The Evolution of Oscar Jr.

I never intended to expand the JenOS universe beyond the core 3 characters: JenOS, the Architect, and Cat. But the best characters are discovered just as much as they are created.

This one started with a hand. My hand.

Everyday, I try to do some sketching exercises to sharpen my eye (and pencil?). I’ve been doing a lot of “blind contour” type sketches where you draw an object by looking only at the object, not the paper. The first pass was just that; draw my hand without lifting the pencil or looking at my sketchbook.

Honestly, not the worst hand I’ve ever drawn.

Next, I repeated this, but added marks for shadows. You can see in the middle image that the shadows don’t always sit on the fingers or knuckles. Such is the blind contour. Lastly, which is harder to see, is drawing little rhythmic lines following the direction of the shape. I know. It doesn’t look like anything and definitely not Oscar Jr.

That last version, the volume study, has a bit of cactus or succulent quality to it. ChatGPT suggested I take the leap to drawing from imagination - create a creature part shell, part animal, part plant. Somehow all of them blended and merged into a believable thing.

Oscar 1.0

At this point, I had no idea what I had done. This was just a weird little creature with leafy appendages, a seashell core, a little tail, and some sort of sensory organ.

Surely, this was sufficient to put the pencil down for the day. It has depth, dimension, volume. It is neither plant nor animal. Just a new little doodle in the sketchbook.

But that was not the end.

ChatGPT said “What if you studied it like a new species discovered in the field and you are documenting its internal anatomy?” To which I said, “That sounds hard.” What purpose could this possible serve??? I get it. Knowing anatomy is important. So I tried. It wasn’t great, I’ll be honest. I only made suggestions of bones and muscles. I gave it some lungs and what I thought was a stomach. Intestines. A whole digestive tract.

Ok. Cool. Then Oscar evolved vibratory membranes between his ribs. Once that happened, it spawned a whole bunch of organs. A frequency modulation bladder. Resonance canals. And a little impedance bell to pair the frequency modulation bladder to what I once thought was a stomach.

Oscar was a vibration powered little guy who could hum and shake. He wasn’t just a doodle anymore. He was a vibe.

This next step in documenting this species was making some panels showing his behavior. Like a little model sheet.

Field sketches of Oscar.

These sketches were simple, but emotive. Oscar had cartoonified himself. I could see him as the star of a children’s book or even chatting with SpongeBob. I now had a character with personality I could draw consistently. He felt alive.

The only challenge left now was getting him translated into the house style so he could live in the background of a JenOS panel like a little hermit crab or something. I figured with all of my sketches, this would be easy peasy.

But I was VERY WRONG.

I tried just describing Oscar to ChatGPT (along with the sketch of Oscar 1.0). The results were more horror than cartoon sidekick. I tried feeding more of the cartoon sketches. But ChatGPT just wanted to make him a turtle or dinosaur. Here are some excerpts of this rendering nightmare.

The problem that I ran into face-first is that AI has no imagination. It runs purely on statistical averages. ChatGPT had never seen Oscar before, so it kept trying to turn it into something it could model. Even with ample reference images.

At this point . . . I felt a bit screwed.

Perhaps Oscar was for the sketchbook only. Maybe he needed to wait until I had Procreate. Perhaps he was just independent of the JenOS universe. But I am persistent when I have a vision.

I asked ChatGPT to just recreate the sketch of Oscar 1.0.

Finally! Oscar has entered the digital world! Great. Awesome. But I still needed model sheets if I was really going to deploy him into the comic universe.

I asked Chat to make a model sheet for Oscar.

That isn’t Oscar! That’s a turtle! A very cute turtle! Re-render. Make it Oscar. Give him leafy appendages. No limbs! One eye membrane thing!

At this point I paused. It wasn’t what I expected. He had two eyes and regular limbs. But he also has strong Oscar energy. The shell was right. The “ears” were leafy. But most importantly . . . he was CUTE! He fit seamlessly into the JenOS universe. A little creature from Galapagos.

And that is how Oscar Jr. was born.

By Maeve Pascal. Meet our contributors.