and another one

Krogan-rules football comic. I need to do more original stuff, but fanart is great to practice on :P

Skyrim comics

One of the things I like about games with independent moving parts is the way that a given encounter's timing and context come together to imply a story. Sometimes the actual scripted stuff is memorable, too X)

TMNT?! What a surprise!

I think there's something about ink that makes me want to draw ninja turtles.


I also found a cute way to draw 'em while I was sketching around, haha.

...It was a little while before I could get them out of my system.

some scifi?!

I got Mass Effect as a birthday present, and enjoyed it quite a bit! Every time I saw a krogan, I wanted to draw it. This may very well be my first real attempt at scifi, haha. I discovered that guns are about the most unnatural thing for me to draw, especially futuristic ones. It kinda makes me want to practice and learn how.

Oh, and this fella has been around for a few weeks. It's another boreal owl design. I'm still derping around with drawings of some other species, so hopefully I can post those soon X)

some ssssSSSssSssewing fun!

I've been playing around with another cool game this summer, and that game is Minecraft. You might have heard of it - over the past month, it's virtually exploded with popularity as well-known gaming and Youtube sources have pimped it. And it is a pretty fun game, for reasons I'll let you look up yourself.

Because I've been doing a lot of freelance illustration work lately, I've been eager to find a project OFF the computer to tackle. Eventually I want to make my own stuffed Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, but I haven't made a plush of any kind since I was about 10 years old. So I thought I'd practice on something simple.

Which is where Minecraft comes in.

If Minecraft has a poster child, it is this thing:

It may look like the most terrifying cactus you've ever seen, but this is one of the game's monsters. Known as a Creeper, it makes absolutely no sound until it's RIGHT next to you, which is when you hear a "*tch* sssSSSsssSSS...", followed by a BOOM if you don't get out of the blast radius fast enough. This is very good at hurting you and damaging things you've built.

How cute! Let's make a stuffed animal out of it! :V

Many fans of the game like to joke that the Creeper only wants a hug, but when it comes over to you it realizes it has no arms and explodes out of frustration. I'd love to get a picture of a small child hugging this plush, but I'm worried that all children will probably be terrified of him. X)

Them dorfs!

Lately I've been filling the little cracks in my time with a fun little game called Dwarf Fortress. It's an ASCII game *kinda* like Sim City, but a lot grittier and Fun (which is the fanbase's code word for losing). You manage a group of alcohol-soaked dwarves as they strike the earth and try to carve a fortress out of the landscape. Wildlife and enemy sieges provide opposition for your dwarves, and traps and levers allow for really creative mechanisms in the game (some people have actually built computers and calculators within the game).

The game is ridiculously detailed - it generates a world and simulates erosion and some history before it even gets to your dwarves and their adventure. It tracks battle damage down to individual fingers and toes (and further in later versions than the one I play). It also has a very steep learning curve (a big step is getting past where all you see is alphabet soup!)

Here we have "Jim Craig" the dwarf in sorry shape. The attacking hydra (green H) is dead, but Jim is now missing his right arm at the shoulder. Fortunately all his other bits are white (healthy) rather than yellow (broken) or red (mangled).

Anyways, because of the limited graphics, I almost think the game encourages you to look deeper to find a story, which is why I love it so much. These are some doodles I've done lately, inspired by dwarfy shenanigans.

My Captain of the Guard is an awesome she-dwarf who runs around with two swords and leaves goblins in many pieces when they cross her. And no, her name is not a Ninja Turtles reference. X)

Miners make great temporary military dwarves when a problem arises, because their mining skill determines how deadly their pick is in battle.

One of the staples of the dwarven diet is the "plump helmet," a purple mushroom of some kind. You can brew booze out of it, eat it raw, or stew 'em up.

The game also has a roguelike mode called Adventure Mode, where you take a single dwarf/human/elf and travel the full world that's been generated. Having fantastic weaponry like this fella's ☼adamantine battle axe☼ helps... though often a wielded wolf corpse is just as deadly. People have one-hit KO'd enemies by throwing mud in this game. It's awesome.

Mouse Guard!

Again I am up late doodling around. But I have some words to say, too!

