Category: Fear the Walking Dead

Fear the Walking Dead: Madison & Travis

We interrupt our scheduled Force Friday to bring you a special request! I don’t typically do requests because my tastes are particular. Often things other people find interesting aren’t of any special interest to me. However, when I say I’m going to do a set of dolls and then don’t do them–and then a reader very kindly asks me if I ever will? Well, then I feel like I should.

Especially when it’s a simple matter of scanning and plating up stuff that’s been sitting around since 2015 (eek!). I could have posted these a lot sooner, but I had to dig them up, I had to ink Madison’s clothes, paint both Madison’s and Travis’ wardrobes, scan them, plate them, pdf them, and get them uploaded. And I’m a slow and lazy creature.

But here they are! Special just for Amy @TV_Teenager. In truth, I made their entire Season One wardrobes, but I just don’t have the time to paint all that. So here’s the dolls and some starter pieces, and for people who want to play with them, they can fill in the gaps.

Fear the Walking Dead has its moments as a show, but first half of the second season really kind of turned me off, which is why this set perished on the vine. They killed a bunch of characters I liked, and I’m frustrated with its Walking Dead-style nightmare wind-chiming pacing. There’s also entirely too much idiotic character decision-making. Perhaps the Season Two finale’s death ought to bring that under control (along with the too-much whining).

Madison and Travis are still cool though. So here they are!

[As always, click each image to download a printable .pdf!]

Fear the Walking Dead: Zombies [Part 3]

ftwd_03_paint_thumbMy original goal with the Fear the Walking Dead zombies/infected was to build a whole army of these scary things over the course of the show. I was specifically choosing the ones who had names. There were plenty of other crawlies in Season One, but they were all nameless munchers. I wanted to try to keep the monsters more personalized.

I was fairly slavish about detail on this series. There was plenty of reference to work from. I had to improvise some (like Kimberly’s shoes–we never see her feet). Otherwise, I tried to make things pretty accurate.

Season Two concluded a couple of weeks ago. Given that I didn’t finish Season One, it’s not likely I will pursue this. The show is okay–it has its moments, but it’s lost its new car smell in terms of making paper dolls. I may yet finish some of the dolls. Liza and Nick are done; Travis, Madison, Ofelia, and Daniel are kinda half-done.  The rest I drafted, but never painted (Chris, Alicia, and Strand). It’s doubtful I will go back to those.

So last/not least: meet Susan and Kimberly. emoji_scared
And have a Happy Halloween!

[Click the picture to download the plate, or the Fear the Walking Dead tag to see related posts.]

 

Fear the Walking Dead: Zombies [Part 2]

ftwd_02_paint_thumbMore not-zombies, as promised, from Season One of Fear the Walking Dead.

Dredging these up has reminded me how labor-intensive they were. For this series and Empire I was doing all watercolor work. Which I absolutely love, don’t get me wrong. But it is intensive. Something made with markers (especially something like Judy) can travel easy, it’s not messy, etc. But with paint you need a fairly fixed workspace, you need water, you need a bigger variety of tools, etc.

With these I at least did blackline inks. I intended to do “color your own” plates for the series, but it literally doubles the work. And after feeling the burn from the Star Wars dolls, I decided I’m much too lazy for that. But I already made the uncolored plates for the “infected”, so I might share them Halloween day.

The guy on the right is my favorite. He’s also the goriest, so you’ve now seen the worst. Tomorrow’s zombies infected are much tamer, I promise.

Today: meet Artie and Peter.

[Click on the picture to download the plate, or on the Fear the Walking Dead tag to see related posts.]

 

Fear the Walking Dead: Zombies [Part 1]

ftwd_01_paint_thumbLast fall, I worked on a whole series of paper dolls for the AMC spin-off Fear the Walking Dead. I did a lot of work, but I didn’t finish.  It wouldn’t take much to complete the dolls I’ve actually drafted, so I might: just to make sure I don’t drop stuff like this regularly (it’s a very bad habit). I wouldn’t want zombies to come eat my brains for not following through.

