Old rough storyboard. I love how happy and oblivious Christopher looks in this picture. If you had to describe his personality in only three words "happy and oblivious" would be a good way to do it, and I think it's funny that he looks that way even when he's just doing some random chores.

This is an inked version of my drawing of Professor Nucleo McRaven and Talon Kyradius from an earlier page. You might have noticed I sometimes refer to Nucleo as being "swarthy" even though he doesn't often appear any darker than his fellow cast members. That wasn't necessarily because the color faded over the years (unlike some pictures in which that happened to his hair). It was because certain people in my life back then took issue with me having a dark-skinned main character and made feel weird about it, so I stupidly conceded because I didn't feel like arguing with them or putting up with their lame jokes and just started coloring him like everyone else, despite that my original script described him as being "as sandy brown as the desert itself". But now that I'm free to do whatever I want, I'd rather present the character as he was originally intended to be, so I tried hand-coloring this drawing (something I haven't done in YEARS), and well...

...gee, that's actually a little too dark...I mean, he might look like that after being on a long expedition in the desert, but not normally. The problem is that I really didn't know what color pencil to use, so the next time I hand-color, I'll have to try something else. Actually, I just took a look at the drawing on paper and it's not quite that dark. My scanner software messed it up somehow...

Same image yet again, but this one I colored using Paint Shop Pro. This might be a little closer to what I had in mind. Unfortunately, Adobe PhotoDeluxe was the best program I had for coloring images on the computer, but that won't install on my new PC. While Nucleo's design was inspired by mountain lions (which is another reason he's supposed to be that color), I used the Siberian tiger as the basis for Talon. The "large cat" motif was evident in a few other Image Arcane characters. The CRASHER villain Gionne was originally just a normal human who looked slightly lion-like. The more I drew him, the more the design gradually morphed into being more lion-like than humanoid. And although Jack Sheen is a bird-like dragon, some versions had cheetah tearlines on his face (albeit, at the opposite corners of his eyes from where they'd be on a real cheetah).

I also used one of my program's features to make this drawing resemble an old baseball photograph, which actually looks kind of neat IMO. One thing that nags at me about Talon's new design (although it's infinitely better than the old one that looked like Nucleo with Bazil's color palette) is that it doesn't really match the description of him in my original scripts. He was supposed to be rather ugly, which is one reason he was picked on a lot, and also contributed to Cory's initial distrust of him - he just didn't look very sincere even though he was. But I couldn't seem to come up with an "ugly" design that I could live with, so I hope I'm not copping-out with this route. But one suggestion I was given is that it would be interesting if people still considered him ugly, even if he's just drawn in this current style, and that might be what I'll do.

I composited the drawing of the young Nucleo with the older one from the Talon picture for comparison. On the left, I'd say he's about 40. On the right, he's about 8. I think I'm pretty good at aging and reverse-aging him, although I'm more competent at drawing him than almost anyone else. But it's important for me to be able to do this because 'Cleo is seen in more stages of his life than almost any other IA character, due to story sequences that deal with his past. Other characters, like Christopher, Chance, and Sesa are also shown when they were younger, but they only have to be aged as far as 15, 19, and 21 (respectively). 'Cleo has to go from 8 to 40 and a lot in-between.

Young Preston, Nucleo, and Aurora. I was still trying to work out some quirks in their designs when I drew this and it shows. Yeah, I know, it kind of looks like they want to eat Nucleo. Adults always look like that around little kids, though.

Damn, Nucleo was one really ugly mofo when he was angry. It's amazing that for all the times I was asked why Fred Flintstone was in my comics that no one ever asked, "And why is he such a psychopath?" I also apologize, but I had to cut off a portion of the bottom of this one because once again, Nucleo was drawn with a tail sticking out of his ass and looping around his left paw...and, well, you can probably imagine that it really didn't look right. I'm not even sure why I'm posting this except that it's one of the few old drawings of 'Cleo I have in which his wings are present.

You'll recognize this as part of the main page's banner. This is what it looked like before I scaled it down and made the background transparent. You can see a little more detail. I put Nucleo and Image's age around their early twenties in this pic.