Hackberry Hollow

Here’s some more concept art from where Preston lives. Earlier we spent some time talking about the first chapter of the comic and trying to solve some of the minor issues regarding how we introduced Derek the raccoon. We found a solution, and because of that we had to change the location and time of day that Derek and Preston will be introduced. So here’s a quick piece of environmental concept art for this significantly revised scene.

In the first chapter we introduce a lot of characters, and we’ll be talking more about how we decided to set the tone for the comic in a later post. For today’s post though, it suffices to say that we were originally going to introduce Preston and Derek at night. Back then I felt that a night scene would provide a good visual contrast between the very first scene, and the first scene with Preston where the serious conflict of the story gets rolling. But as with most of our original ideas we’ve been revisiting, they get cut or modified significantly and this scene was no different.

We like the revised scene because introducing Preston with this warm color pallete and location, instead of a really dark one, really sets the tone for Preston’s warm but lonely personality. Showing a large ranch house first helps contrast Preston’s small cabin, so the audience knows that Preston is living quite differently from everyone else, and showing some real animals first helps contrast with what makes Preston’s talking-undead-taxidermied animals so different.