast forward a year and some months later and I'm illustrating the comic he wrote for the new Fraggle Rock anthology.

As I understand it, my original comics in the Flight series (Vol.6 Walters, Vol. 7 Onere and Piccola) gave someone important enough confidence to give me a chance to do some Fraggle work. I got an email from the editor, Tim Beedle asking me if I would be interested in the project. Well, yes, I was very interested.

After some time I was asked to do some character art, basically Fraggle studies, to become officially approved by Henson. Truthfully (and I still don't know how) I missed Fraggle Rock as a kid. I loved the Muppets, and Sesame Street, especially, but incredibly I don't ever remember watching Fraggle Rock. For this stage then I needed to figure these Fraggles out. I went and watched a bunch of episodes from the first season, read up on the series, and studied the characters. I'm sorry it took me so long to meet the Fraggles.

After I began to do the character art it struck me -- I might have been born to draw Fraggles. Their hair, tails, everything, they're a great combination of a lot of things I like to draw.

Here are the samples I turned in.





So after this point I was approved by Henson and I then took the script and began to thumbnail out the pages. But that's for next time.

Next post, Monday. Thumbnails, roughs, and drawings.

4 comments:

Will Kelly said...

Fraggle rock really is cool...
It came before my time, but I have been fortunate enough to see the first season. I'm especially partial to the episode featuring the legend of "Sir Blunderbrain", and the one with Convincing John. Really good stuff.

Jason said...

Hey Cory,

Do you mind sharing what kind of paper you use? I'm liking the yellow-ish paper

Grace P said...

Cory, Great job on the style and line usage for the details such as the hair and curls, and you're right when it seriously appears that you were "born to draw Fraggles." I can definitely see how you had fun and put your enjoyment into drawing these little guys. How large are the drawings, if you don't mind me asking.
Thank you for sharing.

Cory Godbey said...

Hey Grace P, these Fraggles are about 10 inches tall if I remember correctly.