Phillip Doesn't Heart Macaroni Penguins

How's a slushie gonna borrow a chip? Slushie, is you gonna give a chip back?



Okay, bringing up that drawing that I made for Mayu again makes it seem like I'm tooting my own vuvuzela, but I swear that's not my intention. I just found it funny that that particular drawing and Animal Crossing in general is made to be cute and cuddly, and yet I keep portraying Hopper as being rather boorish and not cuddly. And that's pretty much every Animal Crossing comic I've done, since I usually don't focus on the other neighbors. If only Peanut were in my town to give my comics some much needed class.

I guess Hopper and the other grumpy characters are a bit boorish in the game as well, although I don't ever remember them threatening me with physical violence or belching in my face.

Samantha

...has a sad, apparently.




Here's another character from that scary school drawing. If I remember correctly, I named her after a friend from school (although she usually went by Sammy). I wanted a girls name that was at least three syllables long for some reason, and her name popped into my head first.

Samantha is the second youngest and the smart one of this group of kids that I talked about on Reason's post. She's a bookworm, and has the reserved, shy disposition that usually goes with that type of person. I usually picture her in constant possession of some book, maybe an encyclopedia on the supernatural. If action were required for this story, I guess it could also be a witchcraft spell book, or somethin'. I also imagine her as a possible love interest for Reason, and there could be an on again, off again relationship between them due to him refusing to elaborate on his mysterious left hand of mystery.

On that note, I think of her as being 15 years old, and I said before that Reason is 17. Is a two year age difference too big for a relationship for high school kids?

...OOH, I can talk about their outfits. I wanted them to wear school uniforms, but I didn't want to do the typical japanese sailor outfit. Since a slightly gothic look could go with the supernatural theme, I thought I could give them a made up school uniform design were there's lots of black, like all the kids are going to a funeral. It could also be a good contrast for the ghoulish stuff they deal with, where in they're normal school life is boring and colorless, but they're ghost/monster hunting is hectic and colorful.

...And I swear, I got the idea of the dead being more colorful than the living before I saw Corpse Bride.

Scary School

All done.



I guess I'm finished. I was just sitting there lookin' at it toward the end wondering if there was anything else I needed to do with it. With the comics, I finish the last panel and BOOM, I'm done. But with more artsy stuff like this, it's tough to figure out when to call it quits.

What I did was add reflections and shadows on the floor. I thought I could be clever by just duplicating the characters and then use Free Transform to flip them and create a mirror image on the floor and then use Gaussian Blur and lower the opacity to make it blurry, but that didn't look right since the point of view is too high. If the "camera" was closer to the ground, that might have worked. So in the end, I just painted it by hand.

I also added a little more detail to the floor in general, made it a tad darker, and gave it a slight blue colorcast. Cool colors are usually better suited for creepy stuff than warm colors.

So, uh, go celebrate, and stuff.

Paint Guys Ain't Done Yet

Encore needed.



Here's another Intermediate Painting II... uh.. painting, with some more paint guys. It started out with just them randomly placed on the canvas, but in a critique, the other students said they'd like to see more cohesion between them, so I made it that so that they're standing on top of each other in a crazy balancing act to keep that black stuff from falling on them (Think of that gag in that Daffy Duck "Duck Amuck" cartoon skit).

...I suddenly want Skittles for some reason.

Mayu Hearts Sheep

Insert squeeze toy sound effect here.



Here's a cutesy pic I drew for Mayu, an Animal Crossing Wild World player who posts about her online get-togethers on her AC diary. She's talked about how she loves the Animal Crossing sheep, and this image popped into my head.

Mayu is also a mother, and I love how she can still find time to play AC on regular basis. Growing up, my parents pretty much hated video games and were rather strict on John's and my play time, as they thought we'd spend more time playing than we would on schoolwork, chores, etc (and they were absolutely right). They eased up eventually, and Mom even has her own DS and library of games now. I'm sure there are plenty of parent gamers in this day and age, but they still fascinate me.

Mayu, if you're reading this, thanks for saying nice things about my drawings.

To anybody else... um... please don't tell her I'm not a huge fan of AC sheep myself.

Reason

But probably not the one you're thinking of.




Here's one of the characters that I'd promised I'd elaborate on from that fancy illustration I've been working on. His name so far is Reason but that could change, as any name or anything else about any character I create is tentative until I think of something better. Reason is one of John's many nicknames, which I stole for this character as his lankiness reminds me of him, and also, out of this particular group of characters, I wanted him to have a name that isn't "normal." I have no idea where John got the title of Reason from, so it's origin could end up being inappropriate for this guy.

