Before we venture into Chapter One, I thought it would be fun to look back and meet the unnamed characters of the prologue. First, I’d like you to meet Zeke Hainey, the old timer who ends up face to face with a UFO.

The final model of Zeke Hainey and his dog.

Originally, I saw Zeke as a Jed Clampett type of character with the tattered hat and clothes; more of a back woods type. But the sequence eventually merged with a previous project of mine—an 8mm film I made in High School called They Say There’s Something Out There— a kind of Twilight Zone/Creep Show story about an old man who discovers something strange in the woods after his truck breaks down on the road (sound familiar?). So, once the character was a little more solid in my mind, I needed to “cast” the role by looking for the perfect visual personality for the character. In the short film, I dressed myself as the character ( I fired the original actor. Sorry Darrin!), complete with old age make-up and Ben Nye gray in my hair. So the perfect casting this time around just might be someone related to the original actor—my father.

A reference sheet of my inspiration for Zeke Hainey.

I wasn’t sure how my dad would take being cast in my story, but since I was using his truck as well—a 1964 Ford F100 (more on that some other time)—there was a chance he just might go for it. I made up a few reference sheets from recent photos of my dad and started to work out some rough ideas for Zeke. I eventually nailed the final model right before production on the pages by bringing the design a little more in line with the style of Red’s character.

Here are a few sketches and roughs of the character in progress.

Some expressions for an earlier model of Zeke.

Sketchbook and roughs for the red's Planet prologue pages.