Moon Town

[Og]

OK, so Moon Town is officially under way (under weigh?). Got the script for the first installment done, as well as my first designs.

This one is for the spaceship driven by the Bad Guys. Had a real hard time coming up with something that suited the strapped-together, pseudo-retro-future look-and-feel of the show. At the last minute, I came up with the idea of patterning it after a WWII fighter, and stuck the fin on the bottom. Looked like a gun, and for a bad guy, I call that two-for-one, so I am going to salute this design and get on with the modeling.

More bulletins as events warrant...

[Og]

Someone was asking me about my process, in light of the fact that they liked my ship design (above). I told them I'd been sketching and sketching for quite a while before I came up with anything I liked very much.

In digging through my sketches, I've discovered it's worse than I thought. I've been drawing, sketching, and designing stuff for Moon Town almost subconsciously (even on the margins of pages meant for other stuff, and notes done in meetings) for over two years now. There's practically not a scrap of paper in this house that doesn't have a spaceman, spaceship, or alien scribbled on it, and looking back, I can see I've been trying to puzzle something through.

Here's a typical batch of doodles, this one featuring spacemen and aliens:


I should point out that I'm sure the spaceman will look nothing like these sketches, and neither will his spaceship. The alien... well, I may be onto something here, but we'll see.

[Og]

More of my process... (or failed scribbles?) here is a page of sketches on the main character of Moon Town:



As you can see, there have been plenty of revisions over the years. This is partly due to the changing nature of Moon Town. It started off as sort of a tribute to the cool TV shows of the late 50s and early 60s - Rocketship XM, Thunderbirds, etc. At one point, it was really dark, sort of Blade Runner, future noir (sketches on this to come). And in the back of my head is Marc Craste and StudioAKA pinging at me to Keep It Simple, so you'll occasionally see little capsule-shaped characters with just a circle for a face.

[Og]

And here's my last sheet of sketches on the main character. Variations here include Whacky 60s Spaceman Flying Ace, Future Noir Caricature, Super Simple, and some strange cross between Buzz Lightyear and Mister Incredible. This character's name used to be Ace Tripline, and he was to be the Coolest Flyer in the Sky. (yawn)



But here you can also begin to see the design turning toward his new incarnation, a miner named Melvin. I thought it might be interesting to see one of these stories of interstellar intrigue not from the point of view of the Super Cool Flying Aces, but from someone like a miner or a space truck driver. That's where the story is going, anyway, and you can see the sketches turning that way. Or at least I can. Maybe you had to be there at the time? But there are pages and pages of sketches featuring this sort of schizophrenic design where sometimes it's Ace, and sometimes it's Melvin. *shrug* At some point they diverged and I was the last to know.

Also hidden amongst the many characters here is another character, a mechanic named Jimmy. Can you guess which sketch he is?

[willmj]

WOHO OG!!!!!! These look really great! Can't wait to see more! love the monster coming out of the moon crater! big claps from Wales!

[Muffin]

yeah, wow og! I love these! Especially the terraluna in colors.

[campy22]

these are super cool Og!
Really like them a lot.

[Og]

Thanks, you guys!

[Michael J. Dowswell]

Hey Steve,

As you know...I have a weak spot for sci-fi...

Love the big ship at the top, looking foward to seeing that in action.

I like your sketchs and the diversity of your sketches / emotion in them... lot of different styles in there also which is useful.

Looking forward to seeing more.

Best of luck from Scotland.

[Wei2k]

hey nice work! has a bit of that spaceman spiff feel to it

[willmj]

Hey Og, I am loving listening to your moon town podcasts while I'm eating my lunch! It's great to have you here in Wales!

[Og]

Willy - It's good to be in Wales. heh heh. Now if I can only get the hang of driving on the proper side of the street... Glad yer enjoyin' the casts. And happy to report that Moon Town is still rolling along. Thanks for listening.

Michael- thanks for the compliment. I'm anxious for everyone to see that big ship in the round... it's taken longer to build it than I thought, but I've also been a busy boy, so I can't complain.

Paul - Spaceman Spiff was one of my favorite parts of Calvin and Hobbes. I'm honored even to be mentioned in the same breath with Watterson. I'll try to live up to that...

Thanks, everyone!

[JakeKalsbeek]

I've been busy and haven't checked into the flight forums lately and I come back to this. This looks really cool Og. I totally agree that the spaceship has got a Bill Watterson feel to it with a little bit of Chris Sanders (or atleast some Lilo and Stitch) thrown in for good measure. But whatever the influences are it looks great.

I just downloaded the podcasts and I can't wait to listen to them.

[Nunumi]

hey you've got pretty cool character designs! Lots of personnality! Good luck with your project!!

[Og]

Jake - Ooh, thanks. Chris Sanders - that's a great compliment. I could only aspire.

Minini - I'm glad you like the character designs. I try to put a lot of thought into them.

Time for another sketchdump. Here are a bunch of designs for Quinn's Security Cruiser:

Sheet#1

Sheet#2

Sheet#3


I have several favorites, and am having a tiny problem deciding which one is best for the long haul. It's a good problem to have; usually I hate all the designs, so this is a luxury. One of the designs is a holdover from the Future Noir phase of Moon Town's development. It's a car that looks like a 1950s cruiser, and also looks a bit like a fedora. It fit Ace Tripline when he was a Rick Deckard-type, but now that we have a young, green female Security Guard in this role, the fedora no longer seems the proper visual metaphor.

Right now, I'm leaning hard toward the football-shaped sketch in the upper middle of Sheet#2, or the little bubble ship in the upper right corner of Sheet#2, or one of the Flying Cars on Sheet#1 (middle right, if you must know.)

Off to mull if over. Your comments and suggestions are welcome...