Anyway, Reason is the main character, and the eldest of these kids (I guess 17 years old or so). The story starts with him being discovered by the rest of group who've been doing the Ghostbutster's thing for a little while before. They find out he has the sixth sense as they do, and he unwillingly joins them. Each character in the group brings something to the table, and Reason inadvertently becomes the leader. All the paranormal stuff scares him more than the others, but he's brave enough and has a good enough head on his shoulders to overcome it.

And now for the pull. His gloves. I normally put gloves on everything, but for this particular story, I made sure to have him be the only one with gloves, as he's hiding his hands for some reason, particularly his left one. In the little notes of these sketches, I mentioned that he always keeps his left hand in his pocket, but that would be awkward in some situations, so I just dropped that idea and made it so that it's in his pocket most of the time, and when it ain't, he has the gloves. What's he hiding? Is it sinister? I won't tell you. Although I can at least say it's part of the whole paranormal theme, and it's not dry skin.

As is usually the case with older works, I can see some things I don't like in these early sketches. The lines are too angular and the half closed eyes make him look too smug. He often feints nonchalance, but he's not a douche.

...Holy crap, this post is getting long. I'm taking a nap.

Scary School Character Renderings

Zoinks!



Alright, this is starting to come together now, but I still have some stuff left to do. I still want to mess with the lighting and I'll probably give it a slight color cast. Also, the characters aren't quite integrated with the background enough, so I'll need to add shadows and reflections on the floor.

Remember when I said I'd talk about the characters in the last post? I lied. As you may or may not know, I occasionally post stuff from my teeny-tiny 3.5x5 inch sketchbooks. I have some sketches of these guys, so I'll wait until I get around to posting those to go into greater detail about them.

I can talk about the zombies, though. I didn't want to do the typical rotting flesh thing, cuz one: I want this to be kid friendly, and two: I just wanted to do something different. What I thought might be interesting is that there's this sentient, evil, tar-like goop that animates the remains of the deceased or whatever else it feels like moving.

Have ya Heard?

Probably.



I remember hearing that saying on Adult Swim, either on TV or on their website, and it inspired me to do this painting for my Intermediate Painting II class. I find it kinda humorous how each generation thinks the end of the world is right around the corner, but it never happens. In this case, I was thinking of back in the day when everyone thought we'd all die from atomic holocaust.

This isn't that old, but I already see some things I'd change now. The guys limbs are way too thin and his hands and feet aren't big enough for cartoony proportions (they should be about the same size as the head).

Scary School Characters

Weirdos.



Okay, now I've got the base colors of the characters down. I made sure to give the line art and each color it's own layer and mask so I could go back and properly render one without messing up any others. With the line art specifically, I plan to do them the Disney movie way, where the lines are colored, but not the exact same color of the paint, so it's a happy medium between black ink and lineless art that you see in stuff like Samurai Jack.

Speaking of which, here's the line art by itself. I always like the way stuff looks with just the lines for some reason.



I'll save the specifics of the characters in the next post, but the general idea I have for these guys is that there a bunch of school kids of varying ages that do Scooby-Doo type sleuthing of odd paranormal occurrences, except that the paranormal stuff is real and not disgruntled real estate agents in disguise. Also, there's no talking dog. There's friendly ghosts though, such as that straight jacket dude coming out of that girls backpack and the cutesy little one with the bow.

As you can tell, I don't want this to be too serious. I'd like to make something the kids could like.

Phillip's List

Since Schindler is his last name, this should technically be called Craig's List, but, well... you know.



I'm probably gonna go to Jewish hell for this. Is Jewish hell much worse than real life?

I haven't actually beat Pikmin yet, so I just made up the total Pikmin number. So please don't bother telling me if it's impossibly high or embarrassingly low.

Disney Merchandise Girl 1

So, yes, there will be more.



Can't tell what the date is on this thing. Suffice to say it's a few years old. Almost every time we get back from a vacation at Disney World, I draw a girl with some Disney stuff. Not really a tradition, rather I just wanna draw something Disney related when it's still fresh in my head, and it's usually a cute girl cuz I'm a perv like that.

Anyway, this one's supposed to be wearing one of those translucent Mickey ponchos they hand out when it starts raining. Hard to tell when it's a pencil sketch and you're not a very good drawer.

Scary School Background

Well, not that scary.



