the next thing i needed to tackle was how to pull off an expressive Captain who goes from exuberant to angry to down right beaten up by countless rejections not to mention that it is just him and the garbage out on the open ocean. so i leaned on the old stop-motion animation technique of replacement animation. i created five heads that could be interchanged on one master body. i was able to categorize the captain’s many expressions into just five facial poses(expressions). first there is the neutral face which has a gentle smile/ smirk , second there is the open mouth exuberance, third is the jaw dropped expression of ‘oh no! it the mexican navy!’ forth is the teeth gritting scowl where he is about to blow his top and fifth is the face of a man that is beaten down and gasping for the last breath of fresh air. **(the ‘neutral’ face is not included in the following photo)

capt duffy's many faces

one little problem that arose in the midst of making the multiple heads was that his captain’s hat would need to fit each head and look good from any angle. after finding the right blue leather and about 3 hours of trial and error i got this little gem.

duffy's captain hat

another small detail throughout the book is the captain’s constantly changing t-shirt, my favorite being the one with Mr. Yuck from the green poison control phone number sticker that we had on the center of our rotary phone dial in my childhood home.

Mr. YUCK t-shirt cameo