Outta Nowhere

Nearly two weeks ago I was prepping for a trip back to South Dakota. I was organizing files I intended to use on a new graphic novel project. I figured I would be pretty busy but if there was any spare time I would be ready to go. Best laid plans and all.

The first diversion was a game called “Things…” by Hasbro. A Google search will turn up some sample questions. This game should be called is “Titles for your book…” We played the game on two separate occasions once with adults and again with my kids. Probably the most surprising comparison between the two games is that the answers to the questions were not all that different from each other. Innuendos? Now that was a different story but I came away from those two sessions with half a dozen answers/titles that are begging to be used.

The second diversion happened a few days later while I was drawing with sidewalk chalk. I was decorating the driveway of our hosts with mushrooms. Why mushrooms? My kids had discovered my first generation GameBoy and they have been playing Super Marioland like it was going out of style. I am not sure why they are so fascinated with the grayscale display or bad graphics but I am thankful for it now. I thought I would draw a few Mario-esque mushrooms to commemorate the rediscovery of retro gaming systems. As I was adding details to the mushrooms they started looking more and more like people.

That’s when I became consumed with this new project. I spent the rest of the day drawing new characters. Then I started with a story idea spawned from “Things…” It all came so easily that I couldn’t turn it away. I am hoping to get the preliminary art and dummy done in the next few days so I can start submitting this to agents and/or publishers.