A short story about Space Deer
Going to AMAZE
Hi pal!
This week I’m going to visit AMAZE in Berlin. It’s a huge, artsy game festival. I’m gonna meet up with some friends for the first time, and probably see some new faces as well. I’ll be there for an entire week, so there’s gonna be time for some touristy stuff too.
I don’t know if any of you (my dear readers) live in Berlin or are going to AMAZE, but if you do, let me know!
Onto today’s notes…
A short story about Space Deer
Back in 2014, I had just finished my first big project, a short graphic novel called Empty Planet. It was very melancholic. Which describes pretty well how I felt at that time. It ended with a hopeful message and I was incredibly happy after finishing it, but the monotonous color palette and sad tone made me crave to make a comic in color, something a bit looser.
I doodled a deer in a space suit in my sketchbook, they sat curled up on the ground. Very quickly I turned that into the comic page below.
I felt a connection with this character like I hadn’t done with previous ones. It seemed like other people did too. They made fan art and had pretty strong reactions online, despite how little story there actually was about this fella.
Despite all this positivity I forgot about Space Deer, kinda like you forget about your teddy bear as you grow up.
Since then I’ve been constantly starting new projects, video games, comics, stories, songs, animations, while finishing very few of them.
Never having finished a Space Deer project is my biggest regret when I look back through my back catalogue. I just feel so much love for this character, and it hurts that they don’t really exist in a way that I feel like they should. So I intend to change that.
When I invented Space Deer, the first thing I did was draw them. And that’s pretty much how I made every single comic about them - I improvised panel to panel what would happen next. Which meant I rarely had a point. It didn’t really work.
This time I didn’t allow myself to draw anything until I had written a story.
And I’ve just finished Draft 1 of an outline! It feels like I’ve started something that I should’ve done 9 years ago. I was so afraid of writing back then, it seemed so complicated. It still is complicated, but now I know better how to deal with it. And I have some life experience to pull from that I didn’t have back then.
My first instinct once drawing was to explore different ways to draw Space Deer.
I don’t really wanna change who Space Deer is; a quiet, drifting thinker. But I have to change their look, there are a couple things about the old design that bothers me:
The big round eye was very annoying to draw, the brush was too thick for the detail level and it was annoying to draw it in perspective.
The antlers and the ears don’t jam. I mostly draw them from a 3/4 angle so one ear is always blocking one of the antlers, except for the very tip of the hidden antler. So annoying. If I figure this out the silhouette could also be much more clear.
The old design was cute, but NOT CUTE ENOUGH. It was cute in a bizarre way, not in a very cuddly way. Now that I think about it, the old design has chihuahua vibes.
But also, I’ve just evolved as an artist.
I would never make Space Deer look this manly and realistic, but I had a craving to try it out. Very fun to draw.
We will see how and where this goes!
Mini Notes
📝 Interview - Craig McCracken on Creativity
Love this thought from the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls on character design:
“You know, when we designed Dexter’s, Dexter was originally a lot taller. He had a really tall forehead, ‘cause we were like, “Oh, he’s got a big brain, so there needs to be room in there for this big brain.” So, he was a taller character. But the more we drew him as model sheets and in storyboards, he just started shrinking. Because it was the natural shorthand of drawing Dexter we arrived at. And then that becomes the design.”
It’s something I felt while drawing Space Deer in the past too, I felt a huge urge for the character to change visually, because I could never quite get them to look the same. Maybe this redesign will fix that.
🔴 Youtube video - How I wrote True Detective
“I couldn’t get a story about two guys talking in a car on television so I put a murder in there.”
I think my writing process is quite similar too, it all starts with a very specific image or scenario that I want to use. For Space Deer it was that image of a deer floating among the stars. For Surmount it was the idea of chilling at a campsite after a day of hard climbing.
🕹️ Game - Opus Magnum
In this game you create alchemy machines by placing parts and then you program their movements to produce the right kind of product.
It’s still quite early for me, I just get the tasks done, I think you can learn to build very efficient machines. Looking forward to that.
Warning: There’s also a very addictive mini game in there!
Thank you for reading! I hope you’ll have a nice week.
Do you have any neglected projects in your catalogue too?
Oh boy! I know I'm late, but I'm looking forward to this.
It's also interesting for me to read you looking back on Empty Planet. In the big picture of things, you were young and inexperienced but you definitely put a lot of yourself and your ideas into that work.
Anyway, I'm eager to see what your current take on Space Deer will be! :)