Sunday, December 28, 2008

Bobby Flynn (1991)

When I was visiting my folks over Christmas, I took a morning to rummage through some of my old artwork which was stowed away in my bedroom closet. More precisely, my parents asked me to clean out my closet (when was the last time you heard THAT?). I was lucky enough to find this, my first "official" sketchbook, from 1991—making me 11 years old at the time. I know this because I dated practically every page of the book—signature included. As you can see here, I very clearly stated the rules of the sketchbook on the inside cover:


1. NO TRACING!!
2. Sketch lightly the(n) press down hard.
3. No ripping pages out!

Simple rules to live by, I suppose. Oh, also good to note that I was known as "Bobby" until I was a senior in high school.


Here is a page dated 1-1-91, New Year's Day! Making the sketch 18 years old to the dot in just a couple days. Entitled, DYING ROBOT. Wow, I was fascinated with characters in desperation even then!


Here is a character I must've been working on named Turtle Tort.


...including a cast of other characters. I don't remember doing anything with them, though. I believe this was when Tiny Toon Adventures was on TV.


Finally, a drawing in colored pencils of Dimension-X...with Leonardo and the Technodrome in silhouette. I'll be doing another post entirely about my obsession with the Ninja Turtles, soon. This sketchbook is loaded with them.

Fast forward to the end of 2008, with 2009 knocking on our door. It's been a great year...thanks to everyone who's been stopping by the blog. Happy New Year!

6 comments:

Sherm said...

Everything in this post made me smile. I love to see when a little kid's obsessions (yours) bloom into a real cartooning career.

Happy New Year "Bobby"

--sherm

Bob Flynn said...

Glad you enjoyed it, Sherm. I spent the better part of last night reading through several homemade comic books. Definitely fun to think back to simpler times, when my cartooning engines were first firing up.

Renee Kurilla said...

Hahaha! This is great, little Bobby's rules to draw by! I think I'll apply them to my own art. Thank you, oh wise "Art Yoda."


p.s. I'm not even joking.

Louise Smythe said...

haha! when i was 11 i tried to resist tracing stuff too. nice turtles!

Bob Flynn said...

Renee, I'm glad you could find pearls of wisdom from the words of an 11-year-old. Um, Art Yoda?

Louise, I used to call out my friends for tracing. Tracing paper was always a dead give away (ha). For some reason, I thought it was really important not to tear pages out if I didn't like them...that real artists would never do that. Be sure to check out my new Ninja Turtles post for turtle overload :)

dave roman said...

These are great!