This page features some of the concept artwork I did when I was doing character development for Caseous. I always knew Frog was going to be in it, and Bear was pretty much always there, as far as I can remember. A little gnome-like creature somehow made its way onto the drawing board, as did an evil-looking fish that turned into a bug-eyed bowl monger. It was a process, and I'm not even sure how it came to be what it is. Perhaps it all started with the original Frog...

I am certain that this is the first incarnation of Frog. He was very small, stubbly, almost bloblike. Yes, he's a cute little thing, but you can't do much with him; he's not all that articulate or movable. Towards the bottom of the page is Frog and Bear beer belching, apparantly from their wilder days. Caseous characters don't dabble in chemicals right now, and I really don't have any intention of having them do so. I think I was just looking for an excuse to let them burp, and I didn't have a context for it like I did in Colloquial Prose. I have no clue who that guy is at the bottom of the page, but it seems like perhaps his eyes could have been part of an inspiration for Fish's rather large, white globes.

At the top of this page are some very early drawings of Gnome. It looks like the third one on the right may have been the first one - he's very withdrawn, arms to his chest, pants instead of overalls. There is a drawing of Frog in the middle of the page where he is staring straight ahead - this one was based off of the real "frog." Towards the bottom of the page, Frog seems to get a little bigger, which probably leads to his current state today. To this day, I'm still not quite sure why I drew a fish (far left, middle), but it looks like before I was done with this sheet, I put it in a bowl (far right, middle) and made it a little happier. Again, I have no idea who this "guy"-looking guy is; but I'm sure he didn't have a happy childhood.

The top drawing of Bear on the next display is based off of the Bear in this picture:

Like I said, I always knew there was going to be a bear, but this large bear at Wall Drug drew the inspiration for Bear. The picture of the group all in the car is from my original concept of a storyline - road trip to a Pearl Jam concert. I remember drawing this with Bear and Frog, and then putting Gnome in the back seat. But something was missing. When I thought about the fish I had drawn before, I started to draw a few fish. But when it came time to put him in the car, I put him in a bowl so he could actually, well, live. I don't remember the story behind the fat, round bears, but I do remember trying out different types of eyes on the bear in lower-left hand corner.

Here is quite a strange piece in the history of developing Caseous. Frog became taller, then spotted, then very angular, than super round, than small eyes, then large eyes, and so on. I think Frog as we know him today actually owes a lot to these odd sketches. Although it's different than anything else I had done before, Frog is tall and has found his two prominent eye sockets through these sketches. Do note, however, that I seem to have given Frog's then-eyes to Gnome, eventually. The bottom half of the page deals with deciding the overall shape and movement of bear. This is about the point that he got the longer neck. I've always pictured Bear as a brown bear, yet polar bears actually have these type of long necks. Go figure. The back of this notebook page is faint, but you can make out the characters wearing Star Wars helmets and masks. Even at this early stage, I had thought of a gag or two from one of my favorite cartoons, "EEEENGH!". The masks are the same, except for a replacement of tusken raider for Frog's Darth Vader mask on this sheet of notebook paper. Yes, that's a frog with a moustache in a dinner jacket in the upper-right hand corner. No, I don't know why.