My Hero Project

Here is the image I created for my Hero/ Villain project. The Characters are called Wiz and Oz, and are a team like Batman and Robin. The bunny is not the bad guy, which is a little confusing in the artwork, I'm told.

The Adventures of Wiz & Oz!

Here these two characters stand in my personal favorite buddy cop pose. The image is a little smaller here then I wanted but the idea is still conveyed.

The light and color's are bright to make him appealing to a young audience. I chose primary colors for Wiz to contrast with the villain my Partner Max designed. I colored Oz orange to contrast happily (not violently) with Wiz and  also to evoke the classic comic book character "The Thing", who Oz is partially inspired by.

The story is that the boy, Wiz (Short for Wilbur Isaac Zimmerman, poor devil) wants desperately to become a great stage magician. He can't afford a proper magicians kit, however, and buys an old dusty magic kit from a stranger who claims to have bought it from Harry Houdini himself. Later, when Wiz is in a Jam he finds out he can summon an 8 foot tall super rabbit named Osric. Together the two have a series of adventures guaranteed to be fun for the whole family! Or at least they would if they ever were continued beyond this project. But hey, who knows?

Here is the original sketch before I colored it. The too were based on other cartoon characters. Wiz is actually taken from Luigi of Mario Bros. Fame. The wardrobe was my design with my step-daughter Emily doing the initial rendering of it.

Oz was based on Genie from Disney's Aladdin. He has the same light-bulb torso. I liked the angles they gave to Genie's cranium, and it was a way to make the hero bunny have a square head. The round curves still make him a friendly character though.  Having him rise from the hat also lends to that Genie effect. If I had it to do over again I'd have Oz springing from the hat instead of appearing from the smoke.

Here is an early draft of the character. Emily actually drew Wiz's body and Oz's face here. I re-drew the face on Wiz, although I wish I hadn't. I also drew the "Where's Waldo version in the upper corner. I really liked Ozzie's face here, but I felt he needed to be a little more square in shape. It doesn't quite work as a super-hero, but it's a perfect cartoon bunny though.

This is the finished version of Wiz's face. He needed to be younger thean he was in the initial sketches, so I made his nose and chin triangular to make him look more like a teen. Even his hair forms a triangle. Typically this is a look for a villain, but I think he comes off as a character who has to grow into being a hero. This look is very similar to Ash from Pokemon.  I later changed the face in the upper sketch to practice drawing it. I wish I'd kept the original for the record.

Here's a small sketch of Oz lifting a bus.I wanted to show how strong he is (Like a Hercules or Captain Marvel character), but this ended up looking like he was going to throw the bus instead of save it. I chose this pose to show the weight of the bus pushing down on his ears, which I hope makes him a different type of super-hero character.

So that's the genesis of a comic book hero.  I had a great time drawing and designing them, and I hope to re-visit these two when I have more time to dedicate to the project.