Here's what I got done in the past week for this more detailed illustration I've been working on. It aint terribly special, but I'm still rather proud. I think this is the most detailed thing I've ever bothered to make in Photoshop.

Keep in mind it'll be cropped in the end. Also, since I want it to be creepy lookin', I'll most likely make the overall image darker, so it'll probably look more like this when it's completely done:

Paint Guys Begin, Part 3

Here's the last batch.

If I could make video games, I'd make one with these guys. Just saying.

...If you couldn't tell, I've ran out of things to say.

Values from Elders

The Creative Child

Peer Pressure

Leisure Time

Handicapped Children

Dry Hands

If this were animation, the third panel would have a fog horn sound effect.



I seriously do have chapped hands most of the time. Probably cuz I wash them too much. I'm a borderline germophobe. I'm this close to shaving my head bald, growing a goatee, and hosting Deal or No Deal.

Paint Guys Begin, Part 2

Let's continue, shall we?

In a lot of the art projects you have to do in college there's that point where it gets grueling, no matter how much you like art. You hafta stay up late, or just not sleep at all, to get it done and you can't wait for it to get over with. With this project, I can genuinely say I enjoyed every minute of it. It was my first project in one of my first classes, so a lot of that could of been the excitement, where you're all like, "OH BOY, OH BOY, OH BOY, MY FIRST HIGHER LEARNING ART THINGY!"

...No? Just me? Alright...

Anyway, I sure the biggest factor of the enjoyment was making these guys. Power to them.

Family Time

Emergence of Identity

Education

Crisis in Values

Children without Prejudice

Scary School Sketch

Scary school is scary. Zombies don't help either.



This is a sketch I've been working on with plans to make it a pretty detailed CG image, to take a break from the comics and to make and illustration with these weird group of characters that I've messed around with for a couple of years. I was taking my sweet time to get a good composition, and it'll take me even longer to put it through it's paces in Photoshop, so this will be something I'll be working on for a good few weeks. In fact, seeing as I've just started a comic for next week, it'll take even longer to finish since I'll do other things if they come to mind. It must be nice to do this kind of stuff for a living to have harsh deadlines and promise of pay as "motivation" to get it done quicker. That, and not working at a bowling alley as a day job.

I ain't hatin' on bowling alleys though. Nice job to have while working to get a more relevant one.

Anyway, on this image, I'm gonna focus a lot on the background. I'd like to make it more painterly and avoid using flat colors as I usually do for the comics. Let's see what happens. Fingers crossed!

Paint Guys Begin, Part 1

Here's what I did for my first Design project, where we had to make small designs on small panels with cut paper. The theme was some kind of a faux commission, where the designs were for some sort of child education promotion thing. I obviously don't remember the details, but for every panel we were given a title with a child theme that we had to work with.

Anyway, in this very first project I created these Paint Guys. I call them that as the original idea was they magically came to be after you make big paint drops come together to form a simple, cartoony figure (if the figure part ain't quite coming through to you, watch this animation dealie). I love these little guys. They're probably the most interesting (certainly the most original) things I ever created. I used them in other projects in almost every class I had throughout college. In other words, I'm super proud of them.

There were quite a few of these, so I'm gonna load them in a series of posts like I did with the alphabet thing. They're in no particular order except for how they came up in the upload images list.

Child Injuries

Child Development and Mass Media

Child Care

Child Advocate

Changing Families

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Thirteen

THEND.



Well, that took forever. I liked it, though. It's easier to think of jokes when you have a story going rather than thinking of punch lines every week that aren't related to the previous one. I've got other Animal Crossing related arcs in my head, such as creating more human players that are all controlled by me which starts some crazy multiple personality stuff, and visiting the town of someone that uses an AC mod device to make their town and anything/anyone in it all weird and whatnot. Don't know if I'll get to those anytime soon, though.

And now for something completely different.

I've got a more detailed illustration in mind for my next project, and it may take me longer than a week to get it done, so next Monday might just be a progress report with some sketches and whatever I've done up to that point.

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Twelve

Punchline! Get it?! HA!



I guess I'll just make every comic end with a punch.

I've started working on the next comic, and I know it'll be the end of this arc. I don't have many Animal Crossing ideas left, so I may back off of them for a while. Or maybe not. I often don't get a new idea until the day I start working on a new one.

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Eleven

Out of the frying pan...



Okay, I lied in the last post. It'll take me another two comics to finish this arc. Change your schedule accordingly.

And now for something completely the same.

To keep in the theme of the last panel of this comic, I probably shoulda put this drawing of Resetti in there somewhere: