U is for Ugly (Day 21)

He is very ugly.

And you are very judgmental and shallow, sir. Aren't we being a bit prejudiced here? Well, he has dental problems clearly. And male-pattern baldness (the Daddy Warbucks/Kojak pattern, that is). Some surgical scars still clearly visible. And only three fingers per hand... with the nails on the wrong side... and in the wrong place. No neck. Little puppet arms. Flourescent skin. Prominent warts. Animal-like ears that stick out too far... and don't line up with each other. But do all these details really add up to ugly? Have you gotten to know this indvidual as a person? Did that even occur to you? Sometimes, the people who are "ugly" on the outside are beautiful on the inside and vice versa. I learned that from a little movie called Shallow Hal. Thank you, Gwyneth Paltrow in a fatsuit, for showing us the way. Again.

T is for Troll (Day 20)

Look at the ugly troll.

I would promise you that we're past the "Look at" sentences, but there's at least one more to go. And we're back to having one small character drawn in the middle of the page with the rest left blank. What can I say? To this day, I am not good at drawing backgrounds or props. But what of our troll friend here? This was before the Troll movies by a couple of years and well before the rise of the Internet troll, so the trolls I was referencing were the ones from fairy tales, specifically that Norwegian golden-oldie, "Three Billy Goats Gruff." Note that the troll here has terrible posture and must scuttle around like a crab. That's because he has to live under a fairly low bridge. Note, too, the troll's homeless-guy beard and tattered one-piece outfit. The latter might well be described as a gunny sack onesie.