Thursday, May 02, 2013

He-Man History - Part 1

I was looking through some of my old sketchbooks from way back when. This was the first time I've opened them in many years. I was quite amazed at what I found. Some of the drawings showed just how much I yet had to learn and some of what was in there was surprisingly good. Better than I realized when I created them. 

Among the treasure trove of ancient images I discovered are two drawings of He-Man from my days working on the original TV series. They dated from early 1983 which was the very beginning of production. Later on I must cut them down to tape in my sketchbook which in hindsight was a foolish thing to do. I don't know what I was thinking. In any case I still have them so I'm grateful for that. There's also concept drawings of other characters from He-Man that I'll publish later.

Here's what I found. The first image is a drawing of He-Man in blue pencil. I drew him in my own way. As I recall I was working on the character adapted from the action figure doll and sketching him in my own way. The second is a drawing of He-Man from the finalized look of the character based upon what a senior artist at Filmation Studios had done. This was the design of He-Man that had been approved. I'm not sure if the drawing was practice or from an episode I was working on. Either way it's the real deal.

You can see some of the taped edges as they appear in my sketchbook. The pages are not as yellowed as they appear here. I haven't adjusted the color of the paper for accuracy but you can still make out what's there none the less. Hope all the He-Man fans out there will enjoy this.


2 comments:

Evelar said...

Ooooohhhh yeeaaahh!!

This is indeed a wonder, Mr. Z. Thanks a lot for adding those notes about the images you post. It's great to know the history behind them.

Treasures like this must be preserved. Thank you so much.

Charles Z said...

Thanks for your comments and for checking in Emerson. There's a lot more to show from He-Man and She-Ra. I'm working in that direction to get things digitized and share with fans.