It's Alright Now.

In fact, it's a gas.

Rude Gestures

Lately I've been trying to get in the habit of carrying a sketchbook around and drawing little thumbnail gestures of people around me. Thing is, I'm usually at work if I'm not at home, so I end up with a bunch of tiny scribbles of people staring at monitors. But this weekend, I helped Cindy at her booth at the Gretna Green Craft Show. So I got some scribbles of people staring off into space, instead.



Then I got bored of that, and drew a rabbit pointing at something you can't see.



And, unrelated to all that, here's a marker portrait of Batgirl.



I'm going to try to keep it up, so theoretically, you should see these scribbles start to become better in quality, should I choose to continue posting them.

From the Tablet of Mick Harrison

This is a caricature of me done by Mr. Mick Harrision, a fantastic artist and dandy fellow whose blog you can find in my links, or just click HERE

I'm posting it here today because I decided to replace my old profile picture with it, and thought it would be a decent thing to credit the actual artist who drew it, and not pretend it's mine.

Also wanted to say thanks again to Beans; the Shenanisignal had a good long run, and if I was that kind of guy, I would write a little gag of the sort where I pretend I was in a relationship or something with the picture, but I feel I need to start seeing other pictures, and so on. Maybe I'll make one up for later.

And before you ask, no, I'm not really sure what I'm cooking there. Looks to be a crepe of some sort.

EDIT:

Hey, cool, I found this other drawing he did of me during the brief period I had a full beard. I can't remember what the joke is referencing, though.

yeah

Dryad

Skin once supple, smooth and fair,
Now be coarse and thick!
Arms once held aloft in prayer,
Now be branch and stick!
Feet that danced 'round autumn glade,
Now deep begin to dig!
Hair that fell in dark cascade,
Now be leaf and twig!

Thy roots now clothed in twilight mist,
Thy leaves rattle their sad tune,
Thy branches by cold starlight kissed,
Beneath a Hunter's Moon.

Something a little more illustrative than usual, complete with over-the-top-fantasy spell/curse thing. I've said it before, I'll say it again: I happen to LIKE over-the-top-fantasy, dammit!

Qapla'

Rocked it Original Series Klingon for Halloween this year. Y'know, back before they had head bumps and were basically just guys with weird beards and eyebrows. Taking a real chance putting this on the internet. It's just the kind of image that will eventually come back to haunt me....

Barbarian and Couch-less Guy

Didn't really forget the couch. I drew him without the couch, but the character within the picture breaks the fourth wall and expresses his belief that I did. It's called LAYERS people! It's that kind of thing that creates GREAT ART with a MESSAGE!!!

Huh. Philistines.

Barzai

***NERD ALERT!!!***

So, I rolled a character for a D & D 4th ed. campaign we were supposed to get goin' at work. I haven't heard about it in a while, though, so it may have gone to the wayside. I doodled up a portrait of my character in flash anyway: He's a Tiefling Fey Pact Warlock, and I ripped a name off of Lovecraft and called him Barzai. Done in something of a hurry over lunch, and no, I don't know what that BG is all about. I just thought the colours looked nice.

Robot

He is a Robot!
I build your cars!
He is a Robot!
Exploring Mars!
Maybe I'm not exactly flesh and bone!
I am a robot, leave me alone!

"I am a Robot", The Phenomenauts

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...

Pin Up

I admit, I do enjoy the ol' pin up drawing. If you wanna see some real nifty ones, check out Justin Coffee's blog, you can see the link down the side there. He's got a book out and everything. I like to draw 'em on occasion, when the mood strikes, but for some reason they come out less like "Pin Ups" and more like "Durty Pitchers" when I do 'em. I try for "Lookit me! I'm a nice girl who just happens to like hanging around in her underwear!" But it looks more like "Lookit me! I'm a skank who'll steal your wallet when your back is turned!" I dunno, wrong expression or something.

Both my mom and my daughter sometimes see this blog, so that's why the discrete and tasteful black bars. If you wanna see the full image, just click on it. Crits and comments are welcome, as always.



Also, just want to say thanks to those of you who've taken the time to post your comments in the past. I really do appreciate it , even if I'm bad at saying so, and it's always nice to hear from you fine folks.

Not My Work, But Now On My Blog

I always kind of intended this blog as a place to put some of my stuff. But TODAY I make an exception, for two little things which I thought were pretty cool:

1. I remember seeing the Chipmunks animated movie when I was a young 'un, and I remember enjoying this particular sequence. I never really knew why. But now that I'm a wise animator (HA!), and I watch it again for the first time in a long while, I see that this bit contains some right kick-ass animation. It's all just so damn....FUN. Some of it isn't great, I'll grant you, but most of it's just terrific...they hit some really nice poses in there. Make sure you watch 'till the dancing bits, thats when it gets good.



2. On a completely different note, I saw this one last year, and I forgot about it 'till recently. It's little animation about Time, Space, and the Dimensions therein, and it's darn cool. Oh, yeah, and it'll twist yo widdle bwain.

Another Old Crap Post

So, I've figured out there's 3 levels of activity at work: "Insane", "Chaos", and "That last amorphous blight of nether-most confusion where bubbles and blasphemes at infinity’s centre the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud."
Lately, it's been the last one. As a result, I have absolutely no recent drawings that aren't directly related to show I'm working on, and drawings that are related to the show I'm working on, I can't post. I haven't posted in almost a month, though, so I've dredged through ancient drawings I've done in the past, and scraps of junk I have lying around my desk. I gotta bunch, with the theory that they may not be good, but at least there's a lot of them. So with out further ado , I give you the bottom of the barrel.




This one is a rejected concept from an idea of mine thats going nowhere fast. Folks don't like it, too complicated or something.



This one is a very rough scrap from a different idea, also going nowhere.



This one is special: it's a rejected design for a deleted character from an idea that's going nowhere. Also, I drew it like, 3 years ago or something, on the back of an inventory sheet.



This one is a half-finished drawing of a secondary character for an idea I'm still working on, but I'm not gonna use this design. Maybe something similar though.



This is the only HP picture I've ever done, which I doodled on the back of some revisions while waiting for a render. It's supposed to be the kids facing Fluffy, see, they're each looking at a different head. Note Harry's thick neck, Ron's demented head, and Hermione still in colerase. Abandoned work at it's best.



This is something akin to a life drawing. They have sessions at the studio sometimes, but it's on a bad night for me, so I don't go. This is drawn from a postage stamp size photo from a Muybridge book.





I'm sure you recognize these: thats right, direct copies from Preston Blair!I sometimes copy his stuff for practice, but not in anything like a dedicated manner, so I really don't don't know if it's making a difference. It's fun though, which is the main thing.Check out the poor composition planning on the top one.



Last but not least, a drawing I did for a Drawing Jam, hmmm, gotta be two summers ago. I've never posted it here, though, so it's good as new, darn it.

If you're still reading at this point, whaddaya think of that banner drawing? I feel like it's missing something...a border? Maybe I'll try a border at some point.

Reading back, the tone of this post is kinda negative. Don't worry, I'm not gonna go buy a firearm and a ski mask or anything, just wish I had something new to show ya. Maybe soon. Right now, lunch is almost done, so that's it, I'm afraid.

Magic Al

The death from disease in 951 of Gofraid mac Sitriuc, King of Dublin, was described as divine vengeance for his attack on the Abbey of Kells earlier in the year.