This week, Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #2 came out. The Legends of the Guard series is a chance for some other artists and writers to get to play around in David Petersen's Mouse Guard world by doing some short stories. And it so happens that the first story in the #2 issue, "Potential," was written by my buddy Alex Kain, who happens to also be the writer for our Four Kingdoms project. The sweet art was done by Sean Rubin. So if you like Mouse Guard, I'd advise you check it out! Here's a site with some nice preview images.

Which brings me to the doodle, which is of Kenzie from the main series. :)

silly late-night painting time

Lately I've been doing some digital painting whenever I can't get to sleep. Just some fun playing around with light and pre-existing characters.

You should look up photos of sewers sometime. Apparently there's a whole group of people who like to explore and photograph them. It's surprisingly awesome.

This is actually a Redwall character, but one that only gets mentioned offhand as a long-dead ruler. With a name like Bluestripe, I figured he would be awesome. And a fan of warpaint.

main characters and thumbnails!

These two are going to be the main guys in my comic. Randy is a greenie fresh from flight training. He comes into conflict with "Red," who is pretty much the viewpoint character of the story. Red has lost his best friend in a recent mission, and when Randy gets assigned to his buddy's old bunk, he has a lot of trouble dealing with that. We're also going to see another (maybe both) of the other guys in their flight, who still need to be designed. I'll probably just grab 'em from the other concept sheet I drew; they don't figure into the story much.

I do have the whole thing thumbnailed out. For a "short" story, 19 pages is an awful lot. However, I'm going to be doing pretty simple coloring, so it should be manageable. Jury's still out on how much color will make it into the thing.

And for some more fanart derpiness, have a silly pinup I did of the black Heavy Weapons Guy I designed. Clearly I need to go back and study anatomy again, but the painting was fun. And retro-style propaganda is also fun.

More nerdery, I'm afraid. :T

Recently I've been drawing some of my friends' original TF2 characters, because OpenCanvas is such a fun sketching/painting tool. The practice I'm getting out of this is rad and useful, even if the subject matter still makes me a hopeless nerd.

Michelle and I got to draw together the other night thanks to OC's networking feature. We gave each other shapes to turn into characters. This is some kinda of undersea volcano monster.

shameless fanart time!

Yep.

stupid fanart time!

Team Fortress 2 + Lackadaisy. What is wrong with me. :|

Especially since I have seen "furry" versions of TF2 characters in fanart before and they invariably freak me out. They just look wrong as wolves or tigers or whatever. Perhaps it's because I'm seeing the character crossover more than the species change here?

On the other hand, I had all kinds of fun painting this. :B

I believe we have a birthday boy here somewhere...

So! Here's the story.

I drew this like last week, when Michelle told reminded me your birthday was coming up.

And then for the next few days, you were always in the lab, which is the only opportunity I had to do any Photochopping.

Which is why this is late.


Jerk. ;)

Agni Kai!

This started as a "love note" exchange (done at a church function every Sunday) and, while it stayed weekly for a while, rapidly got out of hand. What we ended up with is something incredibly geeky and criminally insane fun - an agni kai (or fire duel) between our two zodiac characters.

Me = fire tiger snake of Justice
Michelle - fire rabbit lion snake

Before you click any images, I recommend you open this music in a new tab (for atmosphere):

OK. Go.

Comic Con shirts

And now to try and get a portfolio together in time! Huzzah!

Look! It's me in elementary school!

see more crazy cat pics

Art will happen again soon. Blasted finals and my lack of motivation to study for them.

The Raph/Leo Effect

This is one of those spiels that gets bottled in my head and I have to either let it out somewhere or explode. And since I'm no good expressing myself verbally, I'll have to sully my blog with unprofessionalism. I'll just try to keep it concise. And yes Jake, this is totally your fault. :P

An interesting pattern I've found when I talk Ninja Turtles with people happens with those who've chosen Raphael as their favorite - almost invariably, they can't stand Leonardo. And usually for the same reasons their red-masked hero butts heads with him: they say he's bossy, pretentious, boring, self-righteous, teacher's pet... there's a list.

But for all the hostility, from fans and their Turtle alike, it's hilariously ironic that Leo and Raph are easily the most alike out of the brothers. In fact, their primary objective is even the same - protection. Cue my Leo defense.

