herman is not dead.com

the mail man story

 

Once upon a time, when I was a small kid, I remember wanting to be a mailman when I grew up. I just thought how cool it would be to meet all these new people everyday and give them their mail and how every day would be different. At least that's what I thought then...       Back in my art school days, in my children's illustration class we were supposed to work on a project for the entire second semester. I started pretty excited about the whole thing, it was working alright and then I just don't know what happened with it. I think I just didn't have the story all well developed as far as what I wanted to do with it. But the story would be about a small boy who's hero was his mailman.       The story went something like the kid had a wild imagination and always saw his mailman in situations that really weren't. I don't know if this idea came up on my own, but I guess you can say it's similar to the Calvin & Hobbes storyline, as far as wild imaginations. Well, the kid is such a fanatic, that he has his own little uniform that he wears around town while he follows his mailman around on a daily basis watching him as he bravely takes on every adventure that comes along his way.       The funny thing about when I started this story as far as the drawings, is that I only got through about 4 pages not including the cover. They were all done in watercolors,colored pencils and ink. Then came the period that I mentioned earlier that I just put the whole thing aside for awhile. When I decided to pick it up again, I thought it would be easier to on a professional level as far as presentation and handing it to a printer or something, that I could scan in the drawings and work on them in my computer with sharper more vibrant colors. Four scanned, colored drawings later, I realized I was working in an inferior resolution. So once again, I put the project aside. Here you'll see both versions of each page with the exception of the last drawing, I don't think I ever got around to doing it. First the watercolor and then the one generated with computer colors. I like the vibrant colors on the computer ones, but somehow they lose that storybook touch. You be the judge, which do you like better ?
First up, the opening page, introduce the main characters and give a feel of the story. If you take notice now, you'll see a yellow fence that is supposed to run through every page in the story. Is there any symbolism behind it ? I don't know, follow the yellow brick road, I guess.
	I think before anything, this was the first finished drawing I worked on for the story, something about the scenery in it just compelled me to work on this one and say, "hey, this is what I'm going to work on this semester, don't you think it's a great idea ?", or something like that. I don't know, though...looking at some of these again, I know I can definitely rework them to make them much better and less...square ? boxy ? straightforward ? ,...I don't know.
There were particularly some things that I was pretty weak on and one of them is trees and branches. I could never make them believable and they'd come out pretty retarded looking. But somehow, I guess I can either cover it up, or take away from it by concentrating on perspective, color, composition and whatever other excuse I can think of.
	I don't know, I'm not sure why I never continued on this story, perhaps the same reason I've never finished some other projects, but I thought it had some good ideas and cool characters in it. And besides, I could always advertise at the post office.

© 2002 g.hernandez