Xmas Cards/Books

Last year when I finished my 2013 Xmas Card/Book, I swore it would be the last one. And I've kept that oath— there won't be a card/book this year. 

It's not that I don't enjoy making them, you understand. They're fun to draw, but they're an enormous amount of work. Every year they take longer and longer to create. I started last year's book in August and worked on it virtually every day for five months and still barely finished it in time for the holiday. I just don't think I have another one in me.

One of these days I ought to look into selling a collection of these stories.

Since there won't be a card/book this year, enjoy this look back at previous efforts.

Santa Claus Vs. Anti Claus

This is the first card I did, way back in 2008. This one actually is a simple greeting card rather than a book, consisting of a single sheet folded in half.

Obviously the front is based on vintage boxing posters, the kind you'd see in the early 1900s. I had a lot of fun writing the old-time copy. 

Anti-Claus' choice of weaponry still bugs me. Why a crowbar? I still don't know. Maybe I was trying to find a weapon that kind of looked like a candy cane? I should have painted stripes on it to sell that idea better. As you can probably tell I'm never satisfied with my own work.

I guess the aging effects were successful. I sent one to my boss at the time, and when he saw it he accused his wife of bending the corner when she took it out of the envelope!

Gronkoor, The Monster Who Hated Christmas And Stomped On All The Shoppers He Saw

A terrifying tale of man vs. nature in the style of Gozilla and other kaiju films. Or maybe it's just a story about a monster who's not all bad, I don't know.

This was the first card/book that I did, in the style of Little Golden Books. It's the shortest of all of the books, consisting of a scant eight pages. 

Originally it was going to be just a card like the Anti Claus one, and I was going to draw the cover only. Then I thought up an actual story and it grew into an actual book.

I burned off a week of vacation days at the beginning of November 2009 (I always end up with a surplus of time off at the end of the year) and spent the whole time working on this card/book. Those eight pages took a long time, mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. I learned to streamline the process in subsequent years.

Gronkorr Paper Craft Model

I also made a paper model of the Gronkorr character, which you can print and assemble. This was my first attempt at such a thing.

Santataur Is Comin' To Town

An unsettling and unflinching look at body horror and mutation, as Santa Claus transforms himself into a half human, half reindeer chimera.

This is my favorite of all the cards/slash books I've done. The story and art really came together this time, if I do say so myself. 

Looking back, I honestly have no idea how I was able to finish this one in time for Xmas. I didn't even start on it until midway through November! This one was bigger than the previous card/book, clocking in at twelve pages. It was also much more complicated, featuring more characters and detailed backgrounds. 

And to top it all off, I had a second job in 2010 and was working around sixty hours per week. Somehow I managed to write and draw the entire thing in a month! 

Maybe it came out well because I didn't have a lot of time? I couldn't afford to screw around and had to make art and writing decisions quickly. Quite often stress fuels creativity.

I wish I had the time and resources to make an animated holiday special of this story, like the Rankin-Bass shows.

The Space Dweebs Vs. Space Santa

It's Xmas meets technology in this wacky story of irresponsible science nerds run amok!

Like Santataur, this one started out life as a drawing, and I later wrote a story around the characters and turned it into a card/book.

Unfortunately I had way more story than space. The original version clocked in at twenty pages. I had to do a lot of slashing and condensing and rewriting to get it down to a more manageable twelve.

I was also going through a downsizing trauma at the time, which kind of put a damper on my enthusiasm for the project. But I started on it anyway, and it turned out to be good therapy. Working on the Space Dweebs kept my mind off my job woes.

Santa Claus, The Yeti And The Really Bad Decision

An apocalyptic account of Man vs. Nature, as the Earth is doomed by one man's hubris.

I sound like a broken record, but this was another card/slash book that was finished at the last minute. It's a well known law of graphic design— a project will always expand to fill the available time. 

Adding to the lengthy production time was the fact that I went on a family vacation in the middle of it, in addition to working on a massive freelance project at the same time.

I remember I started drawing the pages before I had all the details nailed down, so a lot of elements were created on the fly. Things like the hot young version of Mrs. Claus, the violent Elf names and the Yetis' ability to shoot ice rays.

It's dangerous to work that way, but it all turned out OK this time.

Dr. Killdeath & Count Gothula's Venomous Christmas

A sordid saga of revenge and brinkmanship as two powerful titans battle to the death as the rest of the planet looks on helplessly.

Last year's card/book was a massive twenty four pages, the longest I'd ever attempted. I knew it was gonna be a whopper, so I started extra early. Didn't matter. I still barely finished it by Xmas.

This story is based on classic Looney Tunes cartoons, the kind where the characters try to kill one another in an ever-escalating series of attacks. Even with the extra page count I still had more ideas than space, and had to pare down the number of attacks. Ah well.

Dr. Killdeath Paper Craft Model

I also made a Dr. Killdeath paper model. It's probably the most complicated one I've done so far. I'll probably make one of Count Gothula one of these days, as soon as I figure out how to construct a decent round head.

