Diversity in Tales From Blue Ridge

When my sister first drew the concept art for Mash, Sweetie, Rory and Rosemary, I was impressed at how cute she could make a vegetable look on paper. I also particularly remember her working with different clothing styles on the characters. She couldn’t decide whether to make a body below the main fruit, or make the fruit the body. Since she was only drawing the four main characters at the time, she decided to make the arms and legs attach directly to the head. With a rounder body, it looked better simply to have arms and legs, and not really worry about anything else. It’s a cartoon, after all. She continued to draw more characters while we fleshed out the inhabitants of Blue Ridge Valley and Cornucopia and I remember her saying, “There are just so many different shaped and sizes! It’s such a diverse world.”

This is something that I think is pretty cool in Tales from Blue Ridge. I’ve noticed lately that there are more cartoons that have characters that aren’t alike. Regular show has a raccoon, a blue jay and a talking gumball machine. The Adventures of Gumballs features things that aren’t even in the cartoon style, but are clay or computerized and three dimensional. Diversity in cartoon characters is becoming more popular. In this creation process of Tales from Blue Ridge, I’m finding each different fruit or vegetable that we create has their own unique shape. Especially when it comes to wardrobe, it’s apparent that not every character has a uniform look, distinguished only by color or hairstyle.

As we continue to produce our web-comics, and hopefully switch to animation in the future, I find myself thinking of the range of characters we could potentially spotlight, not just with exterior looks but as cultures as well. I find this to be a unique opportunity we at MackinTrioInk have with Tales from Blue Ridge, because food and nature differ all the world.By using fruits, vegetables and plants we can create a world just as expansive as our own.