VEAL Blog

Hi all and welcome to VealBlog!

Since this is my first post, I thought I’d take some time to explain the purpose of this website and give you a smidge of insight as to what VealBlog actually is. The VealBlog is a way of keeping track of my creation process, from the very beginning all the way through to the release of the first page of my webcomic “Veal”. I figure that it was an excellent way of organizing my thoughts, sharing them with the world and preparing me to keep an online publication of my work. On that note I will should be making posts here 4-5 times a week. It’s also a place where; I hope, to get feedback from various peoples interested in the idea of my webcomic or perhaps want to share in the creative experience.

After all – no one creates in a vacuum, certainly not me. So in order to fully realize this idea, I want to get feedback and test ideas. So who better than the entire world right? As this Blog goes on, I will post tidbits of information about creating various characters, peoples, looks, etc… Basically everything from the ground up. While you won’t know how it exactly fits together till I release the webcomic itself, you’ll have a god idea of what to expect. In theory.

Now as to “Veal” the webcomic; about two years ago, I came up with this weird idea of a talking cow walking around and more less scaring the tar out of folks and giving everyone a good laugh. This was on the heels of me making the decision that my next project I would work on – would be something completely my own.  So while washing dishes – the inkling of this idea came to me. What if Cows could talk? Or specifically one cow – all of a sudden, and just started acting like anyone else. How would we handle that?

It seemed like a strong idea, but I didn’t want to have this anthropomorphized cow running. It just didn’t feel like me. So I started to ponder the various ideas of how I could make the idea more “me”. I like to try and turn things on its ear to see it from a different perspective so I went at making the cow something more relatable for us. And then it hit me. What if humans were the cows? What if people ate us? What if we were killed by the thousands daily? And the idea started to come together. It went from this very lighthearted story to a funny, but darker tale that will (I hope) turn the mirror on ourselves which is what all great fiction tries to do usually.

So yes, Veal is about a young man who is part of a herd of humans who are about to be harvested. Of course though – the twist is when our main character actually escapes and when asked what his name is – he tells them the only thing he has ever been identified by: Veal.

So as you can see – it’s a bit different, but has some very interesting merit. And since this is also the place where I will share some of my very fledgling ideas, let’s start with Veal himself. I have been working on this idea for so long, that it’s come time to start laying out what Veal looks like exactly. I know he will start off Bald (to be explained later) and that he will be fairly attractive for a human. I also know that he will be of an ethnicity that is not strictly white. We see so many heroes today in sci-fi and fiction in general that I figured it’s time to give the Asians, Hispanics, Indian, Native Americans, and Africans a shot at being the awesome guy.

Below are some quick red pencil sketches of Veal in a “Disney” style.  I’m still hashing out the exact style this will be drawn in – but I figured you have to start somewhere and I really enjoyed the design work from Atlantis the Lost Empire. So you may notice a similar motif with the faces. I also did some color tests as well to see what might look best for Veal. Let me know what you think!

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