I don't have any idea WTF it is with Samantha and McRaven family. It seems like whenever you put them together, someone ends up getting knocked out, bitten in the shoulder, or babbling incoherently. At least Sam appears to have a better grip on the unconscious Professor there than she did on Cory awhile ago. Better her than me. I wouldn't want to lug around a 150-pound mountain devil. (And never mind that 'Cleo appears to be missing a finger on his left hand.)

I posted the part of this image that shows Kraken and Cory before, but I finally found the missing bottom piece that shows Nucleo looking up at them. (Which provides me with another rare back-view image of an IA character.) I pieced the two images back together. (I have no idea how or why it got separated to begin with, especially since I'm 100% sure I drew the entire thing.)

A recent sketch I just did of Professor McRaven and Pibby. The point of this was to try to draw him from a front view without him looking like complete crap, as he always did in my old drawings.

Christopher and Nucleo having a heated argument. Normally, they get along quite well, but Nucleo can be stubborn sometimes.

Some recent practice sketches of Nucleo McRaven...

...and Starla Wildflower.

   

This I put up just for the sake of comparison. On the left is a drawing of Nucleo that I just did within the past few months of putting up this Scrapbook page. Not the best in the world, but on the right is a picture of Nucleo from an early episode of IA (circa 1987) drawn in a similar pose. I guess the moral of the story is that time, practice, and maturity can work wonders for some character designs. Speaking of character evolution...

...this is the very first drawing of Nucleo I ever did in 1986. I was 10 years old at the time. Along with how hideous the overall design was due to my lack of skill and maturity, there were a number of things that were different about the original concept. First of all, he was supposed to be a ninja instead of an archaeologist. Yeah, dumb I know. It's probably just because I was a little kid and like all little kids of that era, thought ninjas were cool. I scrapped the ninja idea, but that got transferred over to Jack Sheen. (It made more sense for Jack because he's a kid and kids are more likely to "play ninja" than a 40-year-old.) The original design only had two toes, (probably because Honen Calzoun also only had two toes), and since 'Cleo couldn't retract the claws on his right foot, he could only wear one ninja "sock". That bit of trivia stayed with him, but I eventually changed the number of his toes to three (sometimes he had four, though, I had a hard time making up my mind), and I'll admit I learned to draw cat feet like that somewhat from Garfield.

That picture of Nucleo has been all over the SAB pages, but this is the first I've put it in the Scrapbook. Perhaps an explanation is finally in order. Well, the picture on the right is from an old IA storyboard. There was this one scene where Nucleo is facing off against Honen Calzoun. His hair is kind of a mess from a previous encounter with Felona Corona and he makes this goofy joke while simultaneously throwing his arms up. Anyway, at that time I had a friend who wanted to see this picture every time she visited because it made her laugh. Eventually, just to be funny, I redrew the scene, only this time I exaggerated 'Cleo's expression so much that it was far beyond what he would ever really look like.

Thankfully, although his design hasn't changed too much, I think my skills at drawing the swarthy mountain-devil professor have improved over the years. I think even his unintentional resemblance to Fred Flintstone is starting to evaporate.