Friday, October 17, 2008

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

5 comments:

  1. comics are an art of economy, we have very little space to work with, one way to make the most of a small comic panel..is to have deep spactial depth, like you've done here. nice Job.

    And I like the uplifting idea of making lemonade

    All the best!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Ming. I've been enjoying reading Fantasy Story and hope that you will read Lemon Inc. if I ever find time to get some comics together.

    -Tim

    ReplyDelete
  3. we don't find time man, we carve it out, build a wall around it, and don't let anyone in.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh man. LOVE the concept! The thought of children employing stuffed toys intrigues me, hehe! Will it be as innocent as Calvin and Hobbes?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anne: I'm glad you like the concept. It won't be quite as innocent as Calvin and Hobbes but it won't have anything too offensive. There won't be any swearing. It will include things such as a toddler version of a biker gang called "the Trikers", stuffed animals suing kids for assault, kids being sent to a jail (which is actually just a big cardboard box) for white collar crimes. All that good stuff. I'm trying to make it a comic that you would be comfortable letting your kids read but not one that is necessarily meant for them.

    -Tim

    ReplyDelete