For the development of a story or a world, I of course start with research. Sometimes the idea comes first, and sometimes it's borne of research into a random topic- here, it was the latter. Have you ever heard of a baseball player called Charles Mars "Struttin' Bud" Shaney?* The man is wild. I decided to do a whole thing about him, and in the process it went a bit off the rails, but I'm getting ahead of myself. First stop: research.
60s and 70s baseball uniforms, including the Charlotte Hornets
Mill workers and fashion of the time (the Outlaw league was largely comprised of local mill workers and professional players who had been bribed into joining teams)
Various depictions of zombies. This helped me narrow in on my own zombies- more silly, more slimy and goopy.
Various horror illustration styles- visually similar, but different. This is what helped me lead into the style I wanted to use.
The comic as it appears in stores.
The cover.
Character sheet of the main character Struttin' Bud. Based on the real-life player Charles Shaney.
Melody gleefuly smashes a zombie.
Twofer's first appearence.
Character sheet of the comic relief characters.
Character sheet of the siblings. They also serve a main characters.
Preliminary work on the stadium.
Preliminary work of the locker room and character relationships.
Line up, for scale.
Prop sheet.
Preliminary work of the logo.
Practice on how the actual comic might look.
Preliminary work of how the zombies work and what they look like.
Preliminary work on layouts and character sheets
Character sheet of the big scary monster.
*Probably not, but I found him while researching the history of the patch worn on the uniforms of the Charlotte Hornets baseball team. He didn't even play with them for that long. He did participate in the Outlaw league, and was known for... eating baseballs, like gnawing on them for fun. He was also frequently accused of pushing phonographic needles into the seems of the balls that he pitched, to give them more spin.
