Forgotten I'd done a quick colour test for the Djinn - still figuring this guy out, tricky one for me to get right. Didn't put this through the filter like 'Al' as I think he'll look even weirder if he isn't even 'printed' the same as well as coloured differently (no black lines).

The blue-line roughs for pages 1-5. Going to blow them up and do some more defined roughs soon. One of my earlier sketches captured the bartender's anger while kicking the patrons out perfectly (in my mind) - so he's just been dragged and dropped into the rough. One of the advantages of working semi-digitally!

Here are the turn-a-rounds for the main characters - Al, Jim and the Djinn. May change the Djinn though. I'm still not happy with him, there's something missing or needing tweaked, I think. Really happy with Jim and Al, they're just as I wanted them to be. Inks and colours soon.

Since this is going to be set in the 80s, I figured it would be good to make it look like and 80s comic - limited colour palette and all. As I'm still getting used to colouring, my style is fairly simple in that regard, usually consisting of just flats and a few shadows and hi-lights when need with a filter to mimic the CMYK dots printers use. The 80s look isn't much of a stretch in that regard, and while it would be nice to have a really painterly, Dean White style set of colours I don't want to experiment and fail at this stage. I'd prefer to do something I know I can, and do it well. The limited palette will likely be enough of a struggle anyway, as I don't have much of an eye for colour. However, one of the palettes I found is split into warm and cool colours, which should be useful. I still want to colour-drop the Djinn, though, as that'll make him look even weirder in this setting. These are the first couple of tests - some flats on 'Al' using the palettes I sourced online, plus playing around with a semi-transparent layer of old paper, and the original digital inks.

Here are the digital panel layouts for the 5 pages. I want them to mirror each other after the mid-point - the Djinn ending up right where he started by the end. Usually do these by hand, but seemed faster to do in Photoshop (though still getting the hang of some of the digital tools, took far too long trying to get the square tool to only leave an outline). Making sure they were perfect mirrors of each other was easy too. Some resolutions seem to drop some of the lines, but hopefully printing them will work out fine. If not, back to basics. This is how I want it though - not too complicated or cluttered, nothing fancy, but works well with the story I'm trying to tell. Rough sketches and colour-script soon. (First two digital pages seem to go grey when uploaded here - not sure why, they're the same files as the last 2 just rotated... Hopefully print fine).

The Djinn was harder to design - he/it needs to be expressive for the final page, but I don't want them to be too human. They're supposedly 'born of fire without smoke' so its true form being something to do with green flame appealed to me. In 'Al's eye he's just a green flame, but I figure when he's free to roam his build is more human-like - so I went with the ideas of his looking like an invisible man. That's on fire. And green. That's weird enough, right? Thinking of colour-dropping him too - having the only supernatural character be made up of just colour in a mostly line-based piece makes sense. What to do specifically with the bottom half is a weird one, as most pop culture versions of genies have their bottom half connected to their lamp - which he doesn't have. I like the ideas of lighter flames coming out of his eyes and mouth, and maybe some kind of form being visible underneath. But, while useful ref, I don't want him to be too Ghost Rider or Human Torch. Johann Kraus from 'Hellboy II: The Golden Army' (when not in his suit) could be good to look at. Google seems to be rather light on pictures of that, but luckily the DVD's on my shelf at home. The 'Burning Man' stunt should be helpful to look at. A bit more development work needs done with this guy though.

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Next, the bartender needed designed. Usually, it doesn't take many drawings for me to decide on a character - they form in my head as time goes on and I write them more, maybe altered by whatever story or surroundings or traits I've given them, but only a few drawings get done of varying versions of the same person and I choose a favourite. Normally, I draw one - if it fits, that's their design. If it doesn't, I'll do more (though that's not to say the initial incarnation isn't thought through and considered). 'Jim Mullan' is one of those ones that pretty much popped into my head fully realised - the subsequent drawings this time came in figuring out what he'd be like as a younger man, as this version of the strip is set in the 80s and the original idea is current. Peter Mullan was my inspiration for Jim, so I decided to look for other typical hardy Scots - James Cosmo seemed a good one, he has a similar vibe, so Jim was named after them. The kind of nice, charming bloke you do not want to piss off. They seem the kind of guys you'd find behind the bar in an old Edinburgh pub.

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The drunk, 'Al', needed to be designed first - he's the one we see the most, so he needs to fit the bill. I initially thought of him as a pretty grubby, seasoned alcoholic, seen by the previous sketch. I toyed with the idea of making him younger, but came back to the original idea (if not quite design) after seeing images of Sir Ian McKellen in 'Waiting for Godot'. Something about McKellen's voice seems to fit the way the Djinn speaks, and that juxtaposed with a shabby, blootered patron was funnier to me. The other designs looked a little more 'together' - I want 'Al' to be likeable, but also appear to have definitely lived a hard life so the fact this bout of drinking finishes him off seems plausible. He's a strange one though, as he's less a character and more a device to drive the story. He's a comically tragic character, in that sense (if I want to be pretentious).

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After the talk with Phil and Montynero, my concept for The Jean Djinni was brought up as the most original and interesting. The idea is that a Djinn (Genie) has found their bottle has ended up in an Edinburgh pub, and must now deal with this new home and its patrons. This was originally first created as part of the Memorable Characters brief from Animation last year - and while it didn't fit that brief, it was an idea I enjoyed and kept as something to work on. It would essentially be my 'Hellblazer' - a supernatural story set in Britain, the main characters investigating paranormal goings on to find out, if Genies are real, what other myths and monsters might be. This version is a kind of prequel to that story, showing the first time the Djinn has had any real interacting with people in the pub. Initially, it was quite hard to think of a scenario due to being the series idea being very much stuck in my head - however, a suggestion from Montynero of having someone drink the Djinn by accident got the ball rolling. Again, as it's an existing idea, there were already drawings and notes to work from, so once I know exactly what the story I was drawing would be (plus snippets of previous and ideas thrown in) the look was already sorted and not much more research had to be done into the characters. Some more will be done soon, just to double-check some of the lore to do with Djinn and some references as this will be set in 80s Edinburgh.

My main idea after the initial jot down was to use an old script I did in Adv. Higher English a few years ago - a 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' story in which the an being interrogated is revealed to be dead and the two 'officers' deciding his fate were God and Satan. After a very useful talk with the tutor, Phil, and our guest speaker, Montynero, it was decided that as an idea it wasn't my strongest or most original and was shelved in place of the blog's titular work. I'd mainly chosen this as it was one of the few ideas with a set beginning, middle, end and was, most importantly, short and self-contained. I also had a fairly good idea of what I'd be drawing an how, as I'd be revising an old piece of work (there's even a couple rough layouts of the room, which were drawn fairly early on). Blunt, constructive criticism is essential early on though, and it definitely opened the way for a much more interesting project.