Lemcorp Character Designs

In my last post I announced Lemcorp, the lemonade stand that's competing with Lemon Inc.. These are the employees of Lemcorp. From top left to bottom right they are: Rachel, Alison,
Jane, Becky, and Brenda. None of their names are final yet. Names are hard.

-Tim

Update: Note that I've already changed their names once since I first posted this. This just proves that names are hard.

The Concept of Lemon Inc. and a Full Colour Lemon Inc. Illustration

I have neglected to explain what this comic strip is actually about besides the brief description on the sidebar. I wanted to wait until we had the website ready to explain the concept in full detail but since I've got this blog going I think I should probably elaborate a little since these posts probably don't make a lot of sense to you. So, here it is: Lemon Inc. is (or will be) a comic about childhood innocence colliding with corporate coruption. Andy, a deadly serious seven-year-old opens up a Lemonade stand with his naive friend and business partner, Jeff, and runs it as if it was an office, thus creating the company, Lemon Inc. He hires other kids as employees including Tommy, a cynical kid who doesn't understand why he is working at the age of seven, Craig, who has severe anger management problems, and Derek, who thinks he's really smart but is a complete idiot and ends up ruining all the lemonade through botched experiments. Andy also employs his stuffed animals: Elephanté the elephant as a salesman, and Minsky the monkey as his secretary. However Andy didn't expect a bunch of girls to open up a competing lemonade stand: Lemcorp. Lemcorp is run by Rachel, a seven-year-old female rights activist. Her employees include Becky, a bubblely girl that is always irritatingly happy and sweet, Alison, a quirky and obsessive girl, Jane, an incredibly calm girl, and Brenda who is smarter than everyone else.

Below is the colour version of the image I inked in the previous post. It's the first full colour image I have drawn for Lemon Inc. that has all the characters (except Elephanté and Minsky, unfortunately who wouldn't fit) and a background in it. I feel that it captures many of the elements of the comic.

Lemon Inc Cast, originally uploaded by timlai.

I think it looks pretty good. The colouring is pretty clean looking. However I realized that the perspective in the background doesn't work very well. We intend to put this image into a sort of Flash application that would show several images relating to each of our comics. We would also put this text over it: Lemon Inc. Updates on (whenever I decide to update), and then we would add a witty slogan over it. Here's one that I came up with:

When life gives us lemons, we make lemonade.

Like always, you can tell me what you think of the image and the concept by leaving comments or sending me a tweet on Twitter.

-Tim

"Lemon Inking"

This is an image I drew for the flash image on the official site. Here's a video of me inking it:

This is the first time I've ever really inked something before with real ink, (as opposed to on the computer) with the exception of an experiment or two. Therefore let me make it very clear that this is NOT a tutorial and nor is anything you see on any of our blogs. We are far too inexperienced to be giving out any advice at this point. This is more just a look at how I'm Inking right now for anyone who's interested in that kind of thing or has any suggestions for me. Here are some pics of my workspace:

This is the image before I inked it.
This is the ink and pen I'm using. Both are Speedball.
I'm using bristol board. I usually just use flimsy printer paper that gets ripped and crinkled.

Here is the finished inked image. I kept accidentally smuging the ink with my hand as I inked and had to cover the smuges up with white paint but I think it looks pretty good.

Here are some closeups!
Andy!
Derek!
Craig!

Jeff!
...and Tommy!

-Tim