Scary School Zombie

Coincidentally, this is how I usually look in the morning before my shower.

Thanks to jury duty, I have nothing new to show. So here's a pocket sketch I drew a while back to work out what the zombies in my Scary School pic would look like. Like I said in a previous post, I didn't want a typical rotting flesh zombie, so a came up with the idea of some sort of living goop that animates human remains like puppets.

And even regular puppets are scary enough.

Golden Rod

But not the Pokémon city.

I didn't make those fishing pole parts up, by the way.

I always found Animal Crossing's gold fishing rod and bug net kinda pointless, since you only get them after you've caught every type of fish or insect. Sure, you'll probably do a little fishing or bug hunting afterward, but not enough to reap the benefits that either golden tool gives you. Maybe if you'd get them after filling, say, 75% of either encyclopedia, then you could use them to catch those last few hard to find/catch fish and bugs. At least City Folk let's you find silver versions earlier on.

Maybe the upcoming 3DS version will alleviate this problem. But it almost certainly won't.

Disney Merchandise Girl 3

I'm a bit ashamed to say I want that bag.

Another old pocket sketch, the third that's a cute girl with a bunch of Disney merchandise on her person. This one is poolside, with a Mickey towel and sandals, a Finding Nemo swimsuit, and a Pucca bag. I'm not sure if Pucca is owned by Disney, but I know it only airs on the Disney Channel (or Disney XD or somethin').

Walmart Watchmen

Cue Nat King Cole's Unforgettable.

It's kinda funny, John's and my fights as kids often ended with defenestration.

I made comparisons to Watchmen and Walmart's old logo awhile back and I got it into my head again after DC announced it's line of Watchmen prequels. So I made this thing of John, who is a Walmart Asset Protection Coordinator (last time I checked), taking the Comedian's role of being thrown out a window. I practically traced the image from the movie poster, so don't be too impressed.

And if reading hurts your brain like me, here's a version without text.

Hawt Xmas Girl

What is it with dudes like me wanting to see cute girls in outfits normally worn by well known male characters?

Nothing new to post, as I've been doing more design stuff for my job that I talked about a couple of posts back. I also started taking lessons for Flash CS4 on lynda.com. I know Flash may be dying thanks to HTML5 and Apple insisting keeping it off of their iOS stuff, but it's the only animation capable app I already have, so there.

So to fill the gap, here's a hot girl dressed in a skimpy Santa outfit that's a couple of months late for Christmas. (Actually, it seems the little date I scrawled says '10, so it's a couple of years late.)

Hm... Probably shoulda made her Tinker Bell.

Shoulder Angel and Devil

We're debating if I should eat the last oreo or not.

I realized that in my whole time doin' this whole social media thing on the interwebs, I've never posted an actual picture of myself. But just a plain photo wasn't good enough, so I did the old shoulder angel and devil gag.

So now everyone can see my always perfect hair!


...That last bit was sarcasm, btw.

Bowling Lanes Frame

It would be ridiculously hard to get a strike with the pins set up like that.

Not much to look at in this post, but seeing as I went for several weeks during the holidays without posting, I'd feel bad skipping another week.

Anyway, I seemed to have become a graphic designer for the bowling alley I work at by accident. I was talking to one of my bosses about the promotion papers they occasionally make, and she said she makes them in Word and she hates it. So I asked if she'd want me to do them and she said, "Hells yeah!" So most of this week was spent working on a promotion for an upcoming tournament, which is kinda uninteresting (unless you're really into bowling tournament rules and regulations), so I didn't post it. Then I spent a little time working on this image, meant to be an all purpose frame for whatever kind of promotions the bosses want to print up. They use a really old photo copier to make prints, so that means whatever I make has to be black and white and fairly simple, as little details would be lost in the copies.

This promotions deal works for me, as it gives me more art stuff to do, and after a while I can put pin monkey and graphic designer under my work experience on my resume. But it also means that whatever I might be making for fun at the time will have to be put on hold if my bosses suddenly need something made, so updates to this blog might become irregular.

...Well, more irregular anway.

Samantha and Loid for Amanda

Silly Sammy, bows aren't for dudes!

You see, people? If you say nice things about my work, you're GUARANTEED to get a thank you drawing from me!*

Ages later, I finally put up a new post. Took me a while thanks to preparing for holidays (aka last minute Christmas shopping) and doing some art work for friends, including this one with Samantha, Loid, and Belle for fellow artist and Twitter friend Amanda. She always has kind words about about the stuff I post, including these characters I made for the Scary School universe. And believe me, with all the fan art I've made, it makes me ridiculously happy when someone says they like my original works.

