Wendy

An-uh-ma-shun! ...of some sort! Check out the .SWF on my DA page:
HERE

I really just wanted to scribble some poses to this dude's voice. A while back, Nebriniel linked me to this guy (Duke) who has posted several recordings of his voice - perfect for cartoons/characters. And I had a hankerin' for some sorta 10 second club type challenge so away I went.

I can't really explain it visually. I sorta imagined the lead guy as some sorta "Wendy's fanboy" -- mainly just because he uses the name "Wendy" at one point. And it sounds like he's talking to another character so I plopped in the motionless gum chewer. Are they in line at a restaurant? A club? Is he a REAL redhead? Who knows. Poses first. Questions later

Duke was kind enough to let me use his voice and post it up here for all three of you to listen to. Check out his own wares up HERE

caffeinated doodles

Truth be told (now where did I pick up that phrase...) I ain't so good at drawing on the spot. It's hard to turn down some good ol' fashion, anti-social fun though!

So here's some random doodles from a Friday night drink 'n' draw at the local bar.

A couple Grahams, a couple Enriques, a Zeus, a couple superhero pompadour dudes, one guy that really does know kung fu (who asked if anyone was drawing him which I suspiciously blurted out "NO.") a dude in a turtleneck and glasses, and me with some sorta sissified hands-on-hips pose.

The black lines were added in post. Photoshop.

3nrique had some stellar characitures during the night too. A Frankel face ya just wanted to frame on your wall XD

Stupid Fast

Hey! I made a dumb running sonic for the dumb running sonic blog thing!

I didn't make it in time and the dude isn't taking any more submissions but ya still gotta check 'em all out:
dumb running sonic

Everyone of them is great in their own special way. Strangely the site's formatting squishes the GIFs so to see them correctly ya gotta click on the title of each.

Anyway, I posted a .SWF of mine on Deviant. Enjoy the nonsense.
stupid fast.SWF

SNES pixel-bit

Embarrassingly, I slaved over this tiny SNES deck for an hour or so. Ha! Do NOT underestimate the raw POWER that a single pixel can possess!

I plucked some inspiration from my friend Marshall who created "An Abridged History of Game Controllers" out of pixels:
[link]

Brilliant! I think it's amazing how well everyone of them completely works. All those different controller shapes and button layouts all completely work within the confines of some tiny squares.

And so seeing these just made me want to build a deck for my favorite game system: the SNES.

There is something innately satisfying about creating pixel art: When pixels are your medium, the "right" and "wrong" decisions you make in art become a lot more clear. Say, compared to a drawing or a painting. ONE pixel can make or break it. The appeal is somewhat mechanical. And even if it ain't perfect, you know the artist had to at LEAST consider each pixel. Thought literally goes into every square. Compared again to a drawing or painting where stray lines and happy accidents can be part of the process and the overall look.

And of course, there's a whole lotta nostalgia that comes with anything made of pixels. * sigh * I miss the nearly-forgotten days when hard earned allowances were spent on $50 cartridges that held a few precious megs of homework-delaying wonderment XD

Day after Christmas...

Here's a bizarre doodle I've had to draw 3 times over the life of my truck.



Ya see, somethin' broke in the drum brake assembly of my rear passenger wheel. My dad and I JUST replaced the brake shoes and hardware kits on both rear wheels over the summer. But somethin' broke, and miscellaneous pieces were rollin' around squealing in the brake drum for a couple days. The day after Christmas we fixed it, but brake drums are completely asinine in structure - they require a drawing so we know the order in which all the pieces and springs go together. It's a delicate house of cards with all the parts holding on to each other with springs and cables. The whole mechanism floats around and it hardly seems like a precision piece of equipment that's responsible for your brakes.

And so, I guess that's why they invented disc brakes.

Christmas card

For Christmas I made a mini Santa card for the team at work. I had an original plan of printing the characters out on vellum with the BG printed on nice matte paper then layering the two. The BG had a white silhouette of the characters so the vellum print would be clearly visible on top. Just a neat separation I thought. Well after fighting with the printer to accept the vellum, it eventually worked, but all the detail was lost in the imperfect parchment. I had to bail on the idea and just went with a nice matte print.

Here are my doodles and the final.

Hope everyone had a Happy Festivus!

INSPIRATION

Just a couple mutie bros max chillin'...

I have a lot to say...again... and so I'm gonna try really hard to explain the inspiration behind this image and hopefully not offend anyone.

I don't necessarily do a lot of superhero art, but one day I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna draw me some Colossus because he's one of my favorites." So I start with some searches on Deviant to get the juices flowing. "Maybe something inspiring will pop up." I say to myself.

I should let you know, I've only recently been lulled into Deviant Art's world. I dunno why, but I guess I never really gravitated to it before. Never even really browsed it. Maybe I figured I'd seen plenty of Pickachu fanart in "art school" already... But here's the thing: turns out, Deviant is a whole COSMOS of art. The GOOD, the BAD, and every UGLY fetish in between. Even .SWFs are postable on Deviant. And so you say to me, "...yeah no kiddin' ya rube." But here's the thing again: When you're presented with page after page of Colossus art, dozens of hundreds of thumbnails, something has GOT to get your attention somehow. A cool pose? Bright colors? Stellar inks? A great style? What image deserves your precious mouse click and several consecutive seconds of your attention???

