Sometimes I’ll put a lot of work into something that, for one reason or another, I don’t end up finishing. I wish my work-to-completion ratio was better, but most of the time the work is instructive in some way.

PROFESSOR PORTMANTEAU was to be a sci-fi novella illustrated with sculptural illustration, kind of like a stop-motion animated feature without the animation. For various reasons, I decided not to finish this book, but wrote the story and created the main cast, which can be seen in black and white here (the final book was to be in full color). I sculpted a removable “hero” head for each character, cast it, and would make alterations to each cast piece to reflect their expression in each scene. I’d make alterations to their bodies and sculpt new pieces for each shot as needed.

Characters here include Professor Portmanteau, the current incarnation of the smartest person in the universe, her monkey assistant (who acted as her living backup memory, but could never remember his own name), the nerdy Dr. Guero, snippy Dr. Stadtic (who wore van de Graaff generator hairsticks), the grumpy Dr. Tyke, kindly old Dr. Silverspout, the Celebrity (an elongated, alien Tom Jones type), and Professor Hermetic, a previous incarnation of the professor (who’s designed to look like a Jack Kirby/Go Nagai mashup). At the end you’ll see a mockup of what the pages might have looked like and some sample text.

While I’m a little sad I put the brakes on this one, I’m pleased with the work I did and learned a lot from it.