Sign In
Close
I somehow went from barely drawing random pictures to drawing a lot of them... I blame my new sketchbook! Again, most of these were posted on tumblr before. And half of them were prompted by memes so you can go leave some numbers in my askbox!
I swear, it's like even when my characters are not actively trying to act like jerks they still succeed at it (looking at you, Wynne and Butts).
The doodle under Wynne and Butts is something I drew about a year ago but I didn't post it then because at the time Chance's hand was still a spoiler and I forgot to post it later but I still like it so... If you've seen Reservoir Dogs you'll probably say that Chance doesn't have enough empathy, if you haven't seen Reservoir Dogs you should watch it! I make too many jokes about that entirely non-funny film, I guess it's my way of coping.
There is actually going to be a story (a Cop Story story) about drug prevention in the school Teague, Jarvis and the rest of the meddling kids go to. You'd think these kids get enough drugs prescribed to not want to buy them from shady people in alleyways.
The cowboys sketch was done on this really thick watercolour kind of paper but I keep forgetting to colour it. "Cowboys" is the almost official nickname for Chance, Gavin and Llane both because of their heroic approach to policing and because in British English a cowboy is "someone who is not honest, careful, or skilful in their trade or business, or someone who ignores rules that most people obey and is therefore not considered to be responsible."
Rubik's cube is slowly becoming a semi-official Cop Story symbol. When I get to the next part of the main storyline you'll see why.
I decided to draw Alan and Em as kids and looked up when it was possible to get an eye-controlled computer. Actually, one of my pet peeves is people assuming that every medical/scientific technology immediately becomes accessible to ordinary people - no, that amazing prosthetic you just read about in Scientific American is not something every amputee will get for free within a year. But it turned out eye-tracking still was around earlier than I estimated - the research was being done for about 50 years, most companies producing computers like that were founded around the 90s and most mentions about people getting an eye-controlled computer for the first time seemed to be roughly in 2005. I sort of regretted that you couldn't make a joke about selfies back in those times but then I realised that people were making selfies long before they were called that and did it anyway because no kid is going to pass an opportunity to make faces at a camera. Also Emma regrets that no matter how well text-to-speech simulators get developed they are never going to sound as sarcastic as she means to.
Jarvis likes all animals in general but if he had to choose he would choose dogs. And if he had to choose between all the dogs he would choose his dog Tony (everyone who figures out why Tony is called that gets an imaginary cookie). Tony is a cocker spaniel, he is quite old, remarkably docile even for a breed regarded a great family pet and is Jarvis’s benchmark for all dogs. Toby always allows Jarvis to do anything and Jarvis is convinced that all dogs are like that - which means that even if you have most aggressive ex-dogfighting dog growling and pulling the leash Jarvis will try to get as close to it as possible and pet it, which with his motor skills is more like smacking. Jarvis has never been bitten yet but something tells me it won’t last long…
Leicester's opinion on what art should be was actually a doodle for my online class but nobody there got the meaning - art representing only particular groups of people and only the the way the majority of audience wants to see them. But then I was listening to this song (which is so relevant to Cop Story) and there was a line "pictures of naked young women are fun"- well, somebody gets it...
And Dylan is not allowed to watch telly much (because he gets seizures often and some of them are clearly photosensitive). Which means that one of Dylan’s greatest ambitions in life is, whenever he is left without supervision, to get as close to a tv as possible and to watch it for as long as possible. This doesn’t happen often but when it happens it always ends the same and never ends well and Dylan still hasn’t learned this lesson. He doesn’t understand why he’s not allowed to watch telly and is annoyed by people not letting him do it so he can’t get enough of it.
Cop Story site
Cop Story tumblr
Cop Story © Oly R.
Submission Information
- Views:
- 628
- Comments:
- 13
- Favorites:
- 2
- Rating:
- General
- Category:
- Visual / Traditional
Comments
-
-
Haha! I want to watch Archer because the general theme and humour seem to be my kind of thing but I really dislike that Flash 2D puppet kind of animation where characters are made from static parts getting moved around rather than being more flexible.
Yesss watch Reservoir Dogs, I think my gallery has a couple more jokes referring to that movie already. I don't know your film preferences so I can't say much but it's neither light nor feel-good film but I like it a lot.
