Little Robert Production Drawings
click on the thumbnails to see larger versions

 

this was the first one...just a sketch so i'd remember to get around to doing the whole project later...i had no idea how long it'd actually take me to get around to it.

 

 

this was the second drawing, and there's a lot more character than the first one...you can also see the edge of the page was used to brainstorm other story possibilities.

 

 

possibly my favorite illustration for LR...all of these kids were patterned on existing characters...i'll give you a hint - the kid on the left end looks a lot like the butterball cenobite in the hellraiser movies.

 

 

LITTLE ROBERT'S ORIGIN TALE
wherein lies not a single cosmic ray

Little Robert sprang to life sometime in the fall of 1992. I was living in Memphis and had just finished grad school, and, therefore, I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself next. I'd spent the summer house sitting for a professor friend, and the summer was pretty much over.

I ended up doing a great deal of interdisciplinary performance work for art openings and for shows with modern dance company Project: Motion. With these performances, I'd always compose my own music, occasionally performing it live for the piece, but I was coming to realize that my music talents weren't up to par...at least not in my own mind. So, I started thinking of ways to break into writing.

Children's stories had always been interesting to me, since they are visual in a way that only the most interesting films or performances ever are. Little Robert grew out of my idea that all the punk friends I'd had over the years might grow up and have kids one day. If they did, what might their kids be like? I imagined a couple who named their little boy after Robert Smith, and the rest is on the page.

In 1993, I drew the first LR drawings, and he hasn't changed much since. LITTLE ROBERT GOES TO CAMP was written then, but was finally drawn and printed in 2001. A few of my LA friends have copies of the original, and I've included a few of those drawings on this page. When I decided to recommit the freak engine web site to my own work, I thought it would be appropriate to begin with a reworking of the first Little Robert story.

-Tom