Leonardo's number one priority is to protect his family - it's why he fell into the "leader" position to begin with. He has a natural air of command and a quick mind in battle as well as good judgment, and why would the position stuck unless Leo had earned his brothers' respect? Leo feels that the team's failures are his own, which leads him to try and run the team as well as he can without assuming he has more authority than Splinter. This puts a lot of pressure on him, and Leo has to act more mature than the average teenager to keep out the hordes of Foot ninja and maintain his family's safety. Splinter is proud of his student because Leonardo is the only Turtle that has embraced all aspects of his teachings (Donatello is distracted, Michelangelo is a bit of a slacker, and Raphael is primarily interested in the physical fitness/body-as-a-deadly-weapon side of things - screw the spiritual crap). However, Splinter is careful to keep Leo humble. This doesn't mean he's always successful - Leo isn't perfect and can tend to get a little proud, though Splinter, Raph, or a horde of ninjas will usually deflate that before long. He is also a perfectionist and Always Right, as well as at times being too focused on Staying On Guard to let loose, all of which are character flaws for sure... but I'd think he'd only be insufferable if he actually were perfect.

Raphael is all about protection as well, but his is a more emotionally-charged brand. While Leo is able to keep his brain functioning in "big picture" mode under stress, Raph goes to tunnel vision easily and impulsively throws himself into the fray. The quickest way to set him off is to threaten one of the other Turtles or even an innocent civilian - he's instantly on his way to beat the offender down, sai in hand. When he's working alone there's nothing wrong with this, otherwise Leo has to figuratively keep a tight hold on his leash so he doesn't jeopardize the battle plan just to defeat some peripherally important enemy. This annoys the heck out of Raph, first because he doesn't like being restricted, and second because he doesn't like being proved wrong, especially by his straight-laced brother. He is, however, a great beta to Leo's alpha - when not blinded by rage or some other strong emotion, Raph is a smart fighter and works well within the team in battle. In his 2003 cartoon incarnation, in fact, Raphael is always coming to his brothers' aid just as someone is about to nail them in the back, besides landing some good hits of his own. And whenever Leo is taken out of the picture through injury or capture, Raph is usually able to rise to leadership without too much trouble in an almost "scared straight" kind of way. But his most effective role is as Leo's right hand man, and he knows it. The only time this arrangement ever causes problems is when he gets prideful and refuses to put the family's welfare before his own.

So each has his strengths and flaws. Some people identify better with one than the other, and there's nothing wrong with that. But with the sheer pressure on Leonardo to be both a good brother and a good leader, I think it isn't fair to label him the way many do. He often gets stuck in business mode and has a hard time relaxing with the troops. It doesn't mean he thinks he's better than his brothers (I believe the remark he made to this effect in the 2007 movie was a product of frustration at Raphael's inability/unwillingness to understand where he was coming from, and it was an attempt to get some kind of reaction out of him in lieu of that desired understanding). It also doesn't mean Leo wants to make himself look better for Splinter. He respects Splinter as a sensei and father, and is very aware that he has much more to learn.

Anyways, the part that amuses me the most about friends of mine who hate Leonardo is... well, you could say I am Leonardo. Oldest child, perfectionist, expects a lot of self and beats self up for failure, bit of a goody two-shoes, maintains close friendship with parent, nitpicky and strongwilled... that's all me. Of course, perhaps the reason I'm palatable to these buddies of mine is there's also a healthy dash of Michelangelo in me, and we know from the comics at least that Raph and Mike get along pretty well.

But for those of you Leonardo haters who were first exposed to the turtles through the original cartoon or the 1990 movie, I can completely understand... those Leonardos are definitely boring, annoying, whiny and/or suckups, and his comebacks in the movie suck. The definitive Leo is better cobbled together from the 2003 'toon, 2007 movie, and the comics.

Anyways. If you ever had an irrational urge to talk Turtles with me, I could seriously go on for hours, especially if character analysis had anything to do with it. I already had so much crap I decided to edit out of this particular rant for all y'all's sanity, and look how long it got. 8|

More serious and valuable arty posts are indeed forthcoming - I went to general conference in person for the first time on Sunday, and drew some (possibly) post-worthy things along the way.

Gator + Turtles

Yup, he's a gator. Make himself some gumbo, I garowntee!

Thought I'd play with making the Ninja Turtles look more like... well, actual turtles. Many a page was wasted on this experiment - it ended up being way too much fun and taking over all my drawing time. This was only the first page... probably will spare y'all of most of the rest, though.