Old storyboard that I colored in for some inscrutable reason. Cory (in her dark mage cloak) looks up at Nucleo, who doesn't realize this cloaked creature is actually his daughter.

And here's one of Dark Nucleo from a college notebook. I know this one is from college because that dragon to his left is supposed to be the one from the title screen of the Super NES game, Drakkhen. I must've been playing that game around the time I drew this and I would've been in college by then.

Kind of frightening conceptual art of Nucleo McRaven, although it's an improvement over what he looked like in those scenes with Gaelia. Is it just me, or are the claws on his left foot much larger than the ones on his right foot? And his skin is kind of a sickly pink color instead of the swarthy tone of a desert-dwelling creature that it should be. Some of the features of the earlier "ninja" design got carried over to this one, too, like the blackbelt.

This is old conceptual art of Nucleo and Cory. Damn, I made poor 'Cleo WAY too portly back then, though it wasn't on purpose. It just would've been nice if my advanced cartooning course could've helped me fix that instead of telling me the solution is to make him seven heads tall. ¬_¬

      

Cory's presence in Image Arcane serves as a counter-balance to 'Cleo's "darker" side. Although many characters are intially startled or unsettled by the professor's fierce lion-like outer appearance, it isn't long before most of them pick up on his inner kindness and compassion - he is the proverbial "big teddy bear". His interest in human history is directly linked to his desire to find a solution to ending slavery, war, abuse, prejudice, and corruption in the world. Although he has a past riddled with ups and downs, he emerged from most of it unphased and undeterred. But he is particularly haunted by both the loss of his wife, which he blames himself for, and the incident in which Darkona possessed him via the dark magic in his blood and took control of him. Thinking about either incident often causes 'Cleo, who usually projects a stern outer image, to fall into depression, while a nagging worry that all his efforts could be for naught gradually eats at him. But Cory is his anchor - often snapping him back to reality and bringing back to light the reasons he has to keep pressing on. Levity balances angst.

      

Professor McRaven himself was an oddity amongst oddities in the cast of Image Arcane. His full name, Nucleo Amadeus McRaven, was actually a name I had in reserve years earlier for another character that I never actually drew. When I had trouble coming up with a name for the professor, I swiped that one because I figured that if I ever wanted to use the character it was originally intended for, I'd worry about thinking up a new name for him then (that character, sort of, became Lukyan Degorah). But it wasn't just coincidence that I chose this name. It made sense and fit perfectly. The first name has "leo" in it, latin for "lion", indicative of his lion-like appearance and ferocity. The last name has "raven" in it, significant of his raven-black hair and wings and also his dark magic (ravens, in literature, are often associated with the arcane).

      

It was also ironic how Prof. McRaven became such a central character to Image Arcane when he was not originally intended to be kept for the entire series, considering that the defintion of "nucleo", as in "nucleus", is the center of a cell, atom, or comet. Although 'Cleo usually left leadership duties of the group to others such as Chance Tomasaro and Deuce Koma, there could be a strong argument for him being the true core of the group - the backbone that held the team together. This was due, largely in part, to his unprecendented patience with his angsty (Jack Sheen), bullheaded (Chance), triggerhappy (Deuce), curmudgeony (Tomi Forrester), chaotic (Samantha) and prankster (Christopher Paladin) teammates, and his ability to mediate arguments by seeing a little of all sides.

      

It also had much to do with the fact that he was an older fellow, about 40-ish, which made him more mature than the others. This was also an unusual casting choice - cartoons were (are?) generally dominated by child and teen heroes. Older characters may exist, but usually are just kept around for sage advice and aren't part of the fighting team. I believe that one major reason for this is because cartoons for children aim to pull them into a fantasy world where kids are empowered and get to go on adventures and be heroes without help from adults (parents, teachers, and other authority figures). But I felt a need for there to be stronger, more responsible adult figures in my life - not to eliminate them from the picture entirely. It is interesting to note that 'Cleo does not act authoritative nor speak condescendingly to his younger companions (at least not in normal situations), and not even to his own daughter. His hands-off approach to raising Cory was somewhat inspired by Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my all-time favorite books.

      

I'm also glad that I purposefully avoided the archetypical clichés usually associated with short, buff character types in fantasy and cartoon writing. They're usually boastful, dumb, always ramming their heads into walls, and stomping around saying "We DWARVES are blah, blah, blah!" They're generally regarded as little more than sidekicks and comic relief. (This is specifically why I refused to call the species "dwarves", and instead chose something more distinct and descriptive, like "mountain devil" - a combination of a mountain lion and a Tasmanian devil.) 'Cleo is stern and strong, yet mellow and intellectual. Although he's often lost in thought, and it might seem like he's a 100% no-laughing-matter type of guy, he does have a sense of humor. (I also gave him reading glasses because I was getting really tired of that cartoon law that states that whenever a bespectacled character loses their glasses, he/she will immediately yell, "Oh no! My glasses!", then drop down on all fours and proceed to paw at the ground with their hand as though he/she is now completely blind. 'Cleo only needs his glasses for reading.)

More sketches of "Dark Nucleo", which I'm starting to think of more as "Jawa Nucleo". It looks like he's waving in an airplane in that first one...