The Walking Dead birthed a spin-off series this past fall with the not-so-creative title Fear the Walking Dead. The first season only had six episodes so not a whole lot happened and fan reactions have been all over the map (everything from murderous to bemused).
Weirdly, I really like this show.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s got problems and it’s silly, and sometimes the characters do inscrutable things or the camera lingers on wind chimes for too long (and for no apparent reason). But I find it entertaining in all the ways that the flagship show doesn’t do it for me: I was a fan of Kim Dickens and Cliff Curtis already, so I was able to connect to and root for their characters early on (though Dickens’ Madison Clark is one tough lady to love ~ took me all season to warm up to her). I was also pleasantly surprised by Frank Dillane, Ruben Blades, and Colman Domingo. Even when the script is at its silliest, the actors really sell it.
Is it great television? It’s a zombie apocalypse show, so “greatness” may be relative. It’s madly entertaining, that’s for sure. I was perfectly happy to tune in every week even though I found myself occasionally yelling at the characters to stop being such self-absorbed dolts. And yeah, there was a moment when I declared that if they killed off Nick Clark I was dropping the show (the actor who plays him is just that amusing…seriously, he is), but I’m pretty well-entrenched now.
Does the show make for good paper dolls? Probably not (ha!); it’s the end of the world and fashion isn’t exactly a priority. Also, some of the characters literally wear the same clothes throughout the first season. Ironically, the character about whose wardrobe most people complained (quite vociferously) actually had more costumes than at least one other who got through the whole season without ever changing–more on that later.
Once again, I am trawling through episodes to figure out what people are wearing. Fortunately, as with Empire, there is also some internet help for deciphering some of the trendier bits from this show. Again, I’m not a huge stickler for the minutest details, but anything that helps to make my interpretations more accurate seems like a nice bonus.
And I’m drawing lots of dead people for this series because it amuses me. If an infected character has a name, I’m drawing them. I would have done this with The Walking Dead, but there’s no way I can catch up to six seasons of the flagship show. Since I am at ground zero with the spinoff (and since I actually enjoy it), it feels more manageable.
The schedule for these cut-outs won’t start until 2016. I have a lot of time before Season Two and I’m hedging a bit because it’s hard to know what state of undress to put the characters in. Have I mentioned how weird it is to draw real actors in underwear? I originally drew Rick in boxer shorts because that’s what he wore in the pilot of The Walking Dead, but it felt odd, so I slapped jeans on him. It’s just not a show where people typically take off their clothes. Similarly, in Fear the Walking Dead we only ever see Nick in any state of undress (unless you count Alicia–in her first appearance, she’s only wearing a bath towel). Anyway, it’s weird.
If you haven’t seen the show, expect SPOILERS. I am following far enough behind that I hope it won’t matter.
This will be a color set: The Walking Dead and its spinoff seem to love plaid and inking plaid is not something I have figured out. Also, what’s the point of zombie cutouts if you don’t cover them in bright red gore?
And yup, I’m going to try to do all these characters plus one more who didn’t make this photo shoot.
