Old rough storyboard sketch of Christopher and Nucleo. I have a lot of old sketches of these two characters like this, but the quality of some of them is pretty low.

Aurora hugging the lugnuts out of a very young Nucleo McRaven.

Starla talking with Nucleo. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to attack him. I thought he was a Grimm, or something..." "Oh, no, I'm what you humans call a 'mountain devil', but I'm really quite cuddly, honest."

More hilarity with Starla Wildflower. First she turns to run, but smashes right into Nucleo's shoulder. The kindly professor asks if she's allright...

...but having never seen a mountaindevil before, she grabs a tree branch and proceeds to beat the crap out of him.

And I love that classic response to her apology. It's too bad I'm missing the panels of Chance screaming out the door at 'Cleo, but you can see that this wasn't very well-preserved. It's not even a final draft because it doesn't quite match the script. Nucleo's hands were supposed to be full with several bags of "groceries" and a lantern, which explained why he didn't just grab the branch out of Starla's hands. And the fact that I didn't draw in his wings makes it seem less likely that Starla would've mistaken him for a Grimm.

Very small Nucleo sprite.

   

Left: Nucleo trying to drag his daydreaming daughter away from Chance. (Damn, I was terrible at drawing in those days, but it was too funny not to post it.) Right: That has got to be the ugliest couch I've ever seen. Chance's interior decorating skills are so terrible, it almost distracted me from how poorly-drawn the Professor's right arm is there...

Another large drawing of Dark Nucleo. He hardly ever wore that thing in the actual comics, as it was meant more as a ceremonial garb. I'm kind of glad he didn't.

   

Left: Back view, conceptual drawing of Nucleo McRaven (a version that had four toes). His staff is drawn much too small. I don't have too many back view pictures of my characters anymore, though, and this is one of the few that still exists in my archive. Right: Another conceptual drawing of Nucleo, this one with the standard three-toe design and a longer bo staff. His arms are majorly screwed up, though. Crawl said he looks like Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl in that picture.