Doing some visual tests for the next track on City Silent. As is always the case, I change styles. The original style for Digby was a lineless take, which is cool but it's not where my head's at right now. Digby's kind of high all the time, so I wanted to try and reflect that in a different way than I did the first time he showed up. That track is a psychedelic trip that I quite enjoyed. The mice were loud. I want Digby loud in a different way.

First thing I did was head off into cartoon land, thinking I might reference Vaughan Bodé a little, not least of which because he's been a major influence on graffiti culture. But that kind of thing is such a clash with the rest of the book. I got away with it with Zippa as his track was meant to be flyers, not an actual character walking about.

I saw some work by a Brazilian comic artist named Rafael Grampa and really liked his stylization, especially of Marvel characters. He uses a lot of lines, describing wrinkle after wrinkle. So I did the top drawing while his work was up in the background. Then, I redrew the character, making him flow more, making him more abstract and went back to my old favorite brush while still keeping the detail level high.

When it came to coloring, I wanted something 'outside the lines,' and grabbed one of the first things in my regular brushes, a marker and just whipped colors out. Turns out I like that approach a lot. I even like it with the lines turned off, though that won't work for a comic. At least I don't think it will.

Then I changed the background color to one more or less I've used before to suggest the city night sky and got something very autumn-like. Which makes sense as the season's changing. I'll likely go with this style. I still have to work out how the background's going to be but I can already tell this track is going to be more labor intensive. Ah, well. The mice were 'easy' and it too forever. Maybe this will work the opposite way?