gas powered stick

Meet Impossibear, this Thursday, on Bravest Warriors.

CUTE!

My friend Wes Dzioba commissioned me to draw up some cute food illustrations for his newborn son's bedroom (congrats on baby boy, Wes!) I know what you're thinking—what's gotten into this Flynn guy? Believe it or not, I don't have to draw gross things all the time. I enjoy drawing cute characters as well.


Wes and I worked out the scenarios together—the hotdog/corn combo was mine; sushi/wasabi was his clever idea.



They're cute enough to eat, aren't they? ;)

By the way, you should remember Wes for his amazing job coloring the SpongeBob comics I worked on for Nick Mag.

Preparation

For this week's What the Doodle? on Creative Juices--> Preparation

Inked and colored in Flash.
Be prepared.

Be prepared.

Whenever I try get folks to move to Boston, it often boils down to "but it's too cold" and "what do you mean winter can last 5 months?" First of all, there are much colder places than Boston: Maine. I a grew up there, so a Massachusetts winter is nothing. That said, it's a bit of a right of passage for newcomers to make it through their first winter.

The Improper Bostonian asked me to draw a cartoon to help folks prepare. On streets now, even though it was a balmy 55 today. Pfft! You call this December? 62 tomorrow? Good thing "Rudolph" is on right now, or I wouldn't know.

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.

Publicity (stunt)

(be sure to click for the larger image)

We just posted the latest What The Doodle? over at FableVision's Creative Juices blog. The word this week is PUBLICITY. I went with the publicity stunt angle. I like to think that the nose hair connects to another nose at some point, but I leave that up to you.

Strong Thurmond and The Filibuster

Chris Duffy started up a blog called "The July 4th Project" where cartoonists are contributing their notion of the patriotic, all-American superhero—just in time for Independence Day. Chris says to interpret freely, "You can be sarcastic, political, pro-America, anti-America, whimsical, or nerdy (my favorite)!"

I did 2! Here they are, with a write-up to go along with them.


The frail and elderly Senator Strom Thurmond once took to the skies above Capitol Hill as Strong Thurmond, defender of the Southern delegation! Tourists would cry, "What's that up in the sky? A turd? A stain?" just before he smacked head-on into the Washington Monument. Strong Thurmond often joined forces with The Filibuster, known for his uncanny ability to speak at great length. When armed with a phonebook, no legislation could stand in their way (including the Civil Rights Act of 1957—ouch!). They hold the record for a full 24 hours and 18 minutes!



Draw something up and send it to Chris if you have time before the 4th!

Razor

The WTD? word for this week is RAZOR.


Here's the the sketch that got me started. I played around with a couple different color treatments for this one (alternates below).




I went for pure cartoon pop on the later.
Hopefully it glows a bit on your monitor.

You can check out the other contributions over at the FableVision's Creative Juices blog. If we stay on track, look for another WTD? in a couple weeks.

Me at 100

Here's the color version (see previous post) of my illustration for Phil McAndrew's Draw Yourself at 100 contest. Here's what I had to say before:

I see myself as a mostly bald man with a head full of bushy eyebrows, free to wear pit-stained undershirts, shorts, and saggy socks around the house. If I'm still making art, let's just say I'm not sure if I'll be all there—but hopefully just as enthusiastic about my work.

A couple things to add: extensive nose and ear hair, and it goes without say that my nose will grow long and bumpy like a cucumber (this is what cartoons tell me, anyway).

This drawing is probably a good approximation as well: Glee

See you in 2079!

Justification

Here's my contribution for this week's WTD? (What The Doodle?) on FableVision's Creative Juices blog. "Justification" was what the random word generator spit out—one of the trickier words we've gotten so far.

