Introducing Resident Dragon: The Trials and Tribulations of Living in a Shared House with a Dragon in the Suburbs

Resident Dragon Cast: TET, Red the Dragon
Cool Froyd the Cat, and Grrr Dog.
Buy Prints of finished toons.

Last year (2024), for my birthday in May, my sister bought me a quality, metal bodied, ball point pen (black ink).

 As someone who likes to sketch with ball point pens, and with a big concern that these last few years I really wasn't drawing as much as someone who considers themselves to be an artist should, I decided to put the pen to good use.

In June of the same year I bought two A5 sketchbooks and spent as much time as I needed to fill a page with ball point pen 'doodles', each morning after breakfast.

 I'm predominantly a cartoonist who's always drawn from imagination, so filling a page in a sketch book is not a challenge. I just draw a line, or a circle, or whatever and see what emerges.

Filling Sketch Books Just to Draw More

Filling an A5 sketchbook page would take me about 20-25 minutes. I drew all kinds of random things, occasionally using the time to learn how to draw things by looking up a reference image or two. Giraffes is one specific example.

I knew how to draw a simple cartoon giraffe, but I learnt how to draw a more realistic giraffe looking at reference images online. I also learned they're remarkably like drawing a horse with really long legs (and neck, of course).

You can actually see every page of my sketchbooks on my Instagram account, starting from June 30th 2024.

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Bringing the Resident Dragon Cast Together

About a month in, drawing random images daily was starting to get pretty old so I thought I'd use my page to start learning how to draw Cool Froyd the Cat as a fully realized cartoon character.

If you're a long time follower you may know that Cool Fryod started out as a pencil doodle sketch I did while in College studying Graphic Design between 1992-1994. 

I turned the sketch into a full color acrylic painting in 2009. In 2013 I took the painted image and rigged him as an animated character using Cartoon Animator (then known as CrazyTalk Animator). You can see him in his third animated short in my Animation and Video Life Blog (and get the history) in this post, Cool Froyd, Episode 3: Gardening - Animated Short by TET.

The problem being, I wanted to do more than just have the painting move. I wanted to animate him walking, and basically moving around more like an animated cartoon character should.

At the time I'd already teamed Froyd with my own cartoon TET Avatar, Grrr Dog (another character rigged from a single image doodle turned painting), and Red the Dragon - who was created specifically for a St. George and the Dragon animated short made for Reallusion's Animation@Work competition.

The intention was to make an animated series titled Resident Dragon, which I wrote about, again in my Animation and Video Life Blog, in my post, Can a Solo Animator Make an Animated Feature Film or TV Series? It's worth a read as you get much of the premise of the series in the image joke cartoon captions.

So far I've scripted three of the six episodes for season one. Each episode is no longer than five minutes at most. I've fully storyboarded the first two episodes (something I used my morning sketching time to do. You can see those storyboards on my Instagram).

The only complete, animated short so far is a Christmas special, Resident Dragon: Christmas List

The main problem with all these characters is that I only have one angle character rigs of them. Also the body on my TET Avatar is not my artwork (the head is). So after Froyd, I set about using my 20 minutes after breakfast to teach myself how to draw all the Resident Dragon characters from any angle.

The Birth of almost One Hundred Resident Dragon Cartoons

That grew into drawing them all in the same scene together, which grew into drawing a single image gag cartoon for Resident Dragon a day. Which lead to gradually digitally inking and coloring each cartoon into a finished piece that I'm selling as prints, in three different sizes, suitable for framing, in my Resident Dragon Store. 

Although I only have eleven completely finished gag cartoons, I'm actually coming up to my one hundredth sketch cartoon in the series as I'm writing this - I think I'm around cartoon 91 or 92?

Since I'm only completing the final cartoons very slowly I thought I'd introduce readers of this blog to the series, so I can make an occasional post of completed cartoons. Maybe a post featuring five toons, since I'm currently drawing them five days a week with each of the five toons relating to the same theme. It's another way I can get the word out there, and the cartoon is literally TET Life, since my avatar's name is TET, and the toon is about his life living with a Resident Dragon.

Eventually I hope to release a book of finished toons, along with other merchandise. As well as pushing on with creating my animated series too.

In the mean time, if you want to see each cartoon sketch as I draw them head over and follow my Instagram account (or my Art Time Productions Facebook Page).

I hope you've enjoyed this little insight into the birth of what is likely my most consistent cast of cartoon characters I've drawn since I came up with my Street Kids cartoons back when I was a teenager in high school. Which you can get a glimpse of in my Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook below.