So there you go, a rundown of all the Xmas Card/Books I've made the past few years. Apologies to anyone who was expecting a new one this year. Who knows, maybe after I've had some time away from them I'll get the itch to create some more.

Santa Claus, The Yeti And The Really Bad Decision: Behind The Scenes

Now that my 2012 Christmas Card Slash Book is finally finished, I thought I'd post a behind the scenes look at how I made it for the three or four people out there who may be interested in long-winded explanations of mildly interesting topics.

Here we see my sketch for the cover next to the finished product. I went into much more detail than normal on this sketch for some reason. Usually my sketches are way simpler and, well, more sketchy.

I guess spending more time on the sketch paid off, as the final cover is pretty darn close.

I drew the Yeti as silhouettes on the cover because I wanted to save their big reveal for the inside.

You'll note that the title in the sketch is a bit different than the final one. I went through many, many titles before finally setting on one. Originally it was going to be called Santa Vs. The Yeti, but that seemed kind of meh to me, plus last year's card was called The Space Dweebs Vs. Space Santa, so I didn't want to use another "versus" title so soon.

After much list making and gnashing of teeth I eventually went with a title that had a The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe vibe (yikes, did I just say "vibe?").  At the last minute I changed "questionable" to "really bad." Why? I dunno, it just sounded better.

The title was created in InDesign because it's easier to handle text there than in Photoshop, plus I don't think it can set text on a curve like InDesign can.

Lastly, the cover elements like the header, price and the gold strip at the left? They're all reused from last year's book. Hey, if it ain't broke, why waste time recreating them, emirate?

Next up was the title page. Nothing much to say about it, it's just a two color line drawing. The title's reused from the cover of course, just recolored. 

That's a pretty rough sketch there, and indicative of how they usually look.

Here's a very early sketch I did to try and nail down the look of Santa and his Elves. They changed quite a bit from this first sorry attempt, thank goodness. That's Santa's Domed Complex below, which looks pretty much exactly like the final version.

Here's the model sheet I made of Santa and an Elf. I made this as a visual aid to help me draw them consistently from page to page, then promptly forgot about it and didn't find it again until the project was over. Typical.

Here's Page one, which coincidentally was the first page I worked on. When I make these cards I never draw them in order. I jump around, generally saving the harder layouts for last. Also, the longer you work on a project the better you get at drawing the characters, so the latter pages will inevitably look better than the first ones. By jumping around like this, all my pages have an overall mediocrity (heh).

We're getting right into the story here on the first page; no establishing shots of the North Pole for me! That's probably why this page is so wordy-- I had a lot of stuff to set up.

The Santataur card I did two years ago prominently featured Santa and his Elves, so I wanted to distance myself from that story and make this one look as different as possible, lest it feel like a rehash.

In the Santataur card, Santa wore his traditional red garb and lived in the typical storybook workshop. So I decided to go the opposite direction this time. This version of Santa wears a sleek racing-style jacket emblazoned with his initial and he now lives and works in a slick, high-tech environment filled with the latest in technology.

The Elves also wear similar uniforms to Santa's. The uniforms are all color coded: Santa gets to wear red because he's the boss. The Head Elf, Decapitator-Of-Foes, wears green. The rest of the (lower ranking) Elves all wear blue.

It's hard to see the computer readouts on the wall, so here's a closeup detail of them. I kind of based them on Tony Stark's heads up displays from the Iron Man and Avengers movies. They're not just gobbledegook either; I tried to make most of them actually mean something.

That's Prancer the Reindeer's image (see how old he looks?) and his vital signs at the top. Apparently he was born in 1665. I tried drawing a reindeer from memory, but quickly realized I needed to google them to see what the hell they really look like. You think you know until you sit down to draw one. 

That's an overhead map of Santa's Domed North Pole Complex underneath. It's tough to see, but the legend next to it reads:

• Main Complex (that's the large central dome. I guess that contains the living quarters)
• Hydroponics (apparently the Complex grows its own food?)
• Manufacturing (where the toys are made)
• Support (generators, heating, sewage and the like)
• Proposed (that's the dotted circle, indicating that it's not yet constructed)

Note that the map is labeled "Phase 1." Is Santa planning on branching out someday?

I drew the readouts in InDesign because it's a vector program and better suited for drawing liney, geometric things like this. Once they were drawn I imported them into Photoshop, and then used the "distort" feature to put them in perspective with the wall. 

Prancer was drawn in Photoshop of course. I added scan lines over him to help sell the idea that you're looking at a monitor and not a picture on the wall.

See that row of blue lights above the screen? My plan was to have shafts of light shining down out of them. It worked perfectly in my head, but I could not for the life of me get them to look right in reality. After screwing with them for way too long I realized they were never going to work and reluctantly dropped the idea.

Hey, don't go anywhere! There's lots more to see after the jump!