So for Halloween over the next three days I thought I would post the Season One zombies. Oh, I forgot, we’re not supposed to call them “zombies”, they’re “infected”. Whatever. I made six infected characters (all the ones we have names for in the series). They aren’t really paper dolls so much as cut-outs since they don’t have outfits or accessories. But they are great companion pieces and I had waaaaay too much fun making them.

I like ghoulish things, but totally understand if this is too much for you, gentle readers. You might want to skip the two posts that follow as it will be more of the same. I promise November will be a kinder month with prettier dolls ~ ha!

For today: meet Gloria and Calvin.

[Click on the picture to download the plate, or on the Fear the Walking Dead tag to see related posts.]

So Many Irons; So Much Fire

desk_12_04_15Back in ye olden times I kept a livejournal where I periodically posted pictures of the evolving state of my desk. The links to those pictures are gone now, though I have the originals on my computer. It was fun to record the progression of my whims over time, so I thought I would start anew.

I probably have too many disparate series to work on, but it’s fun to give my desk over to them for now.

I’m trying to figure out a way to post plates that makes sense (and is reasonably paced). While I have a small buffer, I can see burning through it quick.

The Walking Dead has 7 plates (four of which have been posted) and then it’s pretty much done. Judy is on-going with 4 plates ready in the queue for Judy Tuesdays (I’ll work on Vol. 29 over Christmas). Meanwhile, I’m concurrently working on three other series.

I’m painting two of those series (Empire and Fear the Walking Dead [FTWD]), which always takes more time than I expect. FTWD is a big set (9 people, 6 zombies, and I don’t have a clothing count yet). Each character only has a plate or two of clothing, however, and much of it is pretty straight-forward (aside from a handful of prints and plaids). I expect it will be about 25-27 plates, of which I’ve drawn a lot but painted very little at this point.

palette_12_04_15Empire, despite only doing 2 characters, is intensive because Cookie’s closet is a bottomless pit of styles and colors (the woman goes through 4+ costumes every episode). Because of her, I had to mix pink paint Thursday night–might have been a first for me.

I’m enjoying doing new things and challenging myself to not get too sloppy about things I don’t want to do. I flirted with the idea of putting tabs on the clothing (something to which I’ve always been averse), then I remembered how much space tabs take up on the page. I did, however, push myself to do something about my horror of little shoes floating around. After much shoe-envy over other paper doll artists’ blogs, I came up with something I can live with.

The third series I have percolating is comic-book related. I’m keeping it simple by coloring it with markers (which works well for comics). I finished drawing and coloring two characters last night, but haven’t made any clothes yet.

As usual, I’ve probably deep-ended in the ambition pool, but I’m okay if some of these are slow to roll out. I’m not even worried about the FTWD stuff because the show is in hiatus and won’t be back until late Spring at the earliest. I’d like to have half the plates finished before I even start posting it.

I’d like to start posting Empire next week as my regular Thursday post for now.

And I’m not adding any more series to the queue, though I’m wildly tempted.

Fear the Walking Dead : the Horrors of Plaid

plaidsI like a good challenge now and then, but it’s equally true that I’m notoriously lazy. I’m working on drafting clothing for the Fear the Walking Dead characters and finding it a balance of both those worlds. This is a universe where people wear a lot of straight basics: t-shirts, sports coats, jeans, that sort of thing. But it’s also a show full of very particular prints and, worst of all worlds: lots of plaid.

Do men really wear this much plaid these days? Especially in California? It seems so 1990s. But then I guess all sorts of retro is in these days.

Fortunately the horror of plaids is largely restricted to one character, Travis. Each of the Clark children (Alicia and Nick) has at least one plaid of their own, as does one zombie critter. All told it’s about 6 or 7 plaid pieces that I have to get through. It could definitely be a lot worse.

And who knows? Maybe I will come to love painting plaid. It’s highly doubtful, but there’s always a chance that it will be a lot easier than I expect. At least I have plenty of reference pictures. And believe me, I’m not going to be super-particular about the exact patterns.

Between the plaids on this show and animal prints on Empire, I’m really wandering into new territories all over the place. Learning new stuff is never a bad thing. I’m looking forward to how these will turn out.

Fear the Walking Dead and Future Plans

ftwd_templateThe 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.

cast_promo2If 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.