Category: The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead Paper Dolls: Michonne’s Pets

twd04_walker_pets_thumbThis is the final plate I made for the regular Walking Dead series. I wanted to make sure to include some walkers and these two guys are probably two of the most well-known. Mike and Terry knew Michonne before they were “turned” and she used them as camouflage so that she could travel without being harassed. In order to render them harmless, she removed their arms and jaws (pretty gruesome!).

I was going to draw their shirts and the backpacks they carried (Michonne used them to haul supplies), but I never got around to it. But I did add chains, which can go around their necks just for kicks.

Working on this series was fun, but harder than I expected. A good lesson in taking on cultural icons “just because”. When I don’t feel absolutely passionate, staying on focus is difficult.

[Click this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of these costumes]

Next week, I’ll start posting plates from Fear the Walking Dead (in full color). I continue to fall behind and I’ve honestly gotten lazy about it, but I’m determined to get the first season completed before Season 2 starts in April.

The Walking Dead Paper Dolls: Michonne’s Closet

twd07_michonne_thumbWelcome to the kick-off of Fear Friday!

Friday will be reserved for things that make you skin crawl. The current paper doll sets I will be posting are the last two plates of The Walking Dead and then the plates of the spin-off show, Fear the Walking Dead.

Today we have a few outfits for Michonne. Of the three characters I did for this show, Michonne was the hardest to find good costume variations. I finally gave up and reproduced her outfit from the comic book series. It feels a little cheaty, but I was tired of flipping through pictures and I wanted to get this series wrapped up.

On a show full of Mary Sue-ish characters, Michonne strikes me as the most Mary Sue-ish of all. I have yet to feel like she’s a real person at all (and probably never will). She’s still cool, though, and Danai Gurira, who plays her, is awesome.

[Click this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of these costumes]

You can find the plate with Michonne by clicking on her tag below, or click The Walking Dead category link to see all of the plates in this series.

The Walking Dead Paper Dolls: Daryl Dixon’s Closet

twd06_daryl_thumbI’ve still got two more plates of the Walking Dead stuff after this, which, even though I only drew them last month they already feel “old”. It’s the problem with letting stuff sit around. By the time I get to posting, I want something new and shiny. But that’s okay. We’ll be done with these by the end of the year and there’s plenty of new and shiny to come.

I don’t think Daryl ever bathes, so I was surprised to find variations on his costumes at all, but early on in the series he hadn’t established his look, so there were articles of clothing other than his signature leather vest. Once again, I struggled with the weapons for this (except the axe; I enjoyed that). Also had a hard time squeezing all these on the page, so it’s a little awkward.

Had a moment late last night thinking, gee, I’m doing such a better job on the Fear the Walking Dead characters I feel kind of guilty for short-shrifting these. And then I got into a spin about whether I should redo them all. And then I got over it. Because life is short.

[Click this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of these costumes]

You can find the plate with Daryl by clicking on his tag below, or click The Walking Dead category link to see all of the plates in this series.

The Walking Dead Paper Dolls: Rick Grimes’ Closet

twd05_rick_thumbI’m pretty sure Rick’s been wearing the same dirty t-shirt for all of Season Six of The Walking Dead (pretty typical of this series: people don’t change their clothes much given the whole apocalypse thing).

Nevertheless, each season it seems Rick finds a new jacket, at least. So here are a variety of them from Seasons 1-5.  If you know the show, hopefully you recognize the pieces. Yeah, I’m being super-lazy about these plates in terms of identifying and describing because, again, I made these dolls off-handedly for fans (of which I am not).

I pinky-swear to take more care with the sets I’m now working on. Apologies to Walking Dead fans out there.

That’s all I’ve got for Rick. Each of these characters has just one plate of costumes. The apocalypse is a real bear on fashion. If you like, you can print multiple sheets and color them differently to pretend Rick has a whole closet of variations (or maybe draw your own ~ and share!).

[Click this link or the image to download a printable .pdf of these costumes]

You can find the plate with Rick by clicking on his tag below, or click The Walking Dead category link to see all of the plates in this series.

The Walking Dead Paper Dolls: Michonne

twd03_michonne_thumbMichonne is quite the formidable character on The Walking Dead. But of the three characters I’ve done for this series, she was probably the easiest (though, again, drawing her head took me three tries).

I appreciate that she’s a character we haven’t really seen in television before (at least not to my recollection), though she’s a stretch to the credibility overall (because how many people do you know become expert katana-wielders overnight?). But I digress. She’s was fun to work with and I used her for my initial coloring experiment, which was likewise a hoot.

I have a plate of additional costumes for her (I have additional plates for each of the characters), which I will maybe post on some off-days through the rest of the year or alternate with other things in the works. I want to get other stuff rolling and if I only post Walking Dead dolls, that’ll fill the schedule until Christmas.

[Click here or on the image to
download a printable .pdf]

Note: once I’ve posted the additional costume plates, I think I’m done with this series.

I know the show has tons of other characters, but these were seriously hard to do for me since I’m not a devotee of the series–and finding clear, usable source images for the costumes was surprisingly difficult. Maybe I can be convinced to do more if Season 6 stops sucking or someone gives me a compelling reason to pursue it.

If it’s any consolation, I am making paper dolls of the characters from the spinoff show, Fear the Walking Dead (more on that later). So there will be plenty of zombie fun in the new year to come.

The Walking Dead Paper Dolls: Daryl Dixon

twd02_daryl_thumbOf all the characters in The Walking Dead, drawing Daryl’s given me the most overall fits (and that’s saying something given how much trouble Rick was). I had to draw his head three times before I settled (once again), but I had to draw his body three times too. And then there’s the matter of that crossbow. I drew two different pieces with the bow (only one of which is on this plate). Let me just say I don’t ever want to have to draw another crossbow so long as I live, if it can be helped.

