Eat, or...

My latest for Heeby Jeeby Comix.

Interbreeding

The "What the Doodle" word this week (with no influence from me...I sware...completely random) was interbreeding.


Here's my inking from Flash:


I drew the critter below as a spare...some kind of lobster/rabbit mutant.


Be sure to stop by Creative Juices to see what the FableVision crew came up with. By the way, a few people have asked—this is the random word generator we use.

November Inks

Posting a handful of pages from my sketchbook has become a monthly ritual. So here's the latest dump.











This last fella might look familiar. Thanks again to everyone for the early support for Heeby Jeeby Comix. The three of us are working on new comics and gags, so look for new posts over there soon.

Heeby Jeeby Comix

Fun news (and a comic!) to share with you. My pals Chris Houghton, David Degrand, and I just started a new blog called HEEBY JEEBY COMIX. The three of us have been tossing around the idea for a couple months. We all like bizarre, offbeat, and nonsensical comics, so we figured why not combine our efforts and make a bunch. As we create comics, we'll be posting them. There's also a special focus on tailoring the stories and gags to be appropriate for all ages, so that kids can read them too. With the name "heeby jeeby", we thought it appropriate to launch before Halloween. Here's my first comic as a contributor.

"Rest In Peace"




(note I uploaded this one a little bigger than usual)


Visit --> Heeby Jeeby Comix

Much more to come. Tell your friends! Tell your friend's kids, too!

...and Happy Halloween everyone!

Pumpkin Carving Party 09

This was the second year we had friends over to carve pumpkins and celebrate my birthday (I turned 30 on the 22nd...yep). I'm always amazed by the variety of faces and images folks come up with.

Hit the lights!




I went for another cyclops this year. You'll notice a balloon dog in the bunch—that's by my friend Naomi, who is a balloon-twister.


Allie did a cute little pumpkin house.



Renee and Keith joined forces to form a skeleton body.


Loren probably nabbed the grumpiest pumpkin award (left).
Jesse's pumpkin, Lester (right).


Matt had outstanding results with a stencil. The floor reflection is a nice added effect, too.


Ryan definitely had the scariest grin.



And lastly, some of the leftover tangerine-kins.



Here are the pumpkins from last year.

Espouse

I wrote a quick gag comic for this week's "What the Doodle?" The word that came out of the random word generator was ESPOUSE. A tricky one for sure. I decided to play the fear angle. Not sure how successful it is, though. Here's what the rest of the FableVision crew came up with on Creative Juices.

Halloween is just around the corner...

(click to view larger)

A new 4-page comic is coming in a week. Here's a teaser panel.
Look for a fun announcement on October 30th...

Don't ask.

Searching through old email and this image showed up.

I sent it to myself from work back in March.

College Days: A return to cartoons

Thanks to everyone for your responses to the 100 Figures Assignment post, and a special shout-out to Chris Houghton for tackling the challenge head-on (see the results). I've heard from a couple more people who've said they're giving it a shot, so best of luck.

Digging through my college portfolio, I unearthed a lot of artwork and memories—some of which I thought I'd share here. When I arrived at college in 1998, I was a kid excited about drawing cartoons and comic strips. But art school had slowly beaten into my brain that cartooning was a lesser art form (I'm sure others can relate). Throughout school I kept up with my comic strip, Blake (see related post), but it rarely crossed over into my college work.


I sensed an opportunity to burst out when I enrolled in the Illustration major junior year, but it wasn't until the end of Spring semester that a plan began to form. This was mid 2001—SpongeBob was on my radar, so I was watching a lot of cartoons again. I checked an illustration annual out of the library and found the work of Gary Baseman. Here was a professional illustrator who was appropriating a vintage cartoon aesthetic. I was working in St. Louis that summer and decided it would be fun to paint a cartoony carnival lunchbox for my then girlfriend (now wife), Loren.




(one of the first posts on Drip! featured this lunchbox)

The Baseman influence is pretty thick (I know). But something had clicked. I enjoyed drawing the exaggerated/distorted forms—especially the large eyes. I recognized that Baseman was tapping into something different than your generic everyday cartoons. And I studied it. More than anything else, I was now armed with a new justification for cartoonyness—if Baseman could get away with it as an artist/illustrator, why couldn't I?


Here's one of my first assignments from senior year, though I can't remember what it was for. Fortunately my professors got a kick out of it. And it felt good to be doing something fresh, while at the same time familiar. I was drawing cartoons again!