And thank you! Heh, yes, when I first learned it I was really amused that the term originating from supposedly heroic action movie figures is used for people failing to install a kitchen sink properly. :D
-
I'll add it to my backlog of stuff to do, I always have something on in the background to keep me company anyways.
Oh please, please watch Archer, or at least just listen to it. The animation is stiff for the first couple of episodes, but it really is fluid the more familiar the animation team gets. I have literally rewatched the entire series at least 70 times over, the voicework is stunningly brilliant and the show is so well written most of the time (although Season 5 has been a horrible, horrible disappointment, Adam Reed is driving his creation into the ground because he got bored with the format).
-
Aw, that sounds promising, I'll give it a try! :) Can't say when it happens though - I feel a little intimidated by shows with over 2 seasons and take my time getting to them.
-
Go for it when you can, and make sure to lemme know! :D
-
Season one and two are the best anyway, so don't worry. Man, Archer is such a fantastic show if you enjoy black comedy and anti-heroes.
-
One more reason to give it a try! I've seen some videos on youtube and chuckled a lot, it reminds me of some of my cops a bit.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Damn, all theses poses are so dynamic! Yours colors are always nicely saturated, I love it. I have very colorful clothes (I look like a 90's kid toy) but I can't really draw colorful...
-
Thanks! Haha, actually when I was drawing young Alan and Em I thought "oh hey, post-90s kids, I can go nuts with the colours of their clothes! ...oh wait I do it all the time anyway." My mum has a thing for desaturated colours so I spent most of my childhood not really colourful and then I had a short phase where I was trying to wear black only but really I like colours too much so right now most of my things are colourful.
I think your art is coloured fine! Could use some more work but it's true for everyone.
-
-
Aaah, the Fisher siblings are adorable!
I kind of admire you for writing characters with serious disabilities (as opposed to the more "sexy" physical quirks one usually see, looking at you here, badass battle scars) and managing to avoid the whole Disability Superpower trope. I don't think I've ever seeen a comic with disabled people as main characters, and only read a handful of books with them - The First Law series being a good example, Lincoln Rhyme being decent enough.
During research I'd have a hard time stifling my curiousity and treating people with respect, though. Thank god for Internet anonimousity and people's general willingness to talk about themselves. Without it, I'd sure crowd people and ask them all sorts of uncomfortable questions, especially those with the fancy wheelchairs.
-
I've never heard of First Law, I need to give it a try! :D And ahaha, I have so many mixed feelings about Lincoln Rhyme books (well, I only read the first one so far so no spoilers!) - I adore Rhyme and Sachs but those murders are ridiculously under-researched (especially the rat scene, I've been keeping rats for over a decade, my current rats happen to have a wild parent and that was not how any rats behave, not to mention the whole red glowing eyes thing). Especially considering how much research goes into writing someone like Rhyme (and I know, sometimes I get a feeling me and Deaver went to the same medical sites). Besides I generally don't like crime fiction with insane criminals being various degrees of bogeymen, so the characters might be the only thing I like about Lincoln Rhyme books. Still, that's more than enough to keep me reading, I haven't read more just because I finished the first book in two nights and I really need to concentrate on other things right now. But oh gosh, I think you're the only person I know who heard of Rhyme, so nice to discuss it with someone! Quinton's moving finger was a nod of sorts to Rhyme, btw.
And yeah, I am very grateful for the Internet - people who say "you have to talk to people to write about this!" are simplifying it in a lot of ways. After I started writing Cop Story some people I knew came forward and offered to share stories and generally when people find out that I write and draw about disability they often feel comfortable to talk about it but I don't imagine someone at the starting point with not much knowledge asking strangers personal questions and getting proper answers, it's just not how human interaction works. Nobody would walk up to a person they don't know and start asking them about their job or how furniture is arranged in their house, I don't see why asking people about disabilities is any different. So I'm glad there are bloggers willingly sharing information - without them I don't think I could get to the point where I actually can talk about it.
