Lost And Found - Rapskallion

A look at some art from 26 years ago

I was digging through my old hard drives and looking at art from my first few years trying to do this and I came across this character design. This is somewhere around 2000-2001-ish.

Meet Rapskallion.

At the time, I thought this might be the best drawing I had ever done. I was probably right. I mean, it had to be. It was me swiping equal parts of Joe Mad, Chris Bachalo and Humberto Ramos tricks. I mean, there’s so many little Battle Chaser rip offs here that I can’t believe Joe ever became friends with me later in life. Ha ha ha.

A few years later I was embarrassed of this drawing. I had gotten better and started finding my own artist voice and I didn’t want people to see this “old” me. Funny how 2 years back then felt like 20. But yeah, I was young, naive, and pretending to be much more of seasoned pro than I was. If you saw that I drew like this just a few years before you’d figure out that I was just faking it while making it.

But now. 26 years later. Half my life later. (let that sink in!) I love this drawing so much and for so many reasons. First, I drew this so long ago I signed it with my RAP NAME! Elemynt! Because spelling things wrong back then was IN! (For those who don’t know, I thought I’d get into the rap game way before I’d ever got into comics). This was the era of comic creator names like BAD ASS, LIQUID, SNAKEBITE, MAD, etc.

I love this drawing because it was character created along side one of my first comic book artist friends I met when I moved to Chicago at 22. Jacob Elijah. I was in awe of his art and his drive and he was into the same hip hop as me. I was always into comics and drawing but Jacob actually MADE comics in high school. He was legit about that life! I was so inspired by him. He drew all the time and he made me want to draw all the time. And that’s what I did. I started drawing all the time. I met Jacob at the same Chicago con I met CB Cebluski at. When CB asked if I had any ideas to pitch to Image Comics through his company Fanboy Inc, Jacob and I got to work. After a few weeks of needled days and nights of brainstorming and sketching, we came up with a series idea. Rapskallion was one of the characters in that series that never came to fruition.

I love this drawing because of how much I overworked it. Haha. It’s so tightly penciled which is funny because it’s just a character design. And not just a character design, it was the one and only pass at the character. I just started drawing and when I was done, Rapskallion lived. Now I’ll doodle a character 250 times until I get to what i’m looking for. But back then…first pass and DONE! And the details. NO IDEA what I was doing. His hair shine? No idea. The folds? No idea. Definitely not considering gravity like I do now. How do those shoulder pads work? What are they bolted to? No idea. But damn, I thought they looked cool. Why was he wearing a skirt? No idea. I mean, he walks great distances and climbs up structures, needing to be agile and unrestrained. So of course a long leg-restricting skirt makes all the sense in the world.

I love this drawing because even though Rapskallion never made it to shelves, it played a massive role in me feeling like I might be able to do this for a living. I posted this on every art and comics message board there was- like this drawing was a full graphic novel itself. Half my life later I’m writing about this drawing that I still remember finishing.

I thought it would be fun to revisit this old friend and bring him back to life all these years later.

I often sketch with ballpoint pen. It helps me to leave all preciousness behind and just focused on finding character and shape. This stage isn’t about good drawing. It’s about moving the pen until something gives you the feels.

I still love a sketching with blue pencil though. It gets dull pretty fast and again, allows me to forget about precision. Just exploring. You can see here I’m searching for a pose that will convey his inquisitive, scavenger nature. None of that was present in the original drawing.

I picked one of the poses started the actual drawing. As you can see here, I never add too much detail while penciling. I like leaving choices to be made with brush and ink. My penciling is mostly indication of things and shapes. I’ll refine them in the inking stage.

You’ll notice that his hair was much more defined through shape in the pencil stage. This is a the downside to making choices in inks. It’s easy to get carried away and take away something that was working. That area of his hair and junk pack is overloaded with detail and texture and that strong silhouette of his hair just got lost.

So, I took another swing at him.

This take has a much stronger silhouette. Let’s take a look the two designs 26 years apart and talk about the changes.

• His unkept hair gives you a sense of that the kinds of places he goes and what he does doesn’t involve a lot grooming or vanity.

• Goggles are changed to more of helmet with a few other lenses. I thought that super futuristic world would give him the chance to have iPhone camera like tech in a helmet. A mix of VR and Cameras but still a little crude.

• The shoulder pads become more harnesses to help distribute the weight of whatever he needs to carry on his back.

• The first drawing forces me to tell you she’s scavenger. The new one, his packs and pouches tell you that without needing words. Also, pouches are always cool.

• The skirt had to go in place of some more practical and movable pants. Kneepads are crucial to someone who’s going to be climbing and digging around most of his days. Protect those knees!

• The gloves stay but change a bit. Something less bulky to help him grip ledges and repel down tops or vines.

• The walking staff gets a simple add on of a hook-like cap. This can be uses to climb, grab things in hards to reach places. Trees, rivers or swamps and things buried in piles of junk.

Could I keep exploring and refining this design? Of course. But I think this was a pretty fun revisit and revision so I’ll leave it here.

I hope you all enjoyed this walk down memory lane. It was pretty interesting for me to flashback to those early days of all of this and think about how far I am from that time. I found some other gems from back those days so look forward to some more sharing! Not sure I’ll do redraws every time, but it’s a fun exercise so we’ll see.

Ok, that’s all for now. See ya next time!

There was a big original art drop yesterday and it was crazy! For anyone out there looking to grab a few bangers, there’s still a few left to snag!

Visit my site to grab books, stickers, prints and other stuff at The Skottie Shop, updates on appearances and more.