Hey, Jason Salas!

As you know, these fake covers are more thought-out than the internal comics. They have to be. That said, I only think about them a little bit – still keep my creative juices flowing.

For this one, I ran into an obstacle. The initial idea was to make a magazine directed toward people who use mannequins. I thought a goofy take on this would be a man who wanted a family but was unable to snag a wife so he went the way of a mannequin. And, yes, I realize that it is reminiscent of “Lars and the Real Girl,” but it’s more of a trope than a singular idea – that of a man who resorts to a fake woman because he cannot get a real woman to date him. And, one can argue, that “Lars and the Real Girl” plays on that trope instead of presenting a new idea. But I digress.

Here’s a peek behind the scenes of how I created this cover. I used Midjourney to create an image of a man with a mannequin family. I liked the idea of a dated house and the man being something of a nerd; as though he’s a guy who lives in a house he inherited from his dear mother and didn’t change a thing:

That image was a bit too creepy. The guy looks like a psycho and, for all intents and purposes, he is! After all, he’s living with a mannequin family!

I thought a softer approach might work so I prompted Midjourney to make a younger guy in a lackluster apartment with a mannequin girlfriend. Here it is:

OK. So that’s better, but it’s not compelling. The idea is too much like the Lars movie. It’s missing the kids and the mannequin is too realistic. I like the idea of faceless mannequins because they don’t tumble into the uncanny valley.

I tried to create a guy with the mannequin family but Midjourney couldn’t do it, regardless of how I altered the prompts. I figured I could make the guy and then add a mannequin lady and mannequin children. Here’s the guy:

I made the mannequin children and tried to add them to the pic but the lighting was all off. Here are the mannequin kids:

The whole thing began to feel too contrived and difficult. It went against the free-flowing nature of Oddballs so I scrapped it and simply prompted Midjourney to give me the following image:

I liked how it focused on the mannequins without any humans. I thought that was a fun idea – to have a magazine solely for mannequins. I added some sell copy and got it done lickety-split!