I am involved with the local comic festival so I had to read at least one comic about wheelchair users learning to fly or some crap like that every year for the past 5 years or so. But I guess if someone never wrote about disabled people before and has only one disabled character the Disability Superpower trope is bound to be the first trap they'll walk in as a writer, it's just something that goes away when you start seeing being disabled as one of character traits, not the whole character definition. Considering that about half Cop Story characters have some disability at this point there is a couple of characters who are almost genius levels of smart or have some other gimmick but there are all sorts - kind, cruel, smart and completely idiotic (and idiotic in a way that has nothing to do with disability, just plain old stupid). And this situation gives way more freedom writing-wise than having one token character to represent some minority.
Rambling, sorry! :P I don't get to talk about this enough.
-
Urban fantasy and crime fiction has been somewhat of a… guilty pleasure for years. I’d read anything noir-ish and full of those mildly grating first-person snarkers, you know the type. Point is I’ve been through a lot of shitty crime lit, so when I stumbled upon Deaver, I was pleasantly surprised at the change of pace. The books aren’t perfect, but I appreciate his effort in writing a disabled character. Especially when the character is a protagonist and unable to move most of his body (running about and fighting in manly ways is a staple of the genre after all) during the entirety of the series.
Nobody would walk up to a person they don't know and start asking them about their job or how furniture is arranged in their house[…]
Haha, yes of course, I’m not quite that awkward/callous just yet. I can’t say I wouldn’t be sorely tempted, though. I’m unabashedly curious to the point of rudeness sometimes, so I guess it’s a good thing I’m no writer.I get the feeling that most of your character –in all of your stories— are just people, you know, rather than defined by a selected few traits. Very rounded and well-thought out. I appreciate that a whole lot, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
And feel free to talk and ramble about this anytime! I love hearing about it, I feel very privileged!-
Aww! Alright, continuing rambling then! :D I'm used to writing as shortly as possible because of comic speech bubbles so writing anything over a couple of sentences usually makes me feel guilty and sort of intrusive.
I wade through shitty crime lit with varying results too! And you're very preceptive about the stable of the genre - back at early stages Cop Story shifted back and forth precisely because of that. It's hard writing a car chase when half the cast takes ten minutes to get in the car and so on. But I realised that I didn't want to give up on that just to make my writing seem more badass and it turned out much more interesting - figuring out ways to go about things differently. It also made me see that possibly the biggest part of what it means to be disabled is not so much what you can't physically do but what you're unable to do because you're outside of the norm in your environment. It doesn't take much to build a ramp but a lot of places don't have them simply because the majority can use stairs. And that must be incredibly frustrating, maybe more frustrating than just not being able to move. It's like... you know those crazy athletes that climb tall buildings and such? Imagine most people could do it routinely - everyone else would instantly feel disabled even though their bodies wouldn't change at all.
And no worries, I know what you mean! I understand curiosity to the point of rudeness - when I meet physically disabled people in the street I don't stare because I've been stared at enough to know how annoying it is but there's this art part of my brain that wants to look and remember movements and sketch. What I meant when I mentioned talking to people is that I sometimes come across this attitude on tumblr where people say "you can always ask me about -insert an issue here- if you want to write it more accurately" but when someone actually approaches them they go "weeell, you have to meet real people like that because every person is special!" which isn't a real answer. I mean there are things I know from my own experience and there are things I know from research and in both cases I can come up with a number of examples from non-fiction and fiction that can be a good starting point from someone who wants to know more. Of course everyone is bloody special but to help people understand someone they have to see both similarities and differences, not some hallmark card phrases.
And thank you! :) They do feel like people to me, I'm glad it gets across. One of the reasons the cast is ridiculously big is because I started coming up with characters' friends, relatives and their social circles in general and each of those characters had some story of their own and so on... I try to make my writing better but considering that it's something I do in my free time I do whatever feels right so at this point Cop Story is more random stories with a loose plot tying them together than anything else. :D
-
-
-
Link
Rory
I lol'd at Wynne and Butts... reminds me of the episode of Archer where Sterling gets taken by pirates, where he was cracking wise about them stereotypically until he found out they were just basically Indonesians.
I have yet to see Reservoir Dogs, though I have the DVD in my closet.. should probably get on it sometime so I can get the reference!
And that's a fun thing to learn today, about the definition of cowboy. Perspective's a funny, funny thing. Us Americans consider cowboys as the quintessential American embodiment, whereas the disdain in the British English definition is... so delightfully fitting. As always, super fun to read these/see your sketches.