Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

The dramatic conclusion to the Bathorse saga. This is along the lines of the Calvin and Hobbes style of showing the point of view from inside the fantasy and then showing the reality. Of course, to me fly-masks for horses make them look like Batman masks. And I'm not the only one (a quick search on the Web provided some source material).

So once again, we have the dream and reality. And the "voice of reason" or perhaps mild annoyance or responsibility coming from off-screen. In the original version, I was thinking that Nitro (yes, that's his name) would have a thought balloon that simply had a carrot in it, kind of indicating he really didn't care much about what the silly humans did as long as it eventually led to a carrot. But then this variation kind of amused me more. Even though it's my fantasy (yes, the character looks nothing like me, but it represents my whimsy), Nitro does get into it and enjoys the game. A friend, Rob S., suggested a third version, which I like but don't have time to draw. In it, there'd be someone coming into the frame at the end (not sure if it'd be a person or animal), dressed as The Joker asking, "Why the long face?" Comedy gold.

Once again, this was all digitally generated (after an initial sketch on paper). Penciled in photoshop, inked in Illustrator, colored in Photoshop. Yesterday's one was intentionally left as fairly flat colors. Today's had a little more shading, although I did throw that together very quickly. I think I'm finally getting more comfortable making speech balloon tails.