Sunday, February 28, 2010

Fashion

I sketched a couple of the photos from here, which is an incredible blog.



I feel almost bad for drawing these, simply because the original photos were so good! What more could I add to them? I'm a sucker for good fashion photography.



The second one turned out much better, but then again the second girl was more my type. My girlfriend is a brooder, though she usually doesn't look so surly. I'm not entirely pleased with how the mouth turned out in this drawing. It was her most outstanding feature (to me), and I felt I should have given it one more pass.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Frustration

Just some stressful drawings I did, all featuring the same girl. Not trying to be too on-model or anything, just trying to capture the feeling of being stressed, which I was experiencing at the time.






The one above is my favorite. I'm proud of that pose, though I think it could use some refinement. Of course, these are just off-the cuff, so they could all use some refinement.

The drawing below may not look too special, but I've been tweaking the character's proportions and construction. This is partly the result. Looking at it I feel like I still have trouble with hips and shoulders, even though I've drawn thousands of them: from life, from other drawings, and from imagination. I've drawn this character dozens of times, and each time I get a little better.




I'm doing lots of drawing studies during my free time. Through my internship, I'm in a position to get feedback from a number of the industry's best cartoonists, and I intend to take advantage of it. Cartoon drawing was something my art school never taught me; drawing was purely optional for their animation program. In fact, I did my best to find professors who would teach me to draw, and the good ones all taught graduate classes. So if only I were willing to spend two more years and 50,000 more dollars, then I might have learned something. But that's beside the point.

Through the Nick internship program, I've received three of their drawing tests: character design, layout, and storyboarding. I'm starting with the character design before moving on to layout, and by the time I've finished both then I should be fully versed and ready to tackle the drawing challenges of the storyboarding test. I'm getting feedback all along the way, so I feel like I'm in a position to make some real progress. Maybe by the time I'm done with the internship I'll have the knowledge I need to get a job somewhere in the industry.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

SKETCH D-D-D-D-DUUUUMP!

I've been meaning to do this for a while, so here goes!




This here is Schnooks, who I've drawn in a few comics. He's very much inspired by Tove Jansson, particularly in that his design consists of a circle sitting on top of a triangle, with a couple arms and legs sticking out. Sometimes I cheat his arms in a Jove-like fashion.




Everyone likes General Patton! I didn't draw this from reference and still can't be bothered to look up a picture of his face.




Beautiful German actress by the name of Hilde. I've only ever seen her in one film (Murderers Among Us), but right now I'm reading through her autobiography. She was acting during a time of war, suspicion, and general chaos. I drew a few pictures of her, but this was the best one.




Edward Cullenhands, showing off his horrifying Cullen hands. I don't know.




Peek-a-boo is an adorable roly-poly cat who belongs to my roommate. She's grey with a white stripe down her belly, and she has a short tail. She sometimes drools.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Story of Jumpity Jesse and his Banker

Jumpity Jesse Jones never understood how, through what complex machinations, he had been brought onto a pirate ship to begin with. His banker, Mr. Horg Willow, was responsible, he knew, and there was some mention about “reallocating assets” and “upsizing cost differentials,” but these were alien concepts to a simple cowboy man. Jesse only spoke Cowboy, and occasionally just Cow, but never Banker-ese. As a matter of fact, Jesse couldn’t remember why a cowboy needed a banker to begin with. Cowboys were paid in chaw, which they could keep in their pockets or saddle bags.


Sitting up in the crow’s nest, Jesse Jones sipped poke-an-beans from his cactus-styled coffee mug. Then he leaned back and kicked up his feet. At least life was comfortable on the ship, if a little saltier than he was used to. There were sea-birds and sea-fish jumping above the water, and Jesse was always being rocked to sleep by the rhythmic movements of the boat. Jesse was halfway into a nap when he heard an Oklahoma-styled duster brewing on the deck below.


“Get your snake-skinned ass down here before I grind it into horse paste!” bellowed the scrawny, bespectacled banker below. His face was red, either from anger or Caribbean heat, Jesse couldn’t tell which. For some unfathomable reason the banker wore black three-piece suits while out on the ocean. Jesse just didn’t understand of anything where bankers were concerned.


“Pardon?” Jesse tipped his hat off his eyes and spat a wad of tobacco over the deck towards the sea, where a shark lifted out of the water to catch it in its mouth. Only a skilled cowboy can chew tobacco while eating poke-an-beans.


“Get down here! I didn’t bring you aboard this boat so you could tan your face!”


