Fat Unicorn – A Story Developing in Public
November 30, 2010 by Jerzy Drozd
Filed under Blog
So it all began with this drawing I did after a discussion with Kasey Van Hise:
Which led to this one by Kasey:
We were playfully joking around about a comic called “Fat Unicorn” over Twitter and Tumblr, and we found ourselves having so much fun with it, we started creating more characters for this comic that may or may not happen.
JEAN-PIERRE BEARPUNCHER
Jean-Pierre is a Bearpuncher by trade, which is a sort of professional travelers’ protector who specializes in dealing with bears. The Bearpuncher Guild has strict guidelines not only on how to properly dispatch of bears (always with fists, never with weapons), but also in never using one’s punching skill on any other living thing.
Therefore Jean-Pierre must always seek another means to fight non-bear enemies, lest he find himself kicked out of the Bearpunching Guild. Given that he is a 12th generation Bearpuncher, this is an unthinkable prospect.
He is a cheerful and optimistic fellow, who is much more creative than he believes.
AESTHETIC ASCETIC
The Aesthetic Ascetic has invaded the fairy tale land that Fat Unicorn lives in and has taken it upon herself to redesign the world to match her rather severe notion of beauty. Of course a chubby unicorn does not meet AA’s ideals. Therefore, FAT UNICORN MUST BE DESTROYED FOR ART’S SAKE!
PAPERCAT (designed by Kasey)
Papercat is a former paper minion of the Aesthetic Ascetic’s whose only dream in life was to be a cat. Since this is too representational (and SO bourgeois!), he was chased out of the ranks. Since then, he’s become a reluctant ally of Fat Unicorn and friends.
Papercat is a huge worrywart, and constantly nags the others that maybe what they’re doing isn’t such a good idea. He has the ability to change into any shape that can be made with origami, but mostly prefers to spend his time as a cat. He hates water more than real cats, because it makes him all wrinkly and gross.
Possibly what excites me most about this, if we decide to make it a comic, is that we’ve so far been developing the project entirely on Twitter and Tumblr for the public to see. We have yet to talk “face-to-face” about it yet, and I’m not entirely sure if I want to. There’s something really neat about the idea of letting others watch a story come together, for better or worse. Equally exciting is that the story idea came about in a natural and fun way. We had no intention of making a comic when we started joking around about Fat Unicorn, but it just sort of came to life during our conversation.
You can follow the discussion on Twitter, or keep an eye on the Tumblogs kept by me and Kasey.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! I love this so far. The character ideas are all brilliant. I would love to see thsi actually get made.