I also drew some of her crafts in the image, including the awesome little figures she made of the Ghost Adventures crew. Go visit her devianART page so you can see more of her work.


*Not a guarantee.

I See You Drivin' 'Round Town With the Girl I Love, and I'm Like...

...fffunnel cake you.

Even with two weeks to work on it, I still couldn't get this done yesterday. Better never than late... No, wait, I mean.. Ah, whatever, it's done now!

Back to the subject at hand, Peter Pan's a big douche, amiright?! Whenever we see him in a parade, he has Tink in a lantern and is waving her around all like, "Ha ha I have Tinker Bell and you don't!" He thinks he's better than me?! And why the heck would he keep her locked in a lantern anyway?! Wanker.

But he can't bug me anymore cuz we're back home, and back to decent Internet access. We arrived Saturday, but it already seems like forever ago, which may be a good thing cuz that means the manic depression that comes with leaving Disney World goes away quickly. Now on to last minute Christmas shopping and planning next years trip.

(In case you live under a rock, the title is from this.)

The Extra is for the "Magic"

Mmmm... magic.

YAY, I got a short burst of okay Internet connection on our resort's horrible, horrible wifi! So I can finally post this comic that I wanted to go up yesterday! Better late than never. This comic is particularly short, as I wanted to get most of it finished before we actually left home.

So yeah, we're in Florida right now. We went to Animal Kingdom yesterday, and tomorrow will be Hollywood Studios, the best Disney theme park they have, IMHO.

Coincidently, an occurrence similar to the comic came about after I made it. We paid for refillable souvenir cups that were about twenty bucks a pop that are only good at Disney resorts, none of which we're actually staying in, and of course, Disney only has Coke products (and we all like Pepsi). Regardless, we're happy with the purchase, cuz they're DISNEY refillable souvenir cups.

On a side note, my next Disney comic will be a bit more detailed than what I usually draw. That, along with the fact that I have little time to work on it (as we have some activity planned for nearly every day we're here) AND the fact that I might not get this chance again to stay online this long to post it, said comic might not be done and posted until I get back home. Or at least until we get to the motel on the drive back.

Disney World 2011 Begins

I think this is reason enough to see a therapist.

As the title and Tinker Bell fanboyism implies, we'll be leaving for our annual Disney World trip later this week. And also, like the past two years, I'll be tweeting and (attempt) making comics about it.

You'll almost certainly recognize this strips image from the already famous PS3 box art for Catherine. Everyone and their sister has parodied it, and I just figured I'd join the band wagon. That, and it gives me another excuse to draw Tink. I tried replacing the falling sheep of the original image with John Lasseter's head from the judgmental Disney nerd meme, and it was kinda funny, but his photographed, disembodied noggin clashed too much with the illustration.

Oh, and I gave Dad the Y U NO face. So I guess the lesson here is that I'm very unoriginal.

See you in Orlando!

Juliet vs. Fenix

The most badass video game character ever! Oh, and Fenix is cool too, I guess.

Well that's finally done. But maybe I should've taken longer, cuz now all that's left to do is wait for Lollipop Chainsaw to come out. And that's not happening nearly fast enough!

All that's happened between this and the last update was adding the background, which I left pretty simple. Oh, and I made a little bit of a blur around the edges of the characters to help them blend with the background a little better, I trick I learned about in the Wonder Woman animated movie commentary, of all places.

So the lesson here is to be scared to death of girls with chainsaws and always listen to animated movie commentary.

Juliet Vs. Fenix Paint Progress 2

Grrl power.

STILL not done, but I think I'm pretty much finished with the characters and effects. Now I gotta work on the background, of which I probably should've started with first. The background in this isn't final, I just needed a color other than white so that the glow of the sparks would show through better. But it will probably have a lot of pinkish red.

I'm working on mixing the games' two logos, but I don't wanna spend a whole lot of time on it. I'll probably end up live tracing them in Illustrator and just doing a few tweaks. Whatever happens, I'm close to finishing this thing.

Juliet Vs. Fenix Paint Progress

Anyone noticed that Fenix's face in the game bears a strong resemblance to John Travolta?

Sorry for the late post. But it's just another update, so I doubt anyone will be terribly concerned.

This time I started rendering and got the lines colored. You'll notice the lack of a spark between the chainsaws and the lighting that would come from it, and that's because I'm still figuring out how it would look. Before, I just figured I'd use just a plain old spark like I had in the last update, but now I think I'm gonna make it more like the effects from Lollipop Chainsaw, where it's bright pink with hearts and sparkles shooting out. Cuz, y'know, it's a girly chainsaw.

