And I'll bet you thought I'd miss August.

Well, I came close, but I haven't missed a month since I started posting so figured I'd better put something up here. Gotta keep up the streak. Of course, now I've probably gone and jinxed it. Damn.

As usual, got a mix of new and old and in between, much of it rough story art from a couple of the side projects I've been toying with.




Another design idea for Magic Al, except now I think I'll call him Harry Who. Wanted to give him a kinda retro thing, rubber hose arms and such. He's fun to draw.




Was drawing from a photo, got distracted by other matters, and when I came back to it I noticed the big rookie mistake. Can you spot it? Hmmm, how about NO HANDS? I was going to add them in, but then decided to keep it as a grand lesson:
Artists, remember feet and hands! focus on the forms! I don't know if it's just me, but I think it's a lot easier to make those kind of mistakes than you would expect. I've seen some doozies...



Some board panels; it's not Batman, it's someone far more terrifying. Also, she's not bald, nor is she an alien ( as my daughter suggested ). She's just wearing a ninja catsuit thing, and I couldn't get the expressions I wanted with slit eyes and no mouth. So there.




Ooooo, sassy pixie! Boots courtesy Sheila the Thief....




Ah, the ol' spear-in-the-butt crack gag...




Orville gets his revenge.




Much later, Orville is startled to the point of wetting his armor.




Just the kind of thing Gordon finds hysterical ( he's such a jerk...)


That's it for now. Keep it real, and such like.

Doodles From Every Corner of the Desk!

Once again, the time has come for me gather up all the loose scraps of paper around my desk and scan in the drawings that I did when warming up, waiting for renders, sitting in meetings, and generally supposed to be working. As always , they come freshly packaged with small blurbs of text chock full if insights which you may ignore at your leisure.



Couple of wee warm ups done in flash one morning. They're not anyone in particular, but the lady looks similar to the style of a guy I went to school with. Mike M., but not Mueller; the other Mike M.



Evil Sue! This is a character from the show I'm working on, except she doesn't go evil like that; at least, I don't think she does. The character is copyright Animation Collective, Nick, probably Fatkat, I guess, and likely about a dozen other folks. God bless Sharpies and Kirby Crackle.(Krackle?)



I end up drawing a lot of Goblins. It's probably something wrong with me."Goblins! Yaaagh!" Yay for sharpies again.



She's either yawning, or screaming "Why is my left arm so huge?!!" Let that be a lesson to ya, kiddies: when you draw in flash a lot (like I do) you can get lazy about proportions. "Hell, if the arm/leg/head/whatever's too big, I'll just lasso and scale it!" A useful tool to be sure, but if you make it a crutch, it'll f**k you up when you go back to paper. If you let it. As I seem to have.



Did I mention I like Sharpies? I like to think of this as the moment right before the very first scene in Episode IV : "Aw Snap, is that a huge Star Destroyer? Dammit!" The illegible scratched out word above her head is my wicked awesome idea for a sit-com. See, a young family disguises themselves as elderly people so they can pay cheap rent in a retirement community. The 6-year-old daughter dresses up as a REALLY old lady and pretends to be the mother's mother, her crazy kid behavior being passed off as senility. The title? "Geria-Tricks!" Keep the exclamation point, it's part of the title. Producers, contact me thru my comments, we'll get this gold mine diggin'.

Oh, yeah.

G.A.R.T.H.I.M.

Well, ladies, gentlemen, and transdimensional beings torn asunder by arcane forces, if you have a pesky infestation of Gelfoids threatening to shatter your Evil Empire, we here at General Advance Robotics have got your back! Yes, come on up here and orient an optical organ or appendage to our brand spankin' new Tactical Hunter/Invader Module! All ya gotta do is grab yourself a legion or two of these suckers and solidify your stranglehold on any newly conquered populace! (Giant control crystal not included. Product may be subject to falling to bits at the worst possible time.)

So, yeah, found a scan of a two year old drawing kicking around my hard drive, and it still looked pretty decent to me, so I decided to colour it.

Some of you may notice it's kinda based on the Dark Crystal, and kinda not. To you I say: WHAT'S THAT BEHIND YOU?!

(sound of rapidly receding footsteps. pause . fade out.)

What We Been Workin' On.

Hey folks,

The show we been chuggin' away at for the past while is airing in the States on Friday, so I figured I'd stick the link to the website on here. I think you'll probably need the flash player to view it, and you can stop the theme song from playing constantly by clicking the little red sound icon in the bottom right. Click below to get there.

Three Delivery

Eehhhh, Weird Bug Guy

He looks a bit miffed...

Of course you should fight fire with fire...you should fight everything with fire.

MTG Nerds only may apply on this one. Yessiree, I went ahead and drew Jaya Ballard, Task Mage! Wheeeee! I actually drew it a little while ago, and hadn't posted it because I was going to ink and paint it. But this time, I didn't lack time or energy or anything. I'm just not happy enough with it to give it the full treatment. I got to the clean-up stage on it, but now I feel the whole thing needs re-thinking. So, enjoy Ver. 1.0 !

Off To See The World

Most nights we sing Sorcha a little song before she goes to sleep, and one of her favorites for Cindy to sing her is "Moon River". Recently she told Cindy that the line "two drifters off to see the world" made her think of The Hulk in a rowboat. You may think it odd that a six year old girl might think that, but the Hulk, Spider-Man, Batman, and many others are regular topics of conversation at our house, so while it may SEEM odd, it's actually...well, it's still kinda weird, but definitely fun. Cindy requested the drawing, and though the sketch is pretty rough, it gives you the basic idea of where I'm a-gonna go with it.

Didn't notice it before, I think that's a hair in the bottom left of the scan....nice.

Weather Balloons

...or possibly swamp gas. Venus through the clouds....

Ticked Off Bear and Very Quick Monkey

What the title sez. Plus cute clouds.

Wandering Mind , Wandering Pencil, Or Whatever You Call The Damn Pen Thing On a Tablet

A good artist studies art books, with pictures of breathtaking works from across the history of drawing and painting. He will think about life and the world around him, and try to observe things in all their beauty, subtlety, and complexity. He must think about the deeper meanings of a work of art, try to pick apart the subtext hidden in a given subject, composition, and colour. Put simply, he must learn, and seek Truth. Then, and only then, can he sit down and produce something that looks, in terms of taste, like it came from the mind of an enthusiastic but only marginally talented twelve year old. But that's just the kind of dedicated guy I am.

I was going to have some proper colour and BG this time, but I just got NO feckin' time fer nothin'. Yeah, yeah, cry some more, why dontcha...