Above is an assignment shortly thereafter. This was for an article about internet pornography ruining marriages. The images are part pencil on paper, part digital. I drew with a soft lead, scanned it, and added flat colors in Photoshop. I was going for something that looked acrylic—a very different approach from the gouache paintings I was doing the semester before.

Below is an example of pencil artwork I first scanned...


...and then treated in Photoshop.


I looked everywhere for people who were doing vintage cartoons, discovering that underground comics were a good source for the weird and distressed look as well. I had a few issues of BLAB! handy, a shared copy of a RAW comix anthology in the studio, and I printed out everything I could find on the internet. I went direct to the source, too— consuming cartoons from the 20s and 30s when I hit gold with the Fleischer studio.

At the same time, I was drawing editorial cartoons for the college paper, Student Life, which whipped me into shape. I was assigned about 2 a week, turning around each illustration in a 24-hour period. It quickly became a testing ground. They were all accompanied by text, so the context will be somewhat lost.







There was also the alphabet book assignment, where I had to figure out how to arrange a lot of characters in a scene. I decided on a bug theme:

Ladybugs at the Laundromat


Bugs at the Bus Stop


A Tick Directing Traffic


My "Jinx the Monkey" cartoon would be the culmination of everything. The best way to investigate old-fashioned cartoons would be to make one. I've embedded it below for viewing purposes (for the first time on this blog, actually!)



(apologies for not having playback controls, it's about 3 minutes)

It's hard to believe that bugger is almost 8 years old now. Working in Flash lead to drawing in Flash...blah blah blah...I'm still drawing cartoons today...pretty much for the same reason. They free me up; I don't have to make excuses for drawing weird expressive characters. And it's what comes naturally.

That should be enough rambling to last you the long weekend. I hope this was in some way interesting. The advice I give to every artist is do what you know and love—don't just copy or follow a trend because it strikes you at the moment or seems marketable. Your work (and mind) will be better for it.

Sketchbook dump

Another sampling of pages from the sketchbook I started in August.



The guy holding the staff (with a bird) is an ink study of a character I'm working into my birdhouse comic. Still roughing that out—I hope to have more to show soon.



A lot of you are probably familiar with Jake Parker...he just named this month "INKTOBER", in celebration of ink drawings. He's been posting some fabulous sketchbook art so be sure to check it out. I have to say, once (and still being) a practitioner of inking in Flash—the brush pen has truly taken hold of me. I inked my last SpongeBob comic for Nick Mag with it, and now when I step into Flash it feels a lot more clunky and slower than before. It has reminded me how much control the real world still offers us. When you put a brush to paper, you know exactly what you're getting.

I'm still a fan of Flash, but given the occasion, I encourage everyone to whip out a pen or a brush and give real ink a try this month.

Pelagic

Here's my contribution for this week's What The Doodle? on Creative Juices. The random word generator spit out the most obscure word yet: PELAGIC. Which, in a nutshell refers to the open sea, or the creatures who inhabit the upper layers of the ocean.

Stop on by to sea, ahem...see what the rest of the FableVision crew came up with --> here.

100 Figures Assignment (college days)

I checked in over at Graphic Tales late last week and was immediately transported back to my junior year of college—back to the beginning of 2001. My former professor, DB Dowd (though we knew him as Douglas or "Doobie"), has just unleashed on his Seniors the 100 Figures Assignment---> read about it here.

The gist:

You are to produce exactly 100 figure drawings/pictures of humans between 1:00 today, Friday, and Monday morning at 9:00 am, when your new week begins. These drawings should be at least 11” x 14”. The figure must dominate the picture–no “scenes” with teeny figures. And 100 drawings means 100 drawings.

This is the exact assignment as I remember it. Drop the bomb on your students on a Friday afternoon; due first thing Monday morning.

Cue panic.

DB spells out the objective in his post, but essentially, you start drawing (on 11 x 14 sheets of paper mind you...not small) only to realize around #20 that you've used up your bag of tricks. It's designed to bring you to the brink of insanity. I drew a cluster of faces a year ago in one sitting (an hour?)—and heck, I was ready to put the pen down at a dozen.



100 unique figure drawings in less than 3 days. Go!

After reading his post, I went straight to the studio and began digging through my college portfolios. I finally came across the mass of 100 drawings. Here are some of them spread out haphazardly:



It turns out I only counted around 85, so I'm either missing some or they've been misplaced. As unfair as it is to pick out favorites, here are the dozen or so images that I deem "interesting" today. But that's kind of the point. You create a lot in a short amount of time, hoping to make some discoveries.






