I like drawing the Yeti’s eye. I spent a lot of time drawing Orangutangs and Gorillas to be able to better draw the Yeti’s gestures. I fell in love with drawing their eyes and am constantly trying to get that to translate to my drawings of the Yeti in Wiltworthy.
Looking for inspiration for some character design, I spent some time working from photos of guardian statues from Indonesia and Sri Lanka. I think this one is smiling a little more than some of the statues he is based upon. The more I have sketched them, the more they are endeared to me. Their expressions often seem caught halfway between a daunting glare and a big smile. I can see them breaking face and saying, “I’m just messing with you, don’t be so uptight!”
The kids were still very little at this stage and I realized there was so much for them to do and, because the story is about Makerism, there was so much they would be required to make. I realized the characters had to grow up and be older before their adventure could begin. I recall listening to Kazu Kibuishi talk about the pressures by agents and publishers to nail down the age of his characters to exactly ten years old in order to hit the fourth grade reading demographic, but he always thought of his characters as 12 to 14. I think there will be something along those lines in my mind as I keep moving forward with this. Here, Walt and Val look like my own kids from a few years back but as I draw Walt and Val nowadays they do not look like my kids at all; they have become themselves.