Both of the pieces I included on this plate are early costumes before the vest became ubiquitous–but don’t worry, I’ll include that too on a subsequent plate. I also tried to give him a sort of middle-ground hairstyle between the short crop he had at the beginning of the series and the crazy long greasy thing he’s got going on nowadays. The first two versions both showed his ears, but neither of them looked right–I just couldn’t get it to work, so I had to cover them.

I do like Daryl as a character, though he kinda hasn’t had anything interesting to do on the show for a while and there’s rampant speculation that he’s on the chopping block to be killed. As he’s not a character from the original comic book source, he’s a bit of a wild card, but he’s also a fan-favorite, so I’m interested to see which way he goes.

[Click here or on the image to download a printable .pdf]

The Walking Dead Paper Dolls: Rick Grimes

twd01_rick_thumbI almost feel like this one’s a cheat: Rick Grimes and his sheriff’s uniform. But it kind of had to be done, I guess. I also feel like I have to reiterate that I am making The Walking Dead dolls to amuse fan friends, which has been really interesting for me–typically I only ever make dolls for myself and so I feel passionate about the subjects. A very strong ambivalence can be passion, I suppose. Let’s just say the challenge has been good, but definitely a challenge.

At any rate, I hope the results please you. One of the nice things about these being black and white is that you get to dirty Rick up to your heart’s content: go ahead: splatter some blood on him, make him good and filthy. Also, be sure to draw lots of bruises and band-aids on his face if you feel so inclined.

I’ll tell you what, though: it took me about seven stabs to get that face to look anything like Andrew Lincoln. To be honest, I think it’s passable, but I really just gave in to “close enough for government work”. I can occasionally capture an actor’s likeness, but it’s definitely not one of my strong suits and something I am really working on. I don’t want to be a perfectionist too much about it, though, or else I’ll never get anything done. I struggled similarly with Daryl and Michonne. Everything is a learning process.

I’m also aware that the pose is a little weird. I had in mind a reason for putting him like this (so that he could shoulder a rifle and hold a pistol), but I admit it looks funny. The crooked way he’s holding that pistol is intentional, however: the character can’t seem to hold his gun straight in the series ~ which is the subject of many very silly memes. Again, at some point I just had to stop fussing with it and cut bait if you know what I mean.

[Click here or on the image to download a printable .pdf]

 

My Quixotic Relationship with The Walking Dead

twd_templateLast night’s episode of The Walking Dead is an excellent example of why I continue to ask myself what is the point of watching this show? S6E4 “Here’s Not Here” was 90 minutes of wind-blowing-through-the-trees zen psychobabble about man’s humanity with a character who, while interesting, isn’t all that compelling to me personally. So I sat and watched and rooted for Tabitha the goat and of course it was just one long slog of bleakness interspersed with 9th grade philosophical blithering. Reactions around the web are polarized on this episode, so I know I’m not just being harsh.

I’ve never been much into zombies, but I am a ghoul at heart, so by all accounts I should love this show. And yet it passed three seasons without me giving it more than a cursory thought. Then people started telling me to watch it, and by that time it had become such a phenomenon, I felt compelled to resist.

But I didn’t. I watch the first two seasons and decided it just wasn’t for me. I liked Glenn and Daryl (and even Rick sometimes when he wasn’t being insufferable), but I could barely name anyone else in the cast and I wasn’t moved when they started dying off. Also, I dreaded every moment Lori appeared on the screen with the passion of a thousand suns.

I was begged by my friends to persevere, I was promised grisliness and the death of the monstrous Lori. I trudged onward, but once Carl put his momma down, I’d had enough.

Two more seasons passed. A new set of people began nagging me to watch the show. A spinoff (Fear the Walking Dead) was coming and I decided to get in on the first season of that thinking maybe the problem with how I felt about the flagship show was binge-fatigue. It’s a lot easier to wear yourself out on the redundancy of a program when you try to cram multiple seasons into a couple of weeks’ worth of watching.

So I tried picking up where I left off with The Walking Dead in season 4. I was promised it got better (“There’s cannibals! You like cannibals!” ~ well, yeah, that’s true). Half-heartedly I managed to get through about half of season four (the back half), and random episodes throughout season 5. As far as I’m concerned, I’m as caught up as I’m ever going to get and Season 6 is quickly losing me.

stuff_thangsSo why am I telling you this? And why am I making paper dolls for a series about which I feel so ambivolent?

The Walking Dead has a very loyal and very vocal fanbase. They also generally have a good sense of humor about what’s absurd in the program. Not only that, but the people associated with producing the show have a love for it (the actors seem to enjoy themselves) and that’s evident as well. In response to those things, I can appreciate the series on a lot of levels even if I don’t share the intensity of adoration toward it. So I’ve made a handful of paper dolls for those fans (including my friends) to contribute to the goodwill of the phenomenon. It is, after all, a fairy tale success: skyrocketing from the obscurity of what began as a little creator-owned black and white comic book (now surpassing 145 issues and outselling many of the major superhero books).

There are a handful of paper dolls of The Walking Dead characters out there already. You can find them here:

Don’t expect anything too fancy from me with these. I’ll likely only make Rick, Daryl, and Michonne (they’re the ones I’ve drawn so far), with a couple of plates for costumes and a zombie or two. Yeah, I know I’m not supposed to call them zombies, but whatever.

Expect to start seeing plates for this series this coming Thursday. I’m having a devil of a time drawing Daryl’s silly crossbow, but I should be able to post Rick while I figure it out.