Growing up Gemmy

I got an amazing Christmas gift from home of some of my old drawings including the very beginnings of Gemmy and crew.

Well, back in the day when I first conceived of Gemmy and Po there was one big difference: His name was Richard. It started as an idea for a class project and spun itself into a whole world of characters for my alter ego to inhabit and indulge my thirst for adventure (and saving the Universe). I should point out that I still misspell 'guardian' without spell check. This was done when I was 13 around 1995.

Over time 'Richard Guardian of the Universe' split off into two alternate reality versions of the same character: Richard the Great and The Mighty Orange-Peel. RTG carried the back pack and the sword and TMOP kept the cool powers.

RTG lived in a far off land and had adventures with his pals (Pendleton Ward and I must have shared a brain as children because Adventure Time is basically everything I wanted RTG to be). TMOP became known to me mostly just as 'Opeel' or 'O' and so the adventures that would become the story of Gemmy began. He got the family, the power with great responsibility, the genius intellect and all the characters that you'd come to know in Emersus Project.

Opeel I feel grew up with me. His look changed as much as mine did as I began to develop and experiment with drawing styles. The whole cast got makeovers and haircuts as often as I did as a teenager including, eventually, the bright blue streak at the front that signified the awakening of his powers.

   

Eventually, I finally decided to write down Opeel's story formally and at the time the best way I thought to do it was in comic book form. So, around 1999/2000 I sat down and started to sketch out the story of Richard Doodles (aka The Mighty Orange Peel). What strikes me most is how many details from the story all those years ago made it into what became Gemmy's story.

When Opeel became Gemmy 2010

You can see (above) I'd named Opeel's hometown 'Banjo Island City which became Bansho Island City. The sisters were there, Mhetli still looks exactly the same, even Po was part of the gang. There were even Rhe'zans! A few characters didn't make it to Gemmy's world like Mr Cornball (the blue guy like Po but with a green helmet) and Sem was then 'Ben'. But Sem retained Ben's characteristic multicoloured hair and sports jersey. Also, Gemmy has a nose. I never drew Opeel with a nose until he became Gemmy. Why? I don't know. There's probably any number of psychological interpretations about self-identity and what not. But the honest answer is, Opeel was always just an idea. I liked him being other-worldly and not a real person. It wasn't until I grew up that Gemmy became 'Gemmy' - a real person, concrete with a story all his own, someone I'd grown up with, instead of 'Richard Doodles' - a shadow of myself.

So, without further ado, here is Gemmy's early beginnings in the (first draft) comic of the 'The Mighty Orange Peel' from 1999. See if you can spot the beginnings of what became 'Black Star'.

  

   

  

Enjoy!
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Fan boy

I've been thinking a lot about 'fan art' - fan art being your own interpretation of someone else's characters or art - not just straight copying. The hoity-toity professional in me thinks, 'how sad a thing it is to do fan art?' but then I realised, don't we all start out as fan artists?

As a kid I remember spending hours copying the art of my favourite cartoons and comics until I could draw the characters perfectly from memory. It was a point of pride that I could draw Darkwing Duck flawlessly. Then as I got older I began copying the styles of my favourite comics. It started with anime and the art of Akira Toriyama and then gradually moved back to comic book art. It was the work of Chris Bachalo on Uncanny X-Men #356 in the late 90s that brought me back to Marvel (I remember seeing this issue on the comics rack in Walgreens and just needing to buy it). From there I found inspiration in the likes of Joe Madureira (AoA), Humberto Ramos (Runaways and X-Men), Carlos Pacheco and Salvador Larroca (particularly Xtreme X-Men and his pencil with no inking style) that kept me coming back to Marvel and subsequently some their side projects ('Out There' and 'Battlechasers').

This drawing of Gemmy (before he was even Gemmy) was inspired by/ripped off from X-men #76 cover, 1998.

Ballpoint pen & colour pencil - '98

In particular, it was Bachalo and Pacheco's treatment of Marrow (originally created by Madureira) as a character, and the darker edge she brought to the X-Men that I responded to. Bachalo's cartoony style particularly worked with the exaggerated grotesqueness of her powers as well as some of the other newer X-Men like Maggot.

It was with Marrow that I ventured into my first proper 'fan art' and entered a competition to showcase her new look. I totes should have won but did not. Here's one that was not entered in the competition because it was of her 'old look' before she got control of her powers.

Pencil on paper - '99

Later, it was artists like Tony Diterlizzi (Spiderwick Chronicles, Wondla) and D. M. Cornish (Monster Blood Tattoo) who peaked my interest as author/illustrator and made me see that it's possible to be both (I've found that I don't have the patience or sensibility to draw graphic novels).

So, once I did my Mr Onion drawing it made me think, what other artists and images currently occupy my artistic mind?

At the moment, one of my favourite cartoons is Adventure Time. It reminds me of being a kid (I remember creating characters very similar. I think Pen Ward may have got a hold of my sketch books from middle school). The stories captivate and entertain me as I think most little boys have adventure time in their head, escaping to worlds where you flit between braving dungeons and rescuing princesses. So, I've been playing around sketching and reinterpreting my favourite characters from the show (also I can play some of the songs from the show on my uke). Here are some sketches of Finn and Jake and Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen (drawn with my bubblegum scented pencil). Might finish them off later on.

Finn and Jake

Bubblegum and Marceline 

Enjoy!
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