And now for something completely different. We have relatives visiting for the week, so I might not get much done during that time. They probably wouldn't mind it, but I always feel like I'm being rude when I confine myself to my room and draw all day when we have company over. So there may be no update next week. Yes, yes, I'll miss you too, sweetheart.

Juliet Vs. Fenix Base Colors

C'mon Marcus, quit bein' a wuss.

Nothing terribly interesting in this update. I just made a bunch of layer masks and put down the base colors for the "painting" phase.

So let's talk about something else. When I started drawing this, I thought about using fellow chainsaw wielder Jack Cayman from Mad World instead of Fenix. I decided against that eventually because I wasn't sure what to do with his palette. In Mad World, he and the rest of the game are solid black and white, similar to Frank Miller's Sin City, and I thought that'd be too much of a contrast to Juliet's very colorful presentation. He is getting more color in his "guest star" appearance in the upcoming game Anarchy Reigns, but I couldn't find many decent reference images to go by.

That black and white/colorful contrast might've actually made for an interesting image, but I also went with Fenix because 1) there's a lot of hype around Gears of War now that the third game is out, and 2) I thought it'd be cool to pit a Japanese developed character against an American developed one (and Jack was created by the Japan based Platinum Games).

But nothing's stopping another fan artist from making an awesome Juliet vs. Fenix vs. Jack pic.

Moppina

Ooooh this is akward...

I took a brief break form my Juliet and Fenix project to make another Animal Crossing comic. I was trying to think of a good way to introduce Lolly, who of which has been in my town for a while, then fellow artist and Animal Crossing aficionado Amanda Tabb suggested bringing up the always touchy subject of Moppina. And since then Peanut, my favorite female AC neighbor, moved in as well, so I decided to throw her in there too. So cute, girly, anthropomorphic animals all around!

I still would like to do an intro for Stitches, so maybe another Animal Crossing strip will will come up soon enough.

Juliet Vs. Fenix

I guess compared to other chainsaw wielders, it's kinda nice to be pinned down by Juliet.

Well, I've finally got to a point on this project that I've been working on for several weeks that's actually worth showing. What we have is Juliet Starling from the upcoming game Lollipop Chainsaw winning a chainsaw duel against Gears of War's Marcus Fenix.

It's taking forever for me to draw because 1) I've been busier than usual due to taking my old job at the bowling alley back and having a couple of interviews from prospective jobs, and 2) It took quite a while to flesh out the weapons and Fenix's suit, as is usually the case when drawing things that are mechanical and/or have several layers of parts. I redrew Juliet's chainsaw in particular three times, realizing the third version wasn't as good as I thought it'd be and going back to the second version, thus losing about four hours worth of work. But this still has been fun nonetheless.

You'll probably notice the lack of chains and blades on said chainsaws. I figured I shouldn't waste my time on that part yet since I'll have to make some sort of blur effect to make it look like the blades are spinning.

Though the line art, which I think (and hope) is the hardest part, is finished, I've still got a while to go with the painting and shading, and I don't even know that I'm gonna do with the background yet. It'll probably be pretty simple, whatever it ends up being.

...OH, I guess I can explain the parts in green. Those are areas where I don't want the eventual colors to have an outline, so they'll be a guide when I start coloring and will eventually be erased.

So, uh, to be continued.

Cheeky Tink

Warning! This drawing has big butts and I cannot lie.

More old, tiny sketches as I toil away at my current project. The sad part is that, after all these weeks, I'm still no where near finished. I think I may have enough done by next week to at least have a decent WIP image for a post, but don't hold your breath.

Another sad part is this sketch that further fuels my major Tinker Bell crush. I just thought it was cute how she was displeased with her... uh... measurements when she was looking at herself in the mirror in Peter Pan.

But her measurements don't bother me none.

DCAU Watchmen

Then I woke up.

Current project still not done, so more old sketches. With these, I was trying to draw some of the Watchmen in the style of Bruce Timm, as if they were in the DC Animated Universe. Unfortunately, that'll never happen. But you can watch this at least.

Reason's Mom

Turtle neck sweaters for the win.

My current project is going to take a while, and I don't really have anything decent to show yet, so it's time to pull out another old pocket sketch. This is Reason's mom, one of the few times I made a character for the Scary School universe other than the main six. I haven't developed her character much, other than making her look warm and inviting. And, like her son, she's quite lanky.