FALLOUT » 2008

Girlie Sketches: Part 4

Here’s the last batch of scribbles from my cheesecake job, showing quite a few variations on similar poses. I’ll post the final character when I have inked her.

Girlie Sketches: Part 3

Here is another page of sketches from my super-fun cheesecake logo-character design job.

OK, that’s enough fun for one day, I have to get back to all the OTHER stuff I have to do…

Here are some exploratory sketches I did for my short story in the Babes In Space anthology a few years back. These space-faring giantesses were adversaries for Sephilina the Nauti-Girl (AKA: Squid Girl). As I mentioned earlier, I usually spend too much time doing sketches thumbnails, and not enough time actually making finished product and this situation was certainly typical. I have pages and pages of sketches of these gals. I will post the rest later.

Girlie Sketches: Part 2

I was lazy in drawing the hands and feet on these (my bad habit). I’ll tidy them up later.

In Space

I once had an idea about a hypochondriac robot and a manic monkey/dog (a genetic-hybrid) who travel the galaxy selling useless products to aliens. Like door to door salesmen. Their space ship is the size of a small country but most of the interior is filled with cargo, so these two live in a cramped little command module. There is a lot of travel time from A to B in outer space so there’s plenty of time for these guys to really drive each other crazy in there.

I’ve always been a sucker for cartoon science fiction stuff, but this idea is really about sharing space with someone… Sharing a bedroom with your little brother or a cubicle with someone at work. It was inspired by staying in an apartment full of guys and the frictions that result from having room-mates; all those little annoying brouhahas over who ate who’s stuff in the fridge and so on. Just put all that button-pushing and passive aggressive shenanigans “IN SPACE” with robots and monkey/dogs and there you go. Sort of a Silent Running GlenGarry GlenRoss Odd Couple Ice Station Zebra type thang… for kids!

Anyway, it still makes me chuckle when I think about it so I guess I’ll blow the dust of this old idea and do a comic story someday….

Girlie Sketches

Right now, I have a few little design jobs all cooking on the stove at the same time. Some of them are tasty, some of them not so tasty. Here are some sketches for one of the fun jobs. The assignment is to design a cheesecake pinup-girl to be the icon character for a potential line of Boudoir clothing and accessories (which is why she is holding a handbag in a few of the sketches). This is the first time that I have designed a female character and had the client ask me to make the boobs and bum even bigger. Good times.

I’ll post some more cheesecake sketches later, once I scan them. My good scanner (a 2nd-hand Epson Perfection 3170) just up and died recently; one day it simply failed to even turn on, after being a great workhorse for about a year… So until I buy a new scanner (model suggestions anyone?) I am stuck with my slow All-In-One (fax/printer/scanner) which has lousy picture quality, though serviceable enough for rough Black and White sketches…

Kewl Thangs

I want to show you two sites that showcase sculptures made from scrap. STEPHANE HALLEUX is a Belgian sculptor who makes incredible things out of bits and pieces of leather and old machine parts. His work is very inspiring and I recommend that you all take a look-see at his site. Click on each of the menus on the left side from “Personnages” (characters) to “Croquis” (sketches) to see a wide selection of his fantastic and whimsical creations, that include people, animals, machines, and vehicles. (Thanks to Tony for telling me about this artist).

The second site has been on my LINKS page for a while now but it seems appropriate to mention it again here in this post, because it too features sculptures made from bits and pieces of old junk. BENNETT ROBOT WORKS, as you’d expect from the title of the site, focuses exclusively on sculptures of ROBOTS in all shapes and sizes. They all have a retro-tech quality and a ton of personality, each being made entirely from a unique configuration of found objects. If you fall in love with one, the good news is that each of them is for sale.

Thrust Monkey

When I am doodling away on my self-published comics, I can really disappear up my own creative tail-pipe on the preparations sometimes. I may spend days and days designing a character who only appears in one or two panels, drawing pages and pages of thumbnail sketches, and spending hours and hours thinking up names and back-stories and all that stuff…. none of which shows up in the final book.

Case in point, an airborne adversary for Rocket Rabbit, THRUST MONKEY. He’s a jet-pack powered bad-guy who, by the way, rolls (and flies) with JUMP CHIMP (posted earlier) a rocket-boot sporting fellow flying simian, both of whom are members of the APES OF WRATH, a freelance co-op of hairy marauders, each of whom got way more pencil mileage than was really required.

But on the other hand, playing around with all this stuff is the fun part of doing personal projects. And I get to post the left-overs in my blog.

Smitten

My good pal David Gordon has been writing and illustrating charming children’s books for a few years now (such as THE THREE LITTLE RIGS and THE UGLY TRUCKLING). His latest story is a collaboration with his girlfriend Susan and, appropriately enough, it is a charming love story between two articles of lost laundry; a sock and a mitten, entitled SMITTEN.This is my favourite of Dave’s books thus far, which is really saying something, because I have liked all of them. Apart from being a great book for kids, it would also make a great gift for that EXTRA special grown-up in your life.

The Tiniest Bear

A long way away from wherever it is that you live right now, there once was a tiny little cottage at the end of a long and winding trail, deep inside a forest of tall and tangled trees.

Inside this cottage there lived a family of misfit bears. There was an enormous polar bear, a gigantic grizzly bear, a huge black bear, and even a teeny tiny Koala bear.

As everybody who knows anything about bears will tell you, koalas aren’t REAL bears. This koala was even less real-er than the others, for it was actually a little girl. Though not a real bear, the little girl had many excellent bear-like qualities.

She could dance just like a real dancing-bear. She could wrestle just like a real wrestling-bear. Also she was cranky when she woke up in the mornings, just like a real bear!

But best of all, like any real bear, she liked bear-hugs. The bears would hug her right back, though not at full bear-strength (they didn’t want to break her). Those bears loved the little girl as much as if she was a real little bear.

Even though she always cheated at cards.

The little girl felt more at home with those bears than she’d ever felt before and she enjoyed playing with them all year long.

Then one day, the first fall of snow painted the forest in white and announced to the world that winter was beginning.

The bears began to yawn. As everybody who knows anything about bears will tell you, bears sleep ALL through the winter.

The little girl did not feel sleepy. As everybody who knows anything about little girls will tell you, they DON’T sleep all through winter (unless it is night time, of course). The bears worried that the little girl would be lonely while they slept all winter.

So before they went to sleep, the bears gave her a present. They said “We will be asleep for a while. You may feel a lack of bear in your life. Open this if you feel lonely before we wake up.”

The bears each carefully hugged the little girl good night, and then they all went to sleep. As soon as they were snoring, the little girl felt terribly alone.

The little girl opened her present. It was a TEDDY BEAR. As everybody who knows anything about teddy bears will tell you, teddy bears have many excellent bear-like qualities, but they aren’t real bears.

Teddy Bears don’t need to sleep all winter (in fact they don’t sleep at all). So the teddy bear could keep the little girl company until the other bears woke up in the spring.