Jog & Lunge

Inking with a brush pen

This may come as a surprise to those of you who've been following my Flash tutorials, but I really enjoy inking the traditional way as well—the ole dip the pen in the bottle of ink approach (maybe you've heard of it). I talked about my process in an earlier post (My Little Corner of the World) and how I use various pen nibs to ink my comics. I can get a varying-width with my nibs by applying pressure and it works perfectly for the level of detail I want in my comics, but the line width is limited to the size of the nib. This makes is harder to ink at a larger scale.

I recently purchased one of those Pentel Pocket Brush Pens (if you're interested, check out Jet Pens), which unlike felt-tip brush pens (markers, really) has actual bristles. It's known in cartooning circles as one of the best brush pens around. When you first get it the bristles are completely white until you load the cartridge and the ink flows in. As long as you keep the cap on, it never dries out.

I've been playing with it a bit, but it's a little hard to control as I'm not used to inking with a brush, period. But I'm beginning to get the hang of it, and I'm hoping that with a little more practice the transition to inking with a true brush will be easier.

I just finished a couple drawings for an art trade with my talented blog buddies Chris Houghton and David DeGrand. And I inked them with the brush pen, which I am wielding here in this photo.


My end goal is to be able to create the same cartoony line I get out Flash, but on paper with real ink. I learned digital before analog, as odd as that seems. The biggest downside to inking in Flash is that you're not using real ink (INK is so much fun to work with) and you don't have a physical piece to hold in your hand when you're done. The computer is amazing, but it sure does a good job of trapping your original artwork in binary code.




I had a blast inking these drawings. Soon, I'm going to buy some brushes and give the real deal a try. Until then, the brush pen is doing the trick.

Brainy

A little brain dude in early development.


Might work him into a comic, or a game.
I have a possible story in mind. Cute, huh?

In other news, I'll be heading up to the first Maine Comics Arts Festival in Portland, Maine this Sunday. Seems like a fun event! Mike Lynch has a list of the cartoonists and writers who will be attending.

Also, another reminder that I'm on Twitter these days (@bobjinx).
So look me up!

Vinyl

We tried something new over at Creative Juices this week. We used a random word generator which spit out the word "vinyl", and then a bunch of us created artwork to go along with it. We're calling this exercise WTD? (What The Doodle?). Hop on over to see what my friends at FableVision came up with.

Glee

Reed Gunther

A couple weeks ago Chris Houghton asked me if I'd be interested in doing a pin-up for his soon to be released comic named "Reed Gunther and the Steak Snacking Snake!" He recently posted some layouts on his blog. Simply put, its a story about a bear-riding cowboy named Reed Gunther. Chris sent me a bunch of amazing samples to work from, including these handy character sheets:






The task was to figure out how to put my own personal spin on the characters. I really like Chris's designs, so at first I didn't know how far I should go, or how much to deconstruct them. I figured I should start by making them a hair more cartoony, only slightly changing the proportions.


Then I really toyed with the proportions. Their heads got considerably bigger, and there are hints of the ole noodle arms sneaking into Reed's design.


So, I emailed these pencils to Chris, and while he liked them a lot, he pointed out that they weren't really in my "trademark" style (if there is such a thing). Especially the first one. So, he encouraged me to have even more fun with them—giving me the license to make them as cartoony as I wanted.

Moving forward, I took the latest round and punched up the cartoony factor even more, channeling the old-fashioned 20s and 30s cartoons I hold dear. Starla was the trickier one to work out. I landed on a bow-legged solution for her legs that makes for a fun pose—though admittedly less feminine—with a splash of Olive Oyl.


I decided to ink in Flash so I could make changes and tweak as needed.


It was amusing trying to translate a set of characters into my style. And an interesting process. From here I'll be adding a simple desert background and some typography for the finishing touches. Be sure to look for "Reed Gunther" come May!

Come on!

I don't think you'd ever want to run into this guy. I dreamed him up doodling away in the studio today. Below is my pencil sketch, which I scanned and then inked in Flash. For those of you still plugging away at my inking tutorial, keep at it!