Isn't She a Doll?

It's been awhile since I updated this. I debated posting another comic but decided that this will be the last comic preview before I launch the official site. It won't be the last preview on this blog, just the last full comic that I'll give away. This particular comic is actually the FIRST comic I tried to draw. It didn't go well. I tried to draw it again and it didn't go much better. This was the third time I drew this comic. YES I know that Tommy's pose is really weird in the last panel but otherwise I think this one went pretty well. I could have done more with the colouring but I'll probably add to it later. I hand lettered this one. Then I decided that that was a bad idea and switched back to digital lettering for the next one. I don't know why but for some reason I hand lettered the one I did after that. I'm experimenting.

On a side note: I know that it seems like it's taking me a really long time to get this site up. It is somewhat due to circumstances which are out of my control and unexpected events. I might elaborate a bit more about this later on the Lai Guys Comics blog...

-Tim

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

Sketches

I know that nobody is reading this blog, but hopefully someone will soon! Until then I'm going to write this like I would if someone was reading this! Recently I've been busy coming up with strips ideas and developing the official Lai Guys Comics website. While I was doing that stuff I actually neglected to keep up my routine drawing practices so I've been trying to do more sketches for Lemon Inc. recently to prepare myself for when I start posting comics. I know that some people like to look at artist's sketches and process work (me included) so I figured I'd post a bunch of Lemon Inc Sketches. Here we go...

These are some early sketches of the characters in Lemon Inc.. As you can see Andy is in the middle, to his left is an early sketch of Minsky, and at the top are a couple of early sketches of Elephanté. At the bottom left is what was an early sketch of what Tommy might look like - Obviously he looks much different now - and at the bottom right is jeff. The poses are pretty stiff and there's something very wrong about Jeff's expression.
These are early sketches of Andy and Jeff. I was trying to make Jeff kinda fat but he ended up getting too tall making him look a little too old. Their hands look pretty bad...

These ones are more recent. Some of them are okay. There's some Andy, some Jeff, some Tommy and even a little Minsky. The sketches at the bottom are of a character called Becky that I havn't Mentioned yet. The poses are still kinda stiff but at least Tommy's making a hand gesture. In case anybody is wondering, that Thing that Andy's holding is supposed to be an Elmo mug.

These ones are the most recent. Here you've got some very angry Craig sketches, some very bored Tommy sketches and a couple of Jeffs... The posing is getting better. It's still not great but it's better... I think Craig's enraged pose at the top looks pretty funny. The best part of these is probably the facial expressions. I think their personalities come across really well here.

It's getting pretty late. That's all for now...

-Tim

Note: All art and words are © copyright 2008 Tim Lai

Elephanté & Minsky

These are some stuffed animals that will be featured prominently in Lemon Inc.Their names are Elephanté (the elephant) and Minsky (the Monkey). Aren't they adorable!