I look at these, and while I can see the cartoon themes poking through, it strikes me how far in the direction of cartoony imagery I've gone today. This was definitely before I dipped into Fleischer and classic animation. Probably before I discovered Gary Baseman...maybe even before I started watching SpongeBob.






Not to mention that a lot of these are either gouache or watercolor paintings (nothing is digital). I remember distinctly during the critique people mentioning that I draw big heads (I still do). But I now notice how small most of the eyes are—eyes have now all but taken over my characters' faces.






A did a dozen or so like this—brush and ink...flicking the brush at the page to inspire fun ideas. That was key throughout this—keeping yourself in good spirits. I remember having fun with this set.

Here are a few more of varying styles and media.





I doubt I'll ever create so much work in such a short period of time. And it's hard to imagine a more practical exercise. We could all benefit from doing this at least once a year to work out the kinks in our style and explore new approaches of drawing. I like to think that's what a sketchbook is for, but this was much more intense by comparison.

I may do another college-related post, but until then, back to 2009.

Trace

This week's "What the Doodle?" on Creative Juices was TRACE. I drew this guy with a brush pen in my sketchbook and added some color in Photoshop. Check out what the rest of the FableVision crew came up with here.

SpongeClops!

The October 2009 issue of Nick Magazine is about to hit newsstands (if you're lucky, it may have already!). When you pick it up, the first thing you'll notice is that this is practically an ALL COMICS ISSUE. I only noticed one ad, that's how full it is. I'm told that in these remaining months the magazine will be jammed full of comics, so that's at least something to look forward to. There is a ton of talent and cartooning on display in this issue, including comics by Corey Barba, Dan Moynihan, Gahan Wilson and Graham Annable. You would be a fool not to snatch it up, so be on the look-out.

Now, if you turn to page 3 you'll see my third published SpongeBob comic, "SpongeClops!"


I wrote this comic almost a year ago, so I've been sitting on it for some time. Of the bunch I've worked on so far, it's probably my favorite. Mainly because it features Plankton and one of his evil schemes to get at the krabby patty formula. Plus it's one of the few I penned myself—it has a good amount of dialogue. I scanned it directly from the magazine because I don't have a digital copy with the speech balloons. It's 4 pages in 3 images (below), as it appears in the magazine.






(note: Blogger has a tendency to overcrunch jpegs, so hop over to my Flickr page if you want to see them sharper.)

I have to admit, when I pitched the idea I wasn't sure if I was even allowed to monkey with the features of the characters. But they went for it! By the time I had finished the comic, they were actually beginning to look normal this way.

Below are my pencils:





And here are my inks
(this is the final stage before I hand it off to Wes Dzioba to color)





I hope kids especially get a kick out of this comic (and of course, you too!)

I'm working on what will undoubtedly be my last comic for Nick Mag right now. So, one more to go!

Serpents on the brain

One more from the sketchbook...


Below is a loose page. I think I have a story spinning for this fellow.



In non-serpent related news, the long-awaited update to the FableVision website went live on Friday. WOOOOOO! It features a new interface, with plenty of recent projects (some of them may look familiar if you frequent my blog)—a mix of animation, games, websites, apps, and print work.


The direct link to FableVision Studios is now:
www.fablevisionstudios.com

Jinx the Monkey gets an update

A few nights ago I was looking at my website and all of a sudden I realized how old my landing page was—almost 6-years-old. I've made changes and tweaks to Jinx the Monkey over the years, but the image of the gramophone on the flat blue landscape had remained intact.


It's an old drawing, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it feels incredibly dated to me now. It's a quality I can't help but attribute to it, even though I still like the drawing. My gramophone character actually takes center stage in the most recent comic I did for ARGH! (issue #6 should be out shortly in Spain). Here is the first panel.


(I posted another teaser panel earlier this year)

He's basically the same character, but I draw him a little differently now. Anyway, I'm not ready to do a major overhaul of my website, and it didn't feel right to replace the gramophone as the host, so I essentially lifted the drawing from the ARGH! comic (redrawing it in Flash) and created this new landing page.


While the original landing page (which you can still view here) was meant to serve as a "splash page" before you entered the Flash site, the new one provides jumping off points to my website, my comics page (which is also in dire need of a redesign), and my blog. At some point I envision adding animation—so you could crank up the gramophone and wake him before entering the website. But the static image works for now.

Have a look --> Jinx the Monkey.com

Before I sign off, here is another illustration of the gramophone that you may remember from a previous "What the Doodle?" The word that week was VINYL.


I think he looks good in blue (in case you didn't notice already...)