Gullzards!

My thesis at The Center for Cartoon Studies was a science fiction graphic novel project, titled Arridaba. It featured sea turtles, and futuristic sociopolitical issues surrounding a life-prolonging drug made from their brains. Despite the intriguing premise, the story wasn't quite the masterpiece I had hoped for. Even so, I made many discoveries about my abilities as a cartoonist along the way.

During my two years of intensive comic-making at CCS, I increasingly came to know that animals and monsters are among my artistic fortes. For the scene below, I invented the Gullzards as a plot device, to knock the flying cops out of the air. Being somewhere in between ancient reptiles and modern birds, the Gullzards are quite reminiscent of Archeopteryx. I subsequently planned to create a story about the lives of these "primitive" birds, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe sharing them here will provide a jump-start:

I experimented with ink-wash as "color":

Beware of the flying Gullzards!