Note: The images presented here are just a few of the great illustrations included in this chapter in the book!

Dylan Meconis first made a name for herself with the online graphic novel, Bite Me!, a vampire comedy she describes as “Anne Rice by way of Looney Tunes.” She is now self-publishing Family Man, a historical drama following the early life of one of the characters from Bite Me!, while working on Self Portrait as Somebody Else, “a strange autobio piece about my childhood and Greek mythology.” Bite Me! and Family Man can be found at http://projectkooky.com/dylan/.

Dylan Meconis is clearly devoted to the concept of character: “I really enjoy the character design process, but not just for the purpose of visual design play. The only reason I ever started drawing was because I had characters in my head, and I wanted to make them come alive any way I could. Drawing them gave them a whole new level of reality. The rest is great fun, but the joy is derived from bringing a person out of the paper.”

In Bite Me!, each character presents initially as a caricature of familiar vampire clichés, though ultimately it is the characters’ complete inability to live up to the caricatures that makes them endearing and memorable.

In Family Man, Meconis blends subtle nuance and minute movements with notes of amplification and exaggeration. Early in the story, Meconis captures the intimacy of a family at home, defining her characters by interaction as much as by individual identity. These initial exchanges make clear that this is to be a story to be defined more by the personalities of its inhabitants than by the sequence of its events.

Research and Authenticity
While Bite Me! primarily parodied existing period clichés, in Family Man Meconis is more concerned with presenting a reasonably accurate picture of the people living in the 18th century, necessitating a fair amount of research into the time period. She has focused on such topics as the history of family life in the lands that would become Germany; the history of the University as a social institution; and religious and secular philosophy—a particularly important point, as the personal philosophies of each character provide much of the story’s conflict.

In the area of visual research, she has studied period wardrobe, although this research presented some challenges: “It’s quite easy to find out how the high and mighty befrocked themselves, because who wouldn’t be interested in a woman with a sailing ship balanced on her hair, but it’s much trickier to get a sense for the middle and lower classes.”

More difficult than maintaining visual authenticity, however, is addressing the non-visual aspects of period character design. Capturing the dialogue, the personal values and concerns, the complex social interactions, and other such nuances of character can be taxing. Sometimes, Meconis says, it’s better to capture the spirit rather than the letter of the time period in question.

“Nobody writing in the 21st century could ever really write an 18th century mind,” argues Meconis. “It would be like trying to stuff an omelet back into an egg shell. I try to avoid certain phrases and behaviors that are really obviously modern, and add some quaint inflections (without layering on romance novel faux-historic jibber). And I give characters simplified versions of interests and behaviors that I’ve found actual evidence for. But the only way it works is to admit that these people would be very unusual for their time. So I’ve just embraced that by making Luther and his family (and the other upcoming characters) intentionally atypical, bordering on scandalous. Which translates to a modern audience as relatable, and adds a zest of conflict.”

Process and Method
Meconis does not belabor the visual development of a character; she uses no model sheets, rotations, or other such tools, and only sketches a character three to five times before dropping them into the story. When she feels a character bears a strong resemblance to an actor, she will use photos or film stills as reference, though only in very early sketches. Her primary reference is her mental image of the characters, combined with existing drawings within the story itself.

Despite keeping her early process brief, she is concerned with the small details of character design, with a particular fondness for the symbolic value of design elements: “Shapes and features and tones/colors need to be significant to the character’s personality or background. If two characters share visual elements, they’ll share the related character elements, too.”

Her attention to color symbolism is surprising given that her comics make very limited use of color—Bite Me! is in pure black and white, while Family Man adds only tones of green. But, as she points out, “Just because Hollywood filmed in black and white for the first half of the 20th century doesn’t mean the costume designers dressed stars based only around on-camera value. An actress will behave differently in a red dress than a blue one, if it responds to her character somehow. And likewise, for me it’s very important for getting a grip on the character. Additionally, you’re always going to end up producing promotional or cover art that uses full color, so the audience is going to internalize that a little when reading the material. In a practical sense, knowing character colors also helps when assigning black-and-white (or green-tinted) values on the page.”

Designing and Developing Luther and Family
While creating Bite Me!, Meconis decided to create a separate story using Luther, a German werewolf and secondary character made to contrast with the French vampire characters, “who all had dark, severe designs with lots of sharp points and steep curves. So I made him shortish, stocky, rumpled, casually dressed, and cast him entirely in warm grays, with shapes that were organic rather than dramatic.” She added “a big trumpet of a nose to give him a wolfish snout and contrast with the slender vampire noses.” For Family Man, she has removed some of the “cartooniness” and made him about 20 years younger—before he becomes a werewolf. “Now, instead of being an animal symbol, the nose ties in with some of his problems about being identifiably half-Jewish,” says Meconis. “Nobody outside of the family has such an exaggerated feature in their design, so it’s a very easy way of having an immediately distinctive protagonist while still acknowledging how odd the feature is.”

As a young man, Luther’s body language is introverted, a little tired, and defensive. “In Bite Me!, Luther is still a bit exasperated, but he has little bits of sly wolfishness mixed in—long nails, a toothy smirk, wisps of hair, and occasional pieces of transformation that alter his hair and eyes to be darker and wilder. In Family Man, he’s not yet acquired those elements, so he’s less physically self-assured, and his design has fewer lupine tip-offs.”

Adding to the design challenge is the early revelation that Luther has a twin brother, Johann.  “Johann is a much more gregarious, self-assured character than Luther is.  To show the difference but keep them similar, I took Luther's design and tweaked it to be taller and jauntier, with a more feminine jaw, longer sideburns, and smokier eyes.”

Connected, Meconis says, are the designs of the parents, whom she had to “retroactively design” to show where their children’s features came from, while still explaining the parents’ characters.

Luther and his twin brother Johann are distinguished by visual tags, such as Johann’s sideburns and stubble, as well as by differences in body language and speech mannerisms.