Jesse swung one leg over the side of the crow’s nest, then the next. As he hauled himself down the ropes, he said “I’ve never quite understood just why you brought me along on this here floating cork, pardner. Whyn’t you explain it to me one more time?”


“We’re here for cattle-ranging, you buffoon!”


“Cattle? Here?” Jesse looked around at the expanse of water surrounding the boat on all sides.


“Yes, cattle! Sea-cows, of course!”


“Yore looney.”


“Sea-cows! Manatees! They’re an untapped resource, and they’re supposed to be around here somewhere!”


“I s’pose.” Jesse didn’t know much about marine biology. “How’m I supposed to herd these sea-cows?”


“What, and you’re asking me? You’re the cattle expert! Did you, or did you not, put ’10 years ranging experience’ on your resume?” The banker was livid, squinting at Jesse with all the inchoate rage of a hungry badger.


Jesse thought a moment. “Should I, um, maybe bait them to the surface? I need to see ‘em before I can really range ‘em.” Jesse was trying to divert the topic to something familiar.


“Bait? Manatees? Like, with food?” asked Mr. Willow.


“Yeah, they’re sea-cows. They must eat sea-grass.”


“Do we have any sea-grass?”


“Hmm...” The hold was filled with the only two things Cowboy Men need to survive: tobacco and poke-an-beans. “How will we know them when we sea them? Do they look like fish?”


Here was Mr. Willow’s chance to show his knowledge. “Fish? Faugh! Sea-cows are mammals! They will, therefore, have mammaries!


“Mammaries?”


“Tits. Teats. They’d have some sort of lumpy milk sacks dangling from their bodies,” said Mr. Willow with an air of triumph.


“Fish with tits? I’m not sure, do you really think we could make money from something like that?”


Mr. Willow snapped back with renewed fury, “Yes I do! Whatever these sea-cows look like they must surely taste great, or if they don’t then we’ll hype the market to make manatees seem like the next great American meat!”


“I prefer steak myself,” was Jesse’s uncertain response.


“And now you will eat sea-steak, or so help me God, I’ll find myself another cow-poke!”


That idea sounded just fine to Jesse, who was thinking more and more about how great a sleep under the stars by a roaring fire would be. Could you have a roaring fire on a boat? The idea didn’t seem to hold water. As much as he wanted to return to land, however, Jumpity Jesse felt that he shouldn’t betray the trust of this tiny, quivering banker. Jesse didn’t want to leave the man on this boat in the middle of the sea, so he made a proposal.


“Perhaps we should just take this show back on the land. You and me, ranging the type of cows I know how to handle. I could always use another cattle hand,” offered Jesse.


Mr. Willow shook his head, “Have you forgotten already, Jesse? The reason we came out here, the reason why no cowboy is safe on dry land?”


Jesse had forgotten.


“The clowns.


There was a long, uncomfortable pause.


“Clowns.” The word just seemed to hang in the air, moving no more than two inches from where Jesse’s lips had formed it.


“The rodeo clowns. They were going to corner the bull market! No one could rustle bulls better than those rodeo clowns--I know! I saw them with my own eyes!--and with all the bulls under their control, what future would cowboys have with cows? Huh?” The truth was out, and there was no going back. Mr. Horg Willow was thrashing his arms about like a small, looney bird trying to take to the air.


“I think you might be confused, pardner.”


“Don’t you pardner me! I’ve funded this entire operation! I’ve delivered you from the clowns! Or would you rather like to put on floppy shoes and grease paint every morning, despairing in the knowledge that you once had an opportunity to create a whole new market for cowboys everywhere!”


“Ranging sea-cows. Right.” There was only so much Jesse could take. “I think you might be confused as to just what a rodeo clown is.”


But Horg was in a whole different world at this point. “Clowns! Clowns! Freaky, awful, honking clowns! Everywhere I go, anything I try to invest in, the clowns are already there! They beat me to theater! They beat me to fast food! They beat me to real estate! I swear, and now they’ve beaten me to agriculture!”


“Now calm down, there,” said Jesse. The banker’s thrashing and raving was at such a pitch that the cowboy feared for the safety of either himself or his... friend? partner? It didn’t matter, Jumpity Jesse did his best to restrain the small man.


Mr. Willow was strong for his size, however, and wrestled away, cursing and spitting violent oaths against clowns and cowboys alike. Too late, Jesse called out for Horg to hold still, and the banker stomped on a large, slippery wad of cowboy chaw. Mr. Willow slipped and slid and hurtled straight over the side of the boat, directly into the jaws of a waiting shark.


“You know,” Jesse said to eaten friend, “if there really were sea-cows around here, I don’y know how they’d survive with so many sea-bears around to eat them.”