Well for me, these did. Don't laugh. My eyes stuck to these from a mister "bitBEE" and I actually saved them down. Sure, ya might say Colossus has seen better days, and I'd be lying if I didn't say initial reaction was "wow...really???" but this is where my search ended. I kept starring. Which is more than I can say for some masterful Alex-Ross-ish render of Colossus in the thumbnail right next to these.

Certainly there are still many things to take into account like age, talent, tools, but it came down to decisions. What I like about art and animation, what engages me, is the decision making process. So every stroke and shape and color choice was something I was vastly more interested in here than with other images. How does this artist see things? How does his brain come to these conclusions? And then I think about my childhood and how much fun it was to draw. How completely decisionLESS drawing was back then. I could hold a number 2 in my fist and draw you a scene of warring robots while thinking about spaghettios.

I'm jealous of that. I'm jealous of what these "Colossi" represent here. I'll NEVER be able to return to those times - to that effortless decision making. ...well, I guess I COULD try mentally, but it might be hard to sustain being a commercial artist.

And this isn't to sound all depressed about "good ol' days" or whatever. I still enjoy drawing and making stuffs. I think as we all grow up (somewhat), we just embrace the decision making process. Certainly it's tough at times, and unfortunately ya just can't go back home.

So that's what motivated me. "Let's have fun making some DECISIONS!" I said to myself. And I started doodling.

For whatever reason, I wasn't content with ONLY Colossus so Wolverine seemed like a natural runner up. I'm not a big comic nerd any more so I had to look up the specifics of their "classic" costumes. In doing so, I came across some images of X-MEN cards!

Dude! Do you remember these!? I had the whole set! They were all drawn by Jim Lee who was a GOD in my eyes at the time. So I immediately knew I wanted to lift the same sorta card motif here.

Here's my rough layout.

And here's the start of my colors. The black inks I did in Flash and brought into PS. And right around this time I remember really liking the black lines and the flat colors. I kinda wanted to end it right there. Though I pushed on with self-color lines and some brush work knowing I could always go back to flats. I'm kinda bummed where Wolvie's head and elbow land on Colossus. Weird sorta tangents and his head is completely inside the arm silo. Eh, one of those things ya don't really think you'll notice once ya start working in the computer, "oh it'll be fine..." but in the end ya sorta do notice and so ya say, "oh well - there's always next year..."

That's about all for this episode. I gotta go thank bitBEE now!

UPDATE!

Over the holiday break I stole back a buncha my childhood drawings from my folks. For your enjoyment, and my embarrassment, I'm posting a couple notebook scribblings from '92. That woulda made me 13. That middle one of Colossus is straight from the Jim Lee cards again.

Oh those poor feet on Colossus. Like someone smashed them with a hammer...

Stay Classy.

Here's somethin' new!



Let me start at the beginning...

A friend shared this color challenge meme from Deviant Art with me. The object was just to make an image in each of the squares using ONLY the 5 colors for each of those squares. An exercise in restriction in other words. Cool.


I've been on an "Anchorman" kick lately so I thought I'd draw busts of the characters, work that out of my system, and try to match up appropriate colors from the meme. 2 birds with one stone...so to speak. The milk carton (not that it's an actual character...) gravitated to the primary colors immediately. All other characters I kinda just had to make work as best I could. It was also about defining lines and shapes in their faces - defining lighting for me too. Then it was kind of a layout exercise as I tried to assemble the busts to read well...enough. Then I retrofit those busts into the meme. It was all sorts of exercises!


And here're some horrible, horrible, scribbles as I was trying to work out the characters. Also, I've listed the order in which I drew the characters and the number of times I drew them before I felt satisfied taking them digital:





Brick - 9 drawings
Ron - 15
Brian - 4
Champ - 3
Veronica - 1
milk - 1

Just kinda interesting to note that some drawings or characters can click better/faster than others.

SDCC 2011 wraps up

Another year, another round of love! Thanks to all who stopped by, looked, pointed, laughed, scowled, bought, talked, and even frowned (I feel like a jackass for selling out of my Mega Man prints when there were still a couple interested folks!).

The show is always fun despite the rumors that always seem to float around about location changes, price increases, hostile TV take overs, etc. ;-) I hope to keep going and meeting new folks. And I always come back home with renewed ideas. New artistic hopes and goals. A new book? Themed prints? Animation??? Who knows?!!?

Here's my pal Dave manning the table. No new books, but we tried out a variety of prints this year. Every year is an experiment!



Thanks again! See ya next year!

SDCC 2011 print roll

Another summer and another con is almost here...

Dave and I will be back behind the table (F5) fielding all sorts of questions, comments, requests, job offers, photo opportunities, portfolio critiques, awkward furry moments, etc. :-)

We'll have a VERY limited run of prints this year. Some old, some new, some old with new colors. Here's the lot I'm bringing, but we're aiming to wrap up Saturday night so like I say, I only gots a couple of each.



Should be a good time as always. I wanna see some friends, eat out every night, and soak up some nerdly inspiration!

Point and say